Next morning
I almost passed a sleepless night, with the two guys’ non-stop nonsense. They slept past mid-night, but I still lay awake thinking how I should go about in talking to dad. The three of us came out of my room, and it was the usual morning living room scene – dad, with his coffee, newspaper and news on tv and mom, multi-tasking in the kitchen.
“Good morning, guys. Did you all ever sleep? I could hear you until midnight”, said dad.
“Lots to catch up with, uncle, but we slept by mid-night, not very late though.”
I offered a silent prayer to God and started to talk.
“Dad, I want to talk to you about something”. “Go on, what is it?”
“You know this girl Sunitha, my classmate in college, right? Remember she came home last month?” Dad was intently watching me talk, and nodded. I was already shivering. “I am in love with her, dad. I consider her to be the best match for me and would like to marry her….” I could see the stunned-look in his face. Mom heard this from the kitchen and rushed to the living room.
“This is not something I expected from you. That girl is from a different caste, I guess and a non-vegetarian too. How do you think she will be able to adapt to our kind of living. Moreover, what about our sanctity? This is not tradition. You are not even out of college. It’s too early for you to even think of getting married now.”
“Dad, you will surely like her. She is a vegetarian, only her family is not. She is still a Hindu and worships the same Gods that we worship. And I don’t want to get married immediately, maybe after a couple of years.”
“So, the two of you are here to support this noble cause?” he asked them grimly.
“Uncle, they both like each other, what more is required. These days the “marriage-market” is very tough. I heard a lot of my seniors telling the demands of girls are increasing. Their minimum requirements being, the guy owning a house, a car, and earning a lakh a month. This guy doesn’t even have a job and a girl is willing to marry him. Just go for it, uncle” said Vikram.
Mom stared at Vikram bitterly. “Do you think you are in US now? Have you forgotten what your roots are?”
Dad looked at Agni now. “How do you say this is not in our tradition, uncle? According to the “Mahabharatha”, marriage can be classified into eight types, of which five are righteous. The five are Brahma, where the groom’s conduct, achievements, learning and lineage are considered by the bride’s parents, Daiva, where the parents marry their girl to the priest when they end up not being able to find a suitable groom, Aarsha, where the bride is offered in exchange of two cows to a rishi who doesn’t possess a lot of wealth, Praajaapatya, where the groom is given a lot a gifts and wealth to win him and Gaandharva, where the parents get their daughter married to a groom of her choice, even if it is against the parents’ preference. The last one, Gaandharva, is what Shravan is talking about now, where tradition, caste, horoscope do not play any role at all.”
“Is it not very early to make a marriage decision? I have also heard of a lot of these love marriages failing, that too within a short span. How do I know if this is a genuine decision made by him, or are his friends influencing him in any way? Sometimes, what a few friends start for fun, may end up like this. As a parent, I am bound to think about all this too.”
Agni thinks and says “Agreed uncle. We (Agni and Vikram) will go to his college tomorrow and meet up with his friends.”
No comments:
Post a Comment