51 couples to tie nuptial knot in city at one go

PATNA: The Saurath Sabha, the famed wedding site for brides and grooms from Mithilanchal, may now no longer be so common a site. Guardians, panjikars, brides and grooms adorned with the traditional “paag”, are fast disappearing from the Sabha Gachchi at Saurath village in Madhubani district.
Others have taken the cue from this ancient ritual of mass marriages.
Fifty one couples from many areas of the state and five from Jharkhand’s Godda district are all set to tie the nuptial knot on July 16, a shubh lagna (auspicious date) in the month of “Asadh” (according to the traditional astrological almanac), under the auspices of the Ma Vaishno Devi Sewa Samiti, a charitable institution working for social causes. The weddings will be solemnised completely free of cost, to facilitate the guardians of the couples to get their sons and daughters married off conveniently.
In a first of its kind, the 51 couples will be married in 51 “vivah mandaps” dotting the sprawling SK Memorial Hall here. Unlike the Saurath Sabha, 51 purohits here have already been assigned the task of performing the wedding rituals in each mandap, with a token amount of Rs 501 given to each purohit.
The 51 couples comprise three couples from Rajapakar in Vaishali district, where in January, 2008, their houses were burnt and their wedding could not be performed, two girls from the Mahadalit community of Mahendru locality in Patna, who have, incidentally, done MBA, two Brahmin couples from Pusa, Samastipur, a physically challenged Bhumihar girl from Hajipur, a pair from the Maithil Brahmin community from Darbhanga (the girl’s father had expired when she was a child and her wedding could not be solemnised for want of money), a divorcee from Raja Bazaar in Patna who had been married for just six months.
Of the 51 bridegrooms, only 10 per cent are educated and 90 per cent are uneducated. The one notable feature of this unique wedding is that the couples are going in for same-caste weddings. The samiti had sometime back announced its decision of solemnising the weddings of 51 couples and had also distributed forms.
The samiti is making elaborate arrangements at the Maharana Pratap Bhawan located on the Arya Kumar Road and Sahu Samaj, which have been booked in advance, to house the large number of guardians and parents who are expected to attend this one-of-a-kind wedding.
The S K Memorial Hall has been booked for the day with the “jaimala” beginning sharp at 5 pm. A cultural programme has also been organised there which will also be enlivened by noted singer Malini Awasthi. Added to this, each bride will be given a gift of five-ten saris, a “mangalsutra” and a pair of “payal” (anklets) to begin life on a new note.