The "M" word...

“Marriages marriages everywhere
May no man ever be spared!”

These days all I hear people talking about are weddings, marriages, engagements and honeymoons. And that would be quite an understatement. I mean it’s just everywhere like some kind of plague that’s spreading with an alarming speed all over the world. No disrespect meant to the institution of marriage, but it’s just bewildering, baffling and sometimes even frightening.
My darling aunty has also recently discovered that her little girl will be all of 25 years this August. There’s some ominous fascination that our families has with that age. All of sudden aunts, cousins, grandmothers, uncles and practically every other conceivable relative were nodding vehemently when she voiced her concerns about starting to “look for a boy” for my best friend.
It’s hilarious, in part, because the above mentioned people haven’t even begun to treat her like an adult. Not to say that she’s behaving like one and not getting due credit for it. She rather like being a happy-go-lucky-lemme-live-my-life (yes, she’s not ashamed to admit it anymore) person. Sure, there are odd moments in some days when she very much felt like a woman – like an adult who has finally begun to know her mind that’s now surprisingly clear of most kinds of childish anguish.

But a wedding this soon? I really am not too sure for her…

I happened to hear about the wedding of a classmate from school, last weekend. From what I heard, she looked very pretty. One could see the amount of work that had gone into looking pretty for the wedding too. But she stood there smiling a genuinely happy smile all the while, looking very poised to start a new life with the man who stood beside her, accepting good wishes and presents from the crowd. This young lady was the same girl who exhibited the requisite rowdy component in order to a student of “XII-D”. How time changes people and their perceptions.
All the mild phobia about marriages apart, I do sort of understand why proud bachelors and bachelorettes (as the mirror in Shrek calls them) finally give in to ‘holy matrimony’ as it were. Sure it’s very empowering and liberating to live a single life in complete independence, provide for yourself, be ‘forward-thinking’ and whatever other perks that kind of life could possibly offer. But I imagine that after a while (and the duration of that time frame varies from person to person), one does begin to find a life alone rather lonely. One might have friends or a hundred one-night stands or both but at the end of the day, when one is going through a really rough patch or one of those pensive phases, one does wish there was someone to come home to. Someone who’d provide that much needed other human presence to make the residence a home. That person needn’t be Don Juan Demarco but if he would just be genuinely happy to have you back home, wouldn’t that be a much more appealing option as compared to returning to a dark house and tripping over clothes on your way in because you forgot to put them to wash in the first place?

I once read an article that said that men like to be married for three reasons. I’m not entirely sure if I remember them accurately but I recall them as being conversation, companionship and stability. Those who have been lonely would probably agree with me when I say that it is most likely a comforting thought to know you have a warm body to sleep next to in the darkest of nights (and no I don’t mean sex).

Companionship and conversation definitely strike me as very good reasons to want to get married. Maybe they are the very foundations that keep marriages going. I mean if you can’t stand your husband’s/ wife’s presence and/ or you think talking to him/her is like wasting the romanticism over a dodo, there aren’t too many chances you’ll be doing the ‘funky chicken dance on your golden anniversary’, are there? And considering that every couple is going to get their share of irritating in-laws, painful acquaintances, fussy problematic babies, schooling and education related woes, anxieties in planning retirement etc one might as well make sure that the person one wants to share all this with is worth all the trouble.

Anywayz back to my bum-chum. The girl finally found her knight-in-shining-armour and my dame is now in serious distress whether or not to go to the beauty parlour for the make up on her engagement day!! (What all could weddings do to you, I tell you!!) She has found her perfect companion in her would-be hubby and now divulges little details to him rather than her buddy for over a decade now... Is that what marriage is all about?? Getting married and forgetting friends?? Oh well!! I don’t know and I don't want to know either...

Maybe marriages aren’t so bad after all. But the next time I hear my mom flinging a not-so-casual suggestion at me to get married to ‘a nice boy’, I swear I’ll scream.