Spice of life: Romance of the forgotten Sehra of Punjabi wedding

To all those soon-to-be-newlyweds and the public at large, I would extol the virtues of a Sehra. Rather than spending lakhs on flowers, catering, five-star venues, lehengas, etc, maybe you could invest in a beautiful poem called the Sehra, which if luck is on your side might survive 73 years like my grandfather’s did

As summer and monsoon wane and make way for autumn and winter, one can be certain of the arrival of the wedding season and along with it the arrival of invitations, expensive chocolates (for ‘mithai’ is out of vogue now), macaroons (French ones, of course), and curated hampers. Much before ogling on the screens of our cellphones to watch what is happening at the wedding of one of the richest families in the country became our national pastime, there was a time when weddings were much more meaningful and much less materialistic.

No one will remember the flowers, catering or lehengas, etc, for a new wedding would come and people would forget the old, but your Sehra would forever remain with you for eternity. (HT File)

Much before the trend of celebrating weddings on a grand scale and letting money flow like water became our mainstay, the golden generation (our grandparents’ generation, for they are celebrating their golden jubilees now) celebrated weddings by commissioning a poet to write a Sehra, a poem commemorating the union of two individuals and asking for the choicest of blessings from God for the happy union.

Great poets like Ghalib and Zauk, too, wrote Sehraes for grooms on their wedding. Not many of these Sehraes survive (Ghalib’s wedding Sehra does, it’s available online to see but then he was Ghalib, no ordinary man) and clearly in the 21st century the art of commissioning a Sehra is long gone. Frankly, no one in today’s generation would even know what a Sehra is.

While going through the papers of my maternal grandfather in an old, battered black trunk, I found a folded yellowed piece of paper which had the words Sehra written on it in Punjabi. It had a 54-line poem composed in Punjabi by poet GS Kamla to commemorate the wedding of my maternal grandfather, Sardar Mittar Man Singh Kahlon, to my maternal grandmother, Biba Surjit Kaur. It had been commissioned by my maternal grandfather’s brothers S Sampuran Singh Kahlon, IAS, and S Gian Singh Kahlon, ICS, to commemorate the wedding of their younger brother. For some reason, the Sehra had magically survived rust, dust and ‘cleanliness must’ (which involves my mother throwing all old papers away for she thinks they are of no use) and other vagaries of nature for 73 years.

To all those soon-to-be-newlyweds and the public at large, I would extol the virtues of a Sehra. Rather than spending lakhs on flowers, catering, five-star venues, lehengas, etc, maybe you could invest in a beautiful poem called the Sehra, which if luck is on your side might survive 73 years (like my maternal grandfather’s) for your grandchildren to see. No one will remember the flowers, catering or lehengas, etc, for a new wedding would come and people would forget the old, but your Sehra would forever remain with you for eternity or as Amitabh Bachchan in a cement brand ad says, “Sadiyon ke liye (for centuries)’. gurnoorgrewal572@gmail.com

The writer is a Chandigarh-based freelance contributor