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    RSVFree: How Indians are trying (and struggling) to wriggle out of attending weddings amid a raging pandemic

    Synopsis

    Unable to have tough conversations within family groups fearing friction, many vent their frustration online by sly tweeting at people still going ahead with their grand wedding plans

    WEDDING-PRESSURE-MEMES4ETtech
    Illustration: Rahul Awasthi
    “Opened Facebook after ages today and it’s just a combination of Mother’s Day posts, wedding photos, and Covid obituaries,” Raj Kunkolienkar (@kunksed) tweeted on Sunday.

    Kunkolienkar’s post was one part observational and nine parts stemming out of frustration.

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    Last week, the Goa-based cofounder of Stoa School, a premier B-school, wearily tweeted about his grandmother testing positive for Covid-19 after she was “dragged for a wedding” despite his protest.

    “Sometimes, I feel so powerless in this Indian joint family madness,” he said.

    Since not many members of his family are active on the platform, Kunkolienkar said he could vent on Twitter about people still going ahead with their grand wedding plans in the middle of a raging pandemic.



    This is not an isolated phenomenon.

    Memes and posts criticising people having weddings that flout precautionary guidelines have started to emerge amid tweets sharing SOS messages from people looking for help with Covid-19 related medical emergencies.



    Even as the second Covid-19 wave rages across the country, social events such as weddings, characterised as super-spreaders, continue unabated despite multiple reports of such gatherings leading to Covid-related deaths in various parts of the country in the recent past.

    No to ‘no’

    Behavioural scientists and anthropologists note that many people are reluctantly attending these super-spreader events because of their inability to say no.

    “Weddings are still the primary way in which communities show solidarity to members,” says anthropologist Gayatri Sapru.

    Many familial and societal relationships are solely built on the promise of “being there in times of need” and weddings and death ceremonies are considered prime occasions in that context.

    It shows in the way Indians like to keep a record of attendance by documenting who gifted what at a wedding.

    The documenting is an exercise in proving one’s commitment to that community as it is implied that you have to match up to the guest’s gifting standards when the time comes.

    These customs do not, sadly, have a blueprint on how to handle things like a pandemic. They are like ancient pacts, says Sapru.

    Therefore, the fear -- that not attending a wedding will lead to members ostracising or bad-mouthing their own family-- is too high right now.

    Why are people having weddings right now anyway, you ask?

    "It's because the majority is desperate to meet people," says Anand Damani, a Mumbai-based behavioural scientist. "Either they just don’t care or they don't know enough to care unless it happens to them."

    Only something drastic brings about a behaviour change, he adds.

    So, "if the family organising the wedding goes through Covid later, they may still understand the risks involved, but it is difficult for people to predict how they’ll feel about something at a later stage."

    Why should people have to die for those living to get their act together...

    WEDDING-PRESSURE-MEMES5ETtech
    Illustration: Rahul Awasthi

    In some cases, the family organising the wedding requests guests to take a Covid-19 test before attending but many relatives simply refuse, and it is hard to then uninvite these guests.

    Unfortunately, if someone is not taking these adequate precautions and inviting you to their wedding, the onus to decline such an invitation falls on the recipient, says Damani.

    “In such a scenario, an individual feels pressured because refusing to attend means going against the norm and studies have shown that going against the crowd takes a mental toll,” he adds.

    Sly memes

    This pressure is now manifesting in the form of memes and sly tweets on social media.


    Unable to have such conversations within family groups fearing friction, many are finding an outlet to vent their frustration online, often by replying to posts from those calling this menace out.

    Several Twitterati resonated with Kunkolienkar’s post, for instance, sharing it further with captions like, “tell me about it,” or “been there, it’s such a hopeless feeling.”

    Content creator Bhavika Motwani quoted it saying, “I didn’t let my family go to a wedding and obviously I’m the bad person now who has no values whatsoever.”

    Motwani is being labelled as the “bad person” on account of the “shame culture” prominent in Indian society where social approval is paramount, says anthropologist Sapru.

    Only in a society operating on a “guilt culture” does one judge internally when one is right or wrong, she explains.

    Here, if you try to show people in the family the right path, you often risk taking the relationship off track.

    Himanshu Arora, a 32-year-old risk management professional from Delhi, experienced this first-hand recently.

    Arora had been having sleepless nights over the last few weeks because he couldn’t figure out how to avoid attending a cousin’s wedding. “I sent my cousin’s mother some news reports revealing the grim picture of Covid around us through my mother’s WhatsApp. She stopped calling her for a while after that.”

    Ultimately, he had to attend the wedding with 19 other close family members last week because he was the only brother of the bride and was required to perform certain rituals, making it emotionally harder for him to refuse.

    “Everyone wore masks, except the bride and groom,” he says.

    While Arora immediately self-isolated after coming back from the wedding to prevent transmission in case he had been infected, not everyone has been that conscientious.

    Deepu Sebastian, a media professional, recently tweeted about a neighbour who attended a wedding reception after taking a Covid-19 test (and before getting the results) but tested positive on the day he had attended multiple gatherings in Kerala.



    While calling out such elements on social media sure highlights the issue, it doesn’t help much in addressing it.

    For instance, in response to Sebastian’s tweet, someone urged him to call the police on his neighbour.

    “It's so easy to say something like that on social media. It's so difficult to do that, especially in a closely-knit community,” he says. “We really have to acknowledge that there's an information gap here.”

    The only way this gap can be bridged, says behavioural scientist Damani, is if the government makes clear policies, does not change them too often, and ensures they are implemented.

    He advises against assuming that the general public will equip itself with the knowledge on how to behave in a pandemic and willingly make an effort in that direction.

    “It is expecting too much out of people,” he adds.
    The Economic Times

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