Hi everyone, so today I bring to you a short story (maybe actually long) to you all that I wrote long back for a contest. I am going to share this in two parts. So that you can think about the next half with your wildest imaginations, thoughts and ideas. The story is one of my favourites maybe because I wrote it but also because I love that I was able to put this out in writing. Though I didn’t win the contest I am thankful for the competition because it pushed me to write this story. Sit back and enjoy reading today!
The Marriage Conjecture
I was always enraged with the concept of marriage. Every time I watch people getting married and promising vows it made me wonder what they were so happy about. What made them celebrate it by spending crores of money for the ceremonies and attires. Eventually, as I grew up my dislike towards the concept of marriage grew even stronger. My Amma always spanked me when I told her that I found this concept illogical and absurd. So, whenever we were invited to wedding ceremonies and I was reluctant to attend them, she gave me spanks and a spiritual lecture about collaboration and the togetherness of human life. One soul, two bodies and all stuff which I strongly disagreed to. I was completely vexed with the concept. Despite the fact that I was unable to prevent her from constraining me from attending the wedding ceremonies, I still showed my aversion with weird gestures and unpleasant facial expressions. When my mother understood my plans to stay obnoxious and intolerable throughout the wedding, she raised her eyebrow and gave me flags that implied spanks were in arrival. So, I politely had to change my frowny face and unpleasant behaviour to a lovely grin loaded up with bliss. We got another invite this morning from my uncle’s daughter’s cousin’s son and it was his wedding. I became outrageous but still couldn’t express my feelings towards the invitation.
The primary idea I thought was illogical is to give away gifts and buy attires for someone else's wedding. Every time the invitation arrived my mother worried about clothing and dressing us with decent and financially healthy attires. I found this completely strange. Second, I literally never felt marriage is an achievement that needs to be celebrated. I never understand the point of having it done with expensive decorations and high paid bands while there are people dying from poverty and hunger. It appeared to be a festival to homo sapiens however to me it stayed a silly, pointless function.
‘Amma do we have to visit this one?’ I questioned as I put the invitation on the table.
‘Yes Kanna, why do you ask? If we won’t attend their wedding no one will come to yours by the time you decide to marry.’
‘Seriously Amma, I am never getting married, so don’t worry about the guest list and why do you always keep bragging me with this stuff?’
‘One day you certainly will. I got married so did your grandmother and every girl someday has to get married and move to a new family. It’s a social paradigm.’
‘Don’t throw this malarkey again Amma. Social paradigms are not made by God, people created them and as a matter of fact, those who break rules create history. You always keep saying that one day I will create history.’
‘Come here Kanna. Let me tell you one thing, in life everything is inevitable. Marriage is a part of life and it completes your life. Someday you need to have a person for you to share, support and stand with you forever.’
‘Marriage isn’t a part of life and as a matter of fact, having a person in your life to share and support when required shouldn’t necessarily be achieved by marrying someone. Everyone is gifted with their mother, father and family.’
‘They wouldn’t stay with you forever Kanna. Also, God created the universe in such a way that the life cycle needs to be persistent. So, whether you like it or not that’s a fact.’
‘No, it’s not. You will stay with me forever and so will everyone else. There are no creationists, the universe works on the concept of evolution. Though it’s people’s opinion to have a creator and every person decides to choose an individual as his god. Everyone is entitled with their opinion.’
‘That is your opinion,’ she raised her eyebrows and I knew this was the moment I will be spanked so I quietly terminated the debate and went away.
Still, a number of questions ran in my way, I have seen my mother give up her profession because of marriage. Precisely because of us, ever since I and my brother gave birth, she had to devote her entire time to take care of us. Like each lady in the twentieth century who relinquished her profession for the prosperity of her family and its future so did my mom. Amma is a well renowned homoeopathic doctor in our village. She had momentous notoriety and individuals came from various towns to get treated. Even now when I visit my village, I find people who recognize Amma and greet her with utmost care and respect. Last time we visited the village surprisingly an old lady came to our house in search of my mother and requested her to provide medicines for her knee complaints. My Amma stood there baffled and she hardly could think of prescribing her the medicines. It’s been eleven years since Amma has left practising medicine but on the old lady’s repeated request Amma prescribed her medicines and did a little research before writing them down. After a couple of days, while we returned home, the old woman called Amma and expressed gratitude towards her for the treatment. The old woman has been visiting specialists for almost about five years and nobody really could provide her with the correct treatment however after she utilized Amma's medication she felt much improvement and recovered at a quicker rate. This consistently made me wonder that if Amma never stopped practising medicine she might have treated hundreds and thousands of patients. My father insisted mom to start a clinic at home but we relocated frequently to a new place and Amma could never get a head start and eventually she decided to quit. This was also one of the reasons I never wished to marry. There are also some more astonishing contributing factors and the list keeps adding on.
