'Band Baaja Baraats' fall silent in wedding season

Hyderabad: The Indian weddings are a multi-crore industry and more importantly are a community events celebrated by relatives and friends grandly and pompously. However, the pandemic hascast its shadow on the traditional Indian weddings celebrated by all communitiesof Hindus, Muslims,Christians,and others.It has mostly affected the wedding organisers and other stakeholders including priests, function halls, music bands, caterers, car and horse-carriage rentals, etc., as the weddings have been either cancelled or postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

As the season of weddings is passing sans 'Band Baaja Baraat', those involved in renting of horses for weddings are hoping that at least horses would be booked as most of the castes follow the tradition of groom arriving for the marriage ritual byriding ghodi(she-horse). "The last booking I had was on March 20, and since then, the owners of horses and the business have been worse affected that too during the season of weddings between March and June," said Mohammed Aslam, owner of Md Aslam & Co that was formed in 1912 at Hoontwadi, Jummerat Bazar near River Musi.

As people from various communities like Hindu, Rajputs, Marwadi, Sikh, Jain, Yadav, Agarwals and some of the Muslims book horses, buggi, lights, bands, doli etc., but this weddingseason due to pandemic norms the parties are avoiding the bands,baajasand baraats.

"We earn our annual income during these four months of wedding season. The cancellation of big weddings during lockdownhas spread pain and troubles for us," he added.

Speaking to The Hans India, Mohammed Aslam said, "We receive at least 15 bookings per month during wedding season, this year, we have lost the opportunity and are staring at a loss of over Rs 5 lakh," said Mohammed sadly.

Besides weddings, they are not getting bookings for festivals like Bonalu, Ram Navami yatras, and ralliesfor Milad, Bibi Ka Alam andGiyarveeh Shareef etc.

His company has now cut the salaries of his staff and also removed some of his workers due to no bookings."By the grace of god, during lockdown, I received help to feed my 40 horses from Dr Virendra Khwaja and Ribika Gupta from Hyderabad Race Club. Without their aid, it would have been difficult for us to maintain food for horse during 3 months of lockdown," he said while thanking the Samaritans.

"There is no business right now even after the relaxation.Several other local businesses have reopened but we are still waiting for bookings. We are sanitising our horses, buggies, dolisand showing it to the customers but we are not receiving any orders for baraats," said Mohammed Zameeruddin, owner of Patel & Co.

"The scale and size of grand weddings will come down and these are challenging times for the caretakers of horses at Hoontwadi," he added.

History

Earlier, the horses were used for carrying passengers and goods, it was also used for riding and even for health purposes. This was started since the Nizam period, the area which was allotted near the baks of Musi River near Muslim Jung Pul by the wife of Nizam, Umda Begum, was named as Hoontwadi as it was a dedicated market for horses and camels.

More than 100 years ago, the business of using these animals in functions began. And the business was started by great grandfather Jaani Bhai, who used to run this shop in the period of Nizam. Since then the trend of booking animals for functions has been going on, said Mohammed Aslam.