Bharati Mukherjee’s The Tree Bride was once criticized for dredging up and exoticizing an obscure old custom, that of marrying off women to symbolic mates. (Women tend to choose hardwood, natch.) But the criticism may have been premature. There’s speculation that TMBWITW may succumb to the same superstition:

… the buzz is that [Aishwarya Rai] just might have to get married to a peepal tree in Varanasi before she is “fit” to marry Abhishek [Bachchan]. It’s a common practice amongst traditional minded Indians who believe that marrying a ‘manglik’ girl could be dangerous for the life of her spouse. So to ward off the evil, the girl is made to marry a tree, which is said to take on the bad effects of Mars…

“She has to get a ‘mangalsutra’ (black thread tied around the neck of a bride by the bridegroom during the wedding) tied and also has to do ‘pheras’ around the tree…” [Link]

The decoy groom ritual is specified with the technical exactness of a surgery:

… she would have to marry secretly with Lord Vishnu’s idol - either made of gold or silver - in the presence of her parents and a priest before her actual wedding. [Link]

The groom in question also suffers from identical astrological frippery, but you just know the girl is going to get the short end of the branch:

… Kumbh Vivah is done for manglik girls and not manglik boys. [Link]

The custom is reminiscent of temporary marriages in Iran:

Temporary marriage, or sigheh… was used most frequently in Iran by pilgrims in Shiite shrine cities… Pilgrims who traveled had sexual needs, the argument went. Temporary marriage was a legal way to satisfy them…

Maryam and Karim chose temporary marriage for a practical reason. “We went out a lot together, and I didn’t want to get into trouble… We wanted to have documents so that if we were stopped on the street we could prove we weren’t doing anything illegal…” The couple could have gotten married for as short a time as a few minutes or as long as 99 years. [Link]

I just don’t see what people have against innocent young trees. You bring a cute little sapling into the world, water it, call it your own. Many years later, if it survives drought, fire and termites, you might have a fine young tree on your hands. Then someone comes along and forces your sapling into a shotgun wedding, and a loveless one that’s over quicker than a celebrity wedding.

It makes me knotty just thinking about it.

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