On The Train (Lee Chetopa and Cost of Marriage), Sept 7, 2006

On the STAR LRT going to Universiti Station from KL Sentral I saw a guy standing in front of me wearing Lee Chetopa. I smiled and remembered how crazy we were when it was the in thing way back in the 70’s. But our Lee Chetopa was not a carrot but straight cut and Lee had another version with different material that was cut like jeans. To wear those in those days would mean you are slick man.

I was reading Rory Stewart’s Places in Between, an account on his walk in Afghanistan, and the chapter I was reading talking about how costly it is to get married in Afghanistan. They need at least 5K, which is a lot there, to ‘buy’ a bride. To make it more interesting today in our incubation exercise we talked about dowry with our Indian vendor and they told us it is expensive in India as well. Well, at least in India the man is the benefactor. All these talks about marriage brought me back to my own wedding that I consider as quite cheap. Mainly because it was not a big wedding and far from exclusive. Come to thing of it, it was really nothing I sure did not feel it to be grand on that day. Apart from the nikah and the attire that I had to wear I did not feel anything more than I am getting married. I mean it was just like any other day. I did not have a lot of my friends coming and it was low key. Until today I do not know why I did not invite most of my school friends to the wedding. In fact none of us really invited each other except for a few of us. It is a mystery to me.