AN ODE TO THE YOUNG LASS

Teetering life on the violent edge of the world,
Menaces with folklores that cast a chill on the most avid nerds.

A young lass, amassing the cocoon strands,
Falls prey to thou lores; and embellishes the silky floral band.
She'll adorn it on the day she gets hitched,
Hoping with the knot, her broken pieces too get fixed.

Draped from head to toe,
In a burgundy gown and unsoiled stiletto.
She creeped for her post marital dinner date,
Into the dreadfulness; wincing in silence how destiny switches fate!

Cognizing now on the edge of the bed,
How much during the night she bled.
Cries foul over why she was only undressed,
And why there's no ritual of helping each other redress!

More broken than ever; she feels,
What a fool she was who looked for salvation in those brittle reels.
After sobbing for long; in excruciating pain,
She summons herself to wash those stains.

Years later, "Oh! What a bait marriage is"; she exclaims,
Straying one away from the thrust is all it does, she claims.
It enunciates like a dream with profound glory,
But quips in the name of regret as an unsaid story.

Teetering life on the violent edge of the world,
Menaces with folklores that cast a chill on the most avid nerds.

-D. Sharma

TOO SCARED TO COMMIT?

We’re all so convoluted in our lives that our heart has an argument with our head, every time it wants to beat. We’ve finer days in our lives relative to our ancestors. We leave our homes, cities and countries to pursue grander ambitions in life more flexibly than them. We’ve an assortment of choices in everything that life offers these days and every so often. We leave friends, lovers and possibilities for the chance to roam the world and make deeper connections. We defy our fear of change more often, hold our head high more assuredly and do what we once thought was unthinkable: walk away, more recurrently. And this is always scary, but what unfolds beyond the fright is that in leaving we don’t just find love, adventure or freedom, more than anything we find ourselves.

This plethora of vagaries has deluded us from staying committed to a definite thing and more significantly, people in our rusted lives.  We accommodate to deviations in slew spheres of life more sporadically than ever before and in the course we’ve turned oblivious to hold onto someone in life fixedly. Physical appearances are gullible and if that is someone’s utmost priority in settling down with someone then, here’s an advice: You’ll always find a better bargain somewhere down the lane.

“Your naked body should belong to only those who have seen your naked soul” is a thing of past now. “There are still so many kisses and laughs and nights and days and risks worth taking and road trips and books to read and poetry to write and pictures to take, you’ve to believe this please!” is the new in. This new age anecdote is too thwarting for men and women who look forward to get hitched for life. They are muddled in their heap of thoughts than ever before and even overthink their overthinking while forecasting to settle down in life. They are overshadowed by this belief of finding-someone-better-in-life than the one who is omnipresent in their lives.

To people with such a paradox, I would say that if it’s all a matter of finding-someone-better-in-life then this analogy serves well in other relationships viz. parents, siblings et al as well. But do we actually go out on a spree in a hunt of a new pair of parents who are more perceptible to us or a new bunch of siblings who are more fun being with? We don’t. One can argue that we settle with them because they’re our blood relatives. So I ask again, do we keep loitering around colonies and apartments searching for a better neighborhood day in and day out or change our friends the moment we feel there’re differences?  We don’t. We squat down together and talk things out.

We all are so flattered by this new concept of “better” that we apply it in all aspects of our lives with a care in the world. Overwhelmingly, we are now more convoluted in our lives as this new age freedom asks us to decide for our would-be spouse in sharp contrast to the days when the onus lied on the elders in the house exclusively. I vehemently believe that it is high time that we unfasten our safety belts and take a plunge in the deep ocean of love and more relevantly, commitment with whomsoever we’ve spent long time gaily instead of meandering in search of someone who probably exists only hypothetically. 

The Great Indian Wedding Fever

In today’s world of cut throat competition, especially in a populous state like India hard work, ambitiousness aren’t just words but are the daily stories of a common(read: from general quota) man. And what separates the ordinary hard workers from the genuinely laborious students is their dogged adherence. When the world doses off, lights turn off, serenity dispels the chaos and desires burn like they are more to an individual than the heart beat and the incessant respiration, that’s when champions are made.

An individual arises from his/her own nothingness and submerges in the same day in and day out to beat all odds and secure meritorious ranks, qualifications and promotions in myriad spheres. Every single time (s)he cracks an entrance exam, or breaks another record and shines in the periphery of the eye it seems to me that they are trying to tell us that they burnt themselves to appear to be illuminated under the dark tragic backdrop. Hence, they deserve true recognition and utmost respect.

But we still live in a society where if a 22 year old lass confronts to her father that she cleared the entrance test to get admitted in a foreign college(say with a total expenditure of Rs 25 lakhs), then the poor girl receives a negation in the name of financial weakness of her parents. The same girl is married off, the very next month with the parents shelling out at least Rs 30 lakhs for the big fat wedding.

A woman is often limited by our society in the name of ‘realism’ to sew her dreams shut by stuffing all her aspirations in a cushion cover aka her soul. Sports aren’t meant for her, mechanics and aerodynamics can’t be her forte, speed and alcohol shouldn’t give her the adrenaline rush, and definitely driving and proficient decision making can’t be her strength. So she is wedlocked by her parents as riddance, or we can say that the onus now switches over from them to her husband. If she’s really eager to work after marriage, then she can do so for another 2-3 years till the time she bears her own kids and grooms them after (mostly) quitting from the job. She can’t afford to soil her saree during a stroll down the lane with her in-laws or laze around in oversized shirts because she always should be presentable. Can she?

So basically, it all starts with a girl who was dying to finish high school to start college and start living fully. When she joined college, she was dying to finish college and start working and living fully. When she was working, she was dying to get married and start living fully. When she was raising her little ones, she was dying to send them to school and return to work and start living fully. And then she was dying to retire from the job and live post retirement fully. And then she was dying, and she realized that she forgot to live.

A young 21 year old lad isn’t better off either. He has been brought up under the anecdotes which encourages him to be unaccountable to his very own mother after growing up to a certain age, take major decisions of the house and turn a ‘father’ to his mother when he starts earning a livelihood. He can’t afford water droplets drenching his eyes and rolling down the cheeks when the going gets tough. He shouldn’t supposedly express himself too much and should remain inhibited and perennially strong. After all, he solely has to handle his wife and kids as if they’re slaves and he the master. And if you’re the one who’s thinking to break the jinx by sharing the responsibilities with your wife then just be prepared to be mocked at.

You might be wondering that why am I not talking about the band baaja baraat, or maybe shaadi ka laddoo as so is the feeling that the title offers. But I wanted to bring into limelight that why are we just groomed in the society to just get married off one day? Can’t there be more things than being the ideal bride or groom in the society? And, may the Lord and God bless you with enough valor to overcome disgrace if you’re thinking to remain a bachelor or a spinster forever! Period.