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Love Marriage: Be here and you are
on cloud nine but more often than not your parents are on level one or minus one.
Somehow either you make it or break it!
Ø
Arrange Marriage : Be here and
your parents are happy, you are confused, you make their happiness your happiness,
novelty factor strikes in and post marriage you either make it or break it !
Ø
Struggle between marriage and
higher studies: Be here and you will be the most screwed of the lot. You will
be constantly grilled, lectured and blackmailed into getting married by family
and relatives because you just took a little more time to decide what you want
and now your time is up!
Ø
No marriage at all: Naahhhh, you
are an Indian girl, you are born to get married and no alternative course of
life exists for you!
Who decides this for you, sometimes your parents and
sometimes you yourself. But the real question is who decides that at 25 you
should be married because 28 is too late. As soon the girl crosses 25 in number,
she is eligible for getting married without even her knowing it. There is this
sense of urgency in the entire family to find the perfect match for their
beloved daughters before she gets out of the race. Eventually after so many
discussions and debates, even the girl starts to believe that marriage is the
most important aspect of her life (which of course has no denying) and this is the
perfect time to decide on it.
Then comes the option
of a love marriage or an arrange marriage. If you don’t fall in love by the
time you are 26, your hope of having a fairytale love story (if they exist)
before marriage is over. If you are in love at 20 you are taught in every
possible way that you are wrong because you are too young to make decision for
yourself. When you cross the “25” barrier, boom you are again wrong because now
you are too old for it. You cannot enter a relationship at 25 unsure of want
you want in life. Soon you will be forced to pop the marriage question to the
guy and more often than not the guy will run away from you. The second option
is arrange marriage, where you trust your parent’s choice, little bit of your own
instinct and play the gamble. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. Here
you make a checklist of whatever you always wanted in your guy, match it with
whatever options you are currently getting and the voila! The guy with the
maximum points wins.
A question which completely baffles me here is how you marry
when you are not in love. Forget in love, you hardly even know the person. How
do you leave your comfort zone for someone whom you have just met over 2 cups
of coffees and of course why are your parents happy and proud to send you there.
I am sure most of the answers here would be what if you never fall in love,
will you never get married. Life doesn’t work that way. Well, my question is
why can’t it if you don’t mind. Another question for which now I
have a convincing answer (at least to convince myself) is what if you fall in
love after marriage or you don’t ever fall in love. In that case as rightly
said by Shahrukh in kank, you just have to stop searching and believe this guy
is the right guy. I am not advocating love marriages here because no one knows
us better than our parents, but I just feel it is lesser of two evils.
A step further into this thought process and you can’t help but
think, Why the pressure of getting married at all? What if you are not meant
for a marriage and the entire package of responsibilities which comes with it?
This option is almost never given to you. This is a business philosophy but I
wonder is it even true here “It’s
better to be first at the risk of being wrong than it is to be 100 percent
perfect two years too late”.
I have tried finding answers to these
questions how does it all happen and people say it just does, no one can
explain it to you but it just does. I am sure it will for most of us eventually
but till the time it doesn’t, these questions will remain unanswered. But I
wish everyone takes the leap when they are ready, when they meet someone and fall
in love, when they are sure that he is the one, when they are happy in their own
space and ready to share that space with someone else and not when their
parents are ready, when their friends are ready and getting married, when the
society says so, when they are becoming older, when they can’t find anything
else to do or when they just can’t find someone else. My mantra Run free
until you find someone just as wild to run along with .Till you find the right
time and the right guy GO WILD, GO FREE!!
