The Marriage Story

One would almost wonder why there's so much hype going on about marriage nowadays. Facebook flooded with adds of matrimony sites, Cell networks sending you messages with tips on how to have a successful marriage, people going to dhongi babas clutching horoscopes, building houses according to vastu to have a no-fight married life and so on and so forth goes the list of what is happening around on the subject of marriage.

We watch movies of love stories and return home teary eyed getting emotional over how the hero got the girl he loved after so many action and chasing sequences ending with a silly sentimental twist. We laud the hero and his girl for fighting hard to make their love successful. But we never ask ourselves if they lived happily ever after once they got married. For us, getting married is the happily ever after. And no questions or comments on that.

Factionist fathers, bothersome brothers and unmarried sisters in tow are not the problems faced by youngsters today when it comes to getting married. Society is the biggest 'threat' to the individuals who have attained what is called the 'marriageable' age. What the society thinks, what the society says, what the society hopes and what the society decrees are suddenly the most important factors that are going to effect marriage of that individual. Parents will lend their ears to what the neighbours have to say, what the relatives have to say, what the spiritual gurus on TV have to say and what your married friends have to say when you come of marriageable age and then will pour all that into your ears until they reach your brain freezing your thoughts, if any.

What's trending nowadays is Love Marriage. This love marriage does not have the standard definition that one expects. Two youngsters of same age group fall in love at college. The guy has plans of higher studies, financial freedom, buying a home and taking care of his parents at the time of falling in love. The girl has plans of getting married once out of college and making her parents happy by proving to them that she made the right choice at the right time. Sadly, most of the time, either of the plan fails. By the time the guys are out of college, they are either deemed too young (22-21=1) to get married or faulted with having no financial freedom i.e. a job. The girl is by then four years past her marriageable age (22-18=4) and gets bunch of proposals from 'older' guys living overseas and earning enough to give her a lump-sum pocket money. The girl comes under pressure by the time she is 25 and the guy still running after a job or researching abroad. Either their relationship breaks or the guy has to leave his plans aside and get an emergency high earning job to prove himself good enough for marriage.

But that's only half of the game. Caste, religion, financial status, colour, height, weight, horoscope, nakshatra, gothra, etc etc come into play even when the guy has a job or the girl waits for him for so long. Disappointments on trivial matters like "being pudgy" or "too many pimples" wreck havoc at respective homes even after parents grudgingly accept to their marriage. Sometimes, they try to break the engagement by pointing out at good looking girls or top-notch guys within their community, who, according to them, are willing enough to marry even after knowing about all this 'love mess'.

The girl then goes on to get married to someone deemed best suitor by her parents and the guy gulps down a few vodkas and reflects on life for the next few years after which he has to get married to another girl anyways. The dreams and laughter they shared in the prime of their life fades into the dusty pages of history and their lives travel on two never meeting parallel tracks. By the time the guy gets married, the girl has one or two kids and attends his marriage with her husband. They both think for that day if life would have been different if they haven't given up because of their fears and insecurities, but after that day, their life goes on, as normal as it should be.

In a country where celebrities give birth to babies at 32 or more and still manage to get appreciated by the grouchy mother-in-laws who complain everyday that their 26 year old daughter-in-law is refusing to conceive yet, the marriage parody seems never ending. Sulking parents and scowling relatives still seem to play a dominant role when it comes to marriage. We were taught that Love is the only thing that makes a marriage successful. But we realized a long time ago that all the options that a matrimony site offers have to be ticked if we ever intend to get married, or be successful in it.


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