A fake wedding organized by college students has taken Twitter crazy – and with everything going on in the country, why shouldn’t that be what Pakistanis are focusing on?
Videos of a fake wedding held at LUMS in Lahore are circulating on Twitter and TikTok. It seems that the students voted to choose the bride and groom and organized a ‘mass wedding’ for them, with all the activities accompanying traditional Pakistani weddings. For some reason, people on Twitter were pinned to it.
Log in to Twitter and you’ll see everyone talking about ‘wedding’. Not surprisingly, there are people who sigh enviously at the students’ antics and commemorate their long-gone college days. Crowds of people criticizing the students for having fun were also expected.
Apparently, a fake wedding is negatively affecting their education. Smug Twitter users say students need to study 24/7, especially if they’re at LUMS. Apparently having fun means you can’t be a good student. We don’t need to remind you of the incredible pressure on students today – there have been many sad occasions when that pressure has become too great to bear. If students at one of the most academically competitive universities in the country want to celebrate and have fun after class, we should really let them.
Having fun doesn’t make them worse students – and if they do for any reason, it has nothing to do with us anyway. What difference does it make to us at LUMS that Ali or Amna gets a B instead of an A in international relations?
Twitter claims that a fake wedding also mocks the sanctity of marriage. If only someone had told us earlier that a single fake wedding was enough to undermine the sanctity of one of the most commoditized institutions in the world – solid and unsound. A lot capitalist wedding industry. How does a teen in her twenties with a fake mehndi, choreographed dances, and inappropriate hijab look so strong that it shakes our society’s faith in marriage?
Of course, one could argue that Pakistanis are too obsessed with weddings and that the celebration reinforces it. But we already knew that. We didn’t need to see children dress and play as brides and grooms to confirm how deeply rooted weddings and marriage celebrations are in our culture.
In Pakistan, there are very few recreational avenues available to ordinary people. Weddings may be the only venue where people are allowed to laugh, sometimes dance, have fun, and just celebrate. No wonder weddings are one of the few events that come to people’s minds when it comes to having fun. While some would argue that it’s a little presumptuous to have a fake wedding, at the end of the day, it has nothing to do with any of us.
It was interesting to learn through Twitter and shared experience that many Pakistani universities have hosted and organized ‘wedding’ events for many years. LUMS did not invent this tradition, and it is not the only institution its students attend. However, he is the only one whose videos have gone viral on the internet.
To see Twitter so involved in the fun of a group of college students is ridiculous given the current state of our country. Our currency is depreciating, we haven’t come close to an IMF bailout, there’s a real battlefield in Lahore, the lid on expensive gifts for a long queue of government officials has been lifted, everything is more expensive and we’re worried about some universities. kids having fun on campus. It’s funny how our priorities are so warped.
In the midst of all these crises, if some kids in Lahore are celebrating the fake union of two chosen colleagues, it shouldn’t even be on our radar. Why do we hate entertainment so much that seeing other people’s joy makes us want to bring them down?