WHY I DESPISE THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE IN INDIA

“A match made in heaven”

This is a cliché quote seen on most wedding cards and ‘save the date’ promo videos. The Indian system of marriage hardly calls for such a blissful caption which is, in fact, built on vanity and a crafted sense of superiority that rules the minds of people without them actually being aware of it.

‘Superiority’ is what requires a close look in this context. Majority of the human beings stand proudly for equality and believe in oneness of all fellow beings regardless of their gender, caste, religion, region, etc. How does this shatter so hard into very sharp slivers capable of creating hatred and trauma as soon as it comes in the domain of marriage?

People have preferences when it comes to selecting their life partners. So do their parents. So do their relatives. So do their society. It’s funny how individual preference just drown helplessly in most cases and usually it’s the last of the list- ‘the society’ that wins.

Everything is set by the society. The suitable age, the preferred bride or groom to be, the accepted conduct of the ceremony, the appropriate time of pregnancy and what not! The ones to get married, their parents and the family become mere puppets in this drama. How is this set?

It’s years of conditioning into making people attribute standards for themselves and others. It’s magically subtle and surprisingly outright simultaneously. Most people don’t even realize that they are manipulated into this process of assigning levels of superiority and inferiority. As soon as a prospect of marriage comes into play, let’s say, the family of the bride, starts assigning their own worth in the society and then the worth of the proposals that have come by. The question of importance is not whether the bride and the groom find it compatible to love and live with each other for the rest of their lives, but it’s whether the match is in par with their societal standards and the very irritating and degrading question, “what will the society say?”

Sadly, our parents, who kept teaching us about the importance of being humble and treating others equally become the worst examples of the most prejudiced and judgemental beings without even getting to know the other people. They have a reputation to uphold and it seems this outweighs the mental peace and individualism of their own sons and daughters. Most of them don’t even realize where this leaves their children!!

Imagine, after a prolonged period of their education, struggling to meet another set of educational standards set by the society, they come out into various occupations hoping to secure a position in their field of interest and then boom! The marriage truck hits hard leaving them in a big pool of trauma. It’s unsettling. They need to turn into rebels to voice their opinions to their own families. Parents rant about how it was difficult for them and they were just fine dealing with it. Well, a lot of things have changed and are still in transformation and this generation is trying hard to come into terms with these sudden twists. Most of their childhood principles just don’t work in their adulthood because it’s all different. It’s a major shift and there’s no denying it.

To the parents reading this, all this generation wants is to be able to talk to you people without the fear of judgement and a mental smack down. Just let them be and invest in their happiness rather than in their big fat weddings, most of which, as we see in the day- to- day news, end up either in one leaving or killing the other! Let’s just say, blessed are those who live in an alternative reality.