The Great Indian Wedding Tamasha

Nuptial Knots

Within the last few days, I've got news about the marriages of 7 of my friends! Seven friends! Can you imagine that? I mean, what is happening? Were all these people just waiting for me to travel away from Delhi and then, decided to get hitched?

Whatever the reason, I was pleasantly surprised. It's so nice to see all the friends with whom you have played pranks on poor teachers and lecturers, with whom you have joined the first job, with whom you have gone on innumerable window shopping trips suddenly getting mature and settling down in life. What's more enlightening is the understanding of the complexity in this nuptial arrangement that seems to be coming to the fore when the matrimonial plans are getting finalized.

In this situation, it's quite overwhelming when you hear the friends making plans about, "Where will we settle? Near whose office should the house be? Who will sacrifice the career opportunities for making way to marriage?" And so on. Is it like these are the things that girls always have in mind or is it something like a dormant seed in everybody’s brain that suddenly sprouts whenever the marriage is imminent (adj: used in sentences like, ‘the storm is imminent’ Notice the similarity?) The reason is, my friends who are getting hitched were until the last few months thinking of only new restaurants, movie theatres, or the latest researches in the field of medicine and stuff like that. But, now, they just seem to have become as uninterested (note: I'm NOT using disinterested here.. that word means entirely something else) in all the typical gals activities. Please don't misconstruct this statement, but, is it like falling in love cures the guys and gals like feelings out of you? Or is getting married such a heavy burden that nothing more in life is interesting or worth doing? Well, I've thought about it enough. And finally said, like a typical American teenager, "Whatever!"

Now, all this has left me in a precarious position. Suddenly, all my friends will be no longer bachelors (or bachelorettes, as the case may be {please forgive the spelling if it is wrong. My MS Word could not find it!), all of them will be having a family to think of and the typical family problems. What I am worried is, "What will I do with these guys?" If I go to a friends house and say, "Chalo yaar, let's go to the theatre." Tat comes the reply, "No way! Gotto go to Food Bazar and buy atta for tonight or else, the Maid will throw a tantrum and Shurpanaka would look like an angel in her comparison!" Mind you, nothing against Shurpanaka (minus the nose), but, didn't these people know the various facets of their would-be just before jumping into the life-imprisonment of the institution of marriage... Even life-sentence in India is not more than 20 years!

Of course, I am going to be beaten up for having written such blasphemous things about the metamorphosis of the guys and girls after marriage. But, I say, that's occupational hazard... and after all, what's life without friends who'd love to hate you.

Talking about metamorphosis: In schools, we learn about how a butterfly lays eggs, then, it turns into a caterpillar (the egg, I mean) until it eats and eats like Jayalalitaa (note the 2 a's) and then, suddenly becomes a coccon (like Sonia Gandhi often does in the alleged Scillian Sun) and then, behold! A beautiful butterfly emerges.

Now, even in human life, the human animal goes through something of a metamorphosis. From being happy, satisfied and happy-go-lucky individual, you see people going into misery, depression and helplessness that they have to (literally and figuratively) sleep with the enemy! I question the gentry of so called educationalists: Of what use is the caterpillar's metamorphosis to me when the human metamorphosis is infinitely more important? In case any of the aforementioned gentry members read it, mind you it is known as a rhetorical question.

After all this circumlocution, I shall return to the crux of the matter. {Or is it that I am speaking of the crux only now? Like I said before, Whatever!} That is, despite knowing all of the facts, and despite having seen the perils of matrimony, I shall one day ultimatelt fall into this curse. And I'm worried that if all my friends fall for marriage like flies, then, time's not far when my mom shall deem it important to help her only child out in her blissful existence into the shared misery of her afore mentioned friends.

Well, whatsoever be the outcome, I just want to say, "Gals & Guys! Have a blissfully wedded life!" And hopefully, may the joy remain with you and may you stay out of the dangerous metamorphosis that I've outlined above!