The formality wars

The formality wars. Nowadays, every single one of us go through this phase of life called the formality wars. What does it mean in the first place? Let me explain.

One of the many specialties that we Indians have is that we have several number of festivals. And then with festivals come all the laborious visiting. Visiting friends, visiting relatives, visiting neighbors and... you get the point. In the olden days, all these visits used to mean something to everyone. They used to bring joy and excitement to the people about having guests over. The entire point of visiting was to personally greet each other and promote bonding and unity among the people who celebrated that festival or that occasion together. 

But now, people don't visit because they want to visit, people visit because it's a formality. They are afraid that if they don't visit, the opposite person would feel bad. Not only the people who are visiting, but the people who are having guests over feel it as an obligation to return the favor of welcoming them. It's a pain to make the food, it's a pain to clean the entire house, it's a pain to basically have people over and paste a smile on your face even though you are tired from all the cleaning.  This is, my friends, the formality wars.

It's not just about the visiting and having guests over. There are other parts to the formality wars. One of its many vicious circles include the giving and taking of money. According to one of my favourite shows, The Big Bang Theory, it is said very correctly and I can't exactly quote it, but it goes something like this, 'the giving and taking of money is a pure gimmick. you give someone 50 dollars and that person will also give you 50 dollars on another occasion and this will keep going on until one of those two people die, leaving the other one 50 dollars richer.' One of the most brilliant lines ever. 

To me of course, the giving or taking of money also ends in advantage because I am always on the receiving end while my parents do all the giving. Also today, I am going to be part of the formality wars. Going for dinner with relatives. Another formality dinner in the making it seems.

If you ask me (which I am obviously going to say since this is my blog), you want to host dinners and outings, do it if you really want to and not because you have to. I would like to put an end to the formality wars when I grow up. The rest depends on you ;]