The Nuptial Hallows

It has been more than a year since my last blog and it took me a desperate new-year resolution to bring myself back to blog writing ways. For an excuse, I must admit it is Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘social adventure’ named Facebook that has inflicted this year long ‘literary penury’. Secondly, the world around me has changed so fast over the last year that mending my text-knitting passion came disappointingly down my priority order. Anyways, it’s better late than never- a line I read often during ongoing road-safety week (Jan 1^st-Jan 7^th) , which kicks me getting back on my blogger again.

Oh yes, I am indeed going to address the issue that the heading suggests: The Institution of Marriage and the associated events.  Quite recently it occurred to me that I am edging towards-and-through the later half of my twenties, a recognition which instilled a dreaded feeling that forewarns a takeaway of my much loved freedom, luxury to flirt & the license to ‘be out-of-coverage’. Aah !! How sad! But that is how the things go on.

Just notice the alacrity in the eyes of parents when they embark on the task of finding some suitable match for their beloved son. Concealed to their magnanimously winkled smiles and brightly lit eyes remain the sorrows of forlorn heart of their kid. Poor soul (of course of their child) closely watches his cherished liberty moving away, hordes of responsibilities being thrust upon and all sorts of amusement becoming a tale of yesteryears. Poor fellow indeed! And what if you keep on dilly-dallying on the matter? Man, you get to hear terribly poignant appeals from your mother complaining how helpless she finds herself to execute her daily chores. Dear father pitches in too and reads aloud the list of your mates who got married already. Argh! How would you resist that? And to add salt to the agony come the flock of your relatives.  They keep on inciting your parents till they get convinced it is high time their ward got married. Here you find once such occasion when you really wanted to abuse your very own relatives.  Readers, I can’t reveal more. Giggle!

Do you really know who is more concerned about your status quo, more even than your parents and relatives? Of course your neighbours! Every morning you greet them, they throw that eternally repeated question: Boy, when are you inviting us to your marriage?
And you get to know why social respect for neighbours is fading away these days. They bring you to such protruded limits of disgust, while trying to break continuity of your uber-cool ‘single’ status days, that you shun wishing them happiness on Christmas too. I assert, I have nothing personal with neighbours!

Now envision this: you are a group of some 10 odd friends. 3 of the pack got married recently. And you happen to be the eldest of the remaining. Oh my God! You are cursed to be tortured with all senseless, otiose and totally superfluous suggestions. Just to recite a few, you are told: “Bhai shadi karle, nahi to baad me kuch nahi hoga. Bahut dikkat ho jayegi”, “Abe budhape mein Honeymoon pe jayega kya”, “ Fir dekh le, baad me defective junta hi milegi” etc. & much more to be pitied at. Howsoever intelligent they may be to rest of the world, your friends end up foisting such shrill and utterly obnoxious rhetoric upon you.  And all that crap just for facilitating the final rites of a quite enjoyable ‘being-single’ phase of life, an event which marks public acceptance of self-inflicted confinement to the twin-member society by a very dear friend. And you see these very guys, dancing their hearts out to the beats while you painstakingly hold your sobered face wearing a smile at the reception in, deceitful by nature, awe of a better world after marriage.  You remember that catchy title: Friends with benefits. Eerie!

Everybody in this world looks so determined to get you on the deck that you come to believe that it is the right time to tie the nuptial knot or else the hey days would get over. You start counting the white hair peeping out of the black mass stacked all around. Out of this haste, you consent officially to your parents that you are ready to mingle once and for all. Things spruce up quickly and you finally lock a suitable match out of the proposals that come in close around that time. Wow, you are fixed!

And in the festivities of a typically lavish Indian marriage, fellows overlook the social pressure they survived, friendly insults they bore, ludicrous reasoning they agreed to and ostracism from singles’ club which they would encounter post their marital extravaganza.

For all such poor souls, I pray for their peace and happier lives ahead. And I would write and brag about bachelorhood’s luxuries, as long as I am single and free to jingle. Somebody said; Marriages are made in heaven only to be suffered on earth.

Happy reading !