My father arrived late that evening and he wasn’t looking so cheerful. I took a glass of water and offered it to him and he slowly took the glass. Amma arrived and smiled at him and questioned him about his day. My father is a person like one out of many, he is consistently lively, perky, and loaded up with tricks and jokes that bother Amma. He acts tough with his kids and Amma says it’s for our own good. I spent most of my evenings with my father listening to different stories from his workplace. Today was though different from others, I sensed something going wrong and I wished to know it from my father. Amma understood the emotionally charged atmosphere when my father did not reply to her questions. She sent me to fetch Nickie, my younger brother and I went away.
I found Nickie playing with his friends and asked him to come home. Despite the fact that he didn't appear to be glad about it, being an obedient, meritorious little brother who always respected his sassy elder sister's command, he walked with me amiably. On the way, I met Sameera or the way she likes to be called Sam, my funny charming and clever friend. I dropped Nickie at home and stopped by to chit-chat with my buddy. We went on for a long walk after I got permission from Amma. Sam was a girl filled with rage and boldly attitude. She hates to be bossed around by someone and that was one motivation behind why we turned out to be truly best buddies. Our minds resembled identical representations to one another and each time we hang out we crack jokes that are a hoot and a half. We have been friends for almost four and a half years. While we were strolling, a group of young men remarked on Sam and misbehaved with me, this filled Sam with angry outbursts as was I yet I rather overlooked the ill-mannered group of boys. While I continued strolling and when I pivoted to check for Sam, I saw her pounding the whole group alone. She broke a person's nose awful to the point that he began to bleed. I rushed to stop her and calm her down while she continued shouting at them in a shrill maddened tone.
‘Want some more bastards? Come on I will give you what you asked for boys,’ she yelled and threw stones while I quickly grabbed her and took her away from the scene.
Initially, we stared at each other for a while and within a second the silence broke with a great deal of laughter. That was our plan whenever we were tormented or harassed by a group or an individual, we would fight them using the innocent play tactics, where one of us would get into the fight and the other would pretend to be unaware about the actions and then try to stop it. We did it because we hardly knew we were capable to fight every other bully so we had to have an escape plan. We reached our spot where we sat most of the evenings and laughed till our tummies started to pain. Sometimes we sat out on the porch of the vacant house that was adjacent to our spot.
‘You ought to have seen the boneheads faces. I love thrashing young men with rude moral qualities. At first, their appearances were colon and capital “d” and subsequent to pounding it went to the colon, quote, hyphen followed by opening section, it was a productive evening.’
‘True to core. You can use happy and crying instead of your code expressive words, Sam.’
‘I love it that way, that’s our fun part of communication. Well this is our fifty-sixth self-defence brawl, isn’t it?’ questioned Sam.
‘Precisely I would say fifty-seven, you always forget the time we fought with the girl's gang who abused us in school.’
“Oh yes, that was fun and still is, hilarious scene,’ said Sam as she chuckled.
‘Hey, you love beating up boys, don’t you? You also hate boys so do you think you will ever get married?’
‘Whoa! Where did this come from Kashi? Anyway, to answer your question, I do love involving in fights and that too with the boys but someday I guess, I will get married and so will you. Why do you ask?’
‘Take that back, you may want to act like a dope but I am not one. I am never getting married, it’s an awful and illogical concept. People spend immense measures of cash on huge weddings as though they have accomplished something, ladies sacrifice their careers and the worst part is you are supposed to compromise and bear your partner’s uncalled rage. I would kick someone who behaves that way and rather never gets hitched.’
‘Don't you likewise state that it's decent that everybody meets for an event and you get the chance to meet your family, friends and have a good time? A break from technology and separation interchanges that just incorporate talks and phoney emoticon love. So, without wedding functions, you will never have that break.’
‘I do, yet the event doesn't need to be a wedding, it can be a celebration or a festival where you can welcome family, companions and friends on your commendable accomplishments like winning a contest or finding a new line of work, achieving a great rank, I can go on but I guess I have made my point.’
