INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

Depending on different family customs, the behavior of both the bride and the
groom should be chaperoned for forty days before the marriage and from three to ten
days prior to the wedding day they should be confined to their respective houses.
During this period the girl should not use ornaments or cosmetics, and is not permitted
to go out alone. The period of seclusion is called maiyan and is marked by different
preparations for the wedding day, including several symbolic acts to signify the
transformational process of the bridal couple. The marriage ceremony qualifies as a
rite of passage that comprises different stages of identity transformation. During the
period of maiyan the bride and groom wear simple clothes and are held in confinement,
but after a ritual bath on the wedding day they dress up in their wedding
gowns as royalties on public display to mark their transformation from virgindaughter
to married woman, and from bachelor to husband. In the “ritual process” of
a Sikh wedding the couple hovers between two extremes ‒ from seclusion and neglect
of the outward appearance to the most exclusive bodily ornamentations.
In some families the period of maiyan formally starts when the boy and girl
separately receive a red thread (mauli) tied around their wrists by a family member or
the barber’s wife. Among other social groups the ceremony of tying the mauli is performed
after the couple is anointed with oil and bathed a few days before the wedding,
or on the wedding day. During maiyan both the bride and the groom wear more
simple and understated clothes than in daily life. They are also well fed, often with
sweet and fried food that comes from the house of their maternal uncles. During this
period the boy and the girl are considered to be passing to a different phase of their
lives and their seclusion sometimes evokes popular beliefs in ghosts and the evil eye.
The couple is considered more vulnerable to influences of spirits and should be protected
by isolation. 615 Furthermore, the Punjabi culture holds the concept of bhanimar,
people who try to ruin a new relationship by commenting on the couple and insinuating
doubts in the minds of the people, in contrast to the role of the matchmaking
vichola. The preparatory stage of becoming a couple is thought to accentuate malevolent
forces of both spirits and human backbiters.
A few days prior to the wedding the women on both sides gather in the evenings
for what is generally called ladies sangit, the singing of specific folksongs associated
with the occasion. Sikh families in Varanasi who were about to marry off their
son or daughter would invite women of the community to perform the hymn
Sukhmani Sahib for 51 or more times and in the evening sing folk songs and dance to
laughter and clapping. In the house of the bride the folk songs are called suhag, which
in the context of marriage refers to the marital felicity or a happily married woman.
As the dominant social values in Punjabi society remain patriarchal, the preservation
of the family’s health and happiness is generally considered to be the responsibility of
615
Hershman 1981: 163. The groom might be taken out in a procession in his village, wearing
dirty clothes and holding a sword to shield him from the harmful influences of spirits (Jamous
2003, Wikeley 1991).
368
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008