Marriage on the 'credit' cards.

This post is about a cousin of mine who’s about to get married sometime in April. I was really happy for her when I saw her engagement pictures on her Facebook profile. Everything and everyone looked so bright and colorful and sparkling. They were pictures of a typical Indian engagement. There was food, faces that had so much make up on they looked like dolls made of pancakes, flowers and lights and family members flashing wide grins posing besides the bride-to-be and groom-to-be. Sequined, heavy lehengas and resplendent sarees were predominant in most of the pictures. But only yesterday I came to know about the hideous truth behind all the glitz and glamour. Her fiancé’s parents actually asked my cousin’s parents for diamond and gold jewellery, a brand new car in return for getting their son married to her. AND they also want them to get their house refurbished. Wow guys. I’m so impressed I want to applaud. What an easy way to make money.

I’m amazed, nay, I’m absolutely awestruck at you for having the balls to shamelessly announce your demands and keep them in front of the family who’s giving their daughter to you. It’s difficult enough for her parents to get separated from her who they have looked after and adored and loved for all these years and on top of that you want them to fulfill your selfish, pathetic, materialistic desires. Seriously, WHAT world are we living in? I was under the impression that these things ceased to happen somewhere in the 90s. Clearly, I was wrong. Apparently, dowry is still prevalent in many parts of our country.

It’s almost like parents sell their own sons, rubbing their hands wickedly with a gluttonous glint in their eyes. “Oh you want your daughter to get married and find a well off husband so that she can live a happy and safe and secure life? Well, then, out with the moolah!” It’s like a goddamned trade! Buy and sell. Pretty girls, less dowry. Ugly ones, oh good, let’s get rich.

The older and plain-looking the girl is, and the more desperate her parents are, the easier it is for them to extract money out of them. It’s not like their sons look like Brad Pitt. In fact, if he is so okay with his greedy parents extorting money out of the girl’s parent’s pockets, then he doesn’t even deserve her in the first place. I cannot believe how brazenly lustful for material goods and money people can be. Frankly speaking, I was surprised my cousin’s parents agreed to get her married in such a family. But I’m sure they had their reasons. The guy’s parents very cleverly stated that they have to maintain a standard and they want a lavish five-star hotel wedding. Yeah right. Some standard.  

Her parents are under a lot of stress and pressure because they are scraping off every penny that they had saved for her since the day she was born. I’m talking lakhs and lakhs of hard-earned money that they would have to depart with, in order to buy things for THEIR family and THEIR house just to get their daughter married to THEIR son. Tell me, HOW is this fair? Why do you even need to blow up so much of money just to get, um, married? I mean people actually invite so many people (half of them they haven’t seen in years and many of them they don’t even know) and feed them. Err, hello? In our community, and according to the religion we follow, dowry is completely banned and there is a strict budget we have to stick to and limited guests we are allowed to invite. This makes so much of sense. Fine, you’re getting married. Yay! But what’s the point of it if you squander so much of money away that you’re left with very little to enjoy? Pretty absurd, if you ask me.

Such is life in India. While we boast of long-lasting married couples and closely-knit joint families, we conveniently forget to reveal the ugly side. The revolting social evils that lurk behind in the shadows of these iridescent, glossy facts that we so convincingly choose to believe.

I’m suddenly reminded of the Govinda song we so loved to hate, “This ‘happans’ only in India.”

Illusion

The images come to a screeching halt as the mind breaks into consciousness. The ears feel still numb as the deafening noise slowly fades away into the distance. I hear my own raspy, shaky breath as I swallow mouthfuls of air. The pictures are distorted now, they are moving away. Eyes snap shut again as the breath comes out in heavy gusts, beads of perspiration trickling lazily down the neck. The image was close. Very close. Too close. Too lifelike.

My forehead breaks into a frown as I try to comprehend why I can’t focus my eyes. Was it brighter before or did the room suddenly plunge into darkness? Was the music actually playing or was it just in my head? I could still hear the soft violin somewhere in the background. Like someone is crying. I shudder as I think of what I had witnessed moments ago. I bury my head in my knees as I swear to myself I could have reached out and touched him. I could feel the emotions brewing up. Slowly, like a placid candle flame, before it becomes wild. He was in a picture, a picture that was torn and ragged and black and white, as if from a time long ago and from a place far away. Yes, he was right there. That one sided smile was still intact. The soft chocolate brown luster in his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something and then he looked away. It seemed as if I had stopped him, asked him to go. And he was leaving. “Why are you going away?” I wanted to shout. Everything turned bright. So bright, my eyes began to hurt.

And then I heard someone whisper in my ear, “Get up, it’s late”. It was a different voice, and yet it was so familiar. I turned my head to see who it was, but all I could see was a white wall. I didn’t want to get up. I found myself in an unrecognizable place, a vast stretch of land underneath a murky, starless sky. I was screaming and I was not. I was walking and I was not. I was breathing but I could not. And yet I could hear the violin playing. As if someone was hiding somewhere not too far away, looking at me, with melancholic eyes. Foolishly, I dug at the ground with my bare hands, in a futile attempt to find a way out of the mess I was in. “What was I trying to do?”, I thought to myself, as I saw my nails getting clogged with dirt and grime, “to look for somebody or to bury myself in?”

I take a long breath and exhale a sigh of relief as my feet touch the cold floor. It was nothing but a dream.