‘Are you trying to subtly influence me not to marry?’
‘For what reason do you think that way? I never influence you, I generally hit you with legitimate ideas, realities and facts.’
‘Here is a fun logical fact, marriage is an aspect of each young lady's life and sometimes you will begin to look all starry eyed or find your dream guy, fall in love and like every other girl get married. Being in love is the best reason to get married.’
‘That is a fallacy and also the sickest thing I have ever heard. I guess you were abducted by aliens and they completely malfunctioned your brain which is the result of your stupid pointless talk. Likewise, to point out, I am a human being before I am a girl so technically, I follow the standards and ideal models of being a human and not a young lady, communist, socialist or whatever group you wish to place me in.’
‘You know what, you sound like Jo from the March sisters. Remember the book we read last week “Little Women”. Jo is like the perfect resemblance of Miss Quirky Queen Kashi.’
‘Hey that’s not my name and I am not Jo. In the book Jo always wanted her sisters to stay together till eternity and the only barrier that she found was marriage. Fundamentally, that’s the reason behind her constant denial to marriage. Also, she didn’t want her sisters to get married including herself however I am not constraining individuals into picking the way of life I wish to lead.’
‘You understand that because your parents got married you came to life so...’
‘So, if one girl in the entire universe doesn’t marry no harm will happen to the working biological cycle of the world. Where socially you have so many issues to resolve and work on, I don’t think one unmarried girl will create any chaos in a world which is already filled with chaotic consequences.’
‘Touché!’ said Sam as she looked at me and smiled.
‘So, what is your conclusion to this controversial debate, Sam?’
‘Kashi you still forgot one point. The social paradigms are set in such a way that when a girl remains unmarried people make a hellfire out of her life. That is not applicable to a boy but is a transgression and sin for a girl to be unwedded or stay a virgin.’
‘You remember when we both discussed that life becomes a hell only if we decide it to be and not due to our disturbing surroundings or individuals with snide remarks and brutal words trying to end our life. So, if it’s my life choice and people think that it’s wretched, it isn't my flaw and I would prefer not to give it a second thought.’
‘Again touché! Anyway, when I get married, I want you to officiate my wedding and I will definitely make you the maid of honour.’
‘Seriously, you are completely insane and have lost your mind today.’
‘Hey if you don’t plan my wedding, I am going to beat you up the exact way I did to the boys now. Later I will fall off the cliff.’
‘What!!! Melodramatic person, stop it, but if I officiate the wedding, I will not spend bundles of money on a ceremony and maybe you won’t even get married. Think before you jump to the conclusion.’
‘Don’t worry, I still believe someday you will definitely marry or in the worst case at least understand the concept of marriage and will no longer call it illogical or criticize it the way you are doing it now.’
‘Again, that is impossible. You are definitely acting like a lunatic.’
‘How about a bet?’
‘Sure, let’s bet it, by the time you get married if I totally change my perspective towards marriage or get married you will win the bet else; I win. What do you want to put at stake?’
‘Interesting, if I win you will have to officiate my wedding and dance and if I lose, I will never ever question your thoughts about marriage.’
‘So, you will agree to my concept. Wonderful, this just got super cool. Bet accepted.’
We shook our hands and then decided to head back. The marriage conjecture no longer remained to be our topic of debate and we slowly walked back to our house.
‘Someday you will definitely get married and I am certain it will be before me. So, while you lose the bet make sure you perform the task with utmost care.’
‘The only thing I am worried about losing now is my marks in the all India test. So, you better prepare yourself to accept your defeat pal.’
‘One day you will definitely find your charming partner and that day you will regret that you made a bet. Roger my words.’
‘I am not listening. Good night Sam!’ as I waved back to her, I thought about Sam’s stupidity and smiled.
Now that’s the first part of the story, wait for the next sequel in the next episode. Though I am not sure if you understood where I am going with this story, but when you read the next half I bet you will. So if you have any thoughts and comments now after reading the story do post it in the comments or email me. Until then, take care, stay safe and sayonara!
Best wishes,
Ganga
Disclaimer: All the thoughts and ideas discussed are exclusively the author's individual thoughts and do not represent any association/foundation/individuals the author is related to. Anything that may have hurt the sentiments of any group or groups of individuals is inadvertent and without malice. The author at no point means to demonize or insult any religion, practice, gathering, or individual.