So you’ve always dreamt of that perfect partner by your side who will be your life-long, unending supply of cuddles, goodies, holidays, time, attention, understanding, emotional availability and doting love? Well, it’s time you got married.
You’ve finally found your soulmate. You’re on cloud nine, dizzy with the romance of the honeymoon and the first flush of matrimony. You pat yourself on the back at your wisdom in finally identifying your Mr Right.
But soon, oh-so very soon, the ordinariness of the daily grind begins to get to you. A little voice inside you whispers its first niggling doubt. Did you really say yes to the right person? And one romantic moonlit night, as you look over your pillow, that guilty doubt becomes stronger. Did you really hand-pick that boring person next to you, snoring in Surround Sound?
It’s a Slippery Slope...
And then there comes the day when he forgets your birthday, followed by your anniversary, topped by your father’s special day and your mother’s arrival at the airport. Now THAT, you decide, is the ultimate insult. You wonder: “Would life have been better if I had married that guy?” “Have I written off my entire life – traded freedom for imprisonment?”
OR
“Lucky Sheela, she still has her independence!”
That’s when you begin spending time on Facebook and get more and more depressed when you see happy, shiny faces of couples cuddling to each other in exotic locations. And where does he take you? To his parent’s town or, very grudgingly, on a budget vacation to a place you would not even agree to die in – leave alone being clicked in.
You have still not wizened up to the unspoken rule of FB that people put up only happy pictures of themselves, even though they might scratch each others’ eyes out immediately after the photo-session. In our self-obsessed, narcissistic times, only happiness gets “likes”. And the more “ likes” you get, the more important you feel. That is FB’s most closely-guarded secret.
By this time, the gadgets have come out in full swing. Instead of looking into your eyes, he now concentrates deeply on the laptop screen. Instead of lapping up every word you say, he prefers to lap up every word the sports commentator spouts in every cricket, football, tennis match – even kho kho on TV. Help!
Why Matrimony Ain’t All That
You look at your earlier love-mails and wonder – Was there really a time when you could have the last word? For the millionth time, the D word dances enticingly in your head and takes up room in your head, rent-free.
And then, many summers later, (if you’ve lasted that long!) when both of you have lost your teeth, your waistline, your taut skins, retired and angry, you play the blame game. Slanging matches, bitter quarrels and one-upmanship dominate your conversation – or whatever is left of it. So at bed time, after you have put in your respective nose drops, eye drops and gulped your dinner of a plateful of tablets each, you turn to the other side and say to yourself: “I wasted my life. And it’s all because of him!”
But don’t worry, honey, never give up on holy matrimony. Which other institution gives you the comfort of always having someone by your side to blame everything on?
Everything comes with a price, after all.
In this one, it is just a little shift from being soulmates to cellmates!
(Did you think that was entirely too women-centric? Wait for next week, when Neelam Kumar fills in that space with her companion piece – Why Men MUST Marry!)
(Neelam Kumar has battled cancer twice. A writer of 5 books, including one with Mr Khushwant Singh, Neelam’s latest book ‘To Cancer, With Love – My Journey of Joy’ was published by Hay House Publishers in 2015. It is the first humorous book on cancer to come out of India. Neelam lives in Mumbai and can be reached at neelamku@yahoo.com)
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