from the Crow's Nest ...

-- "You’re next...!!"

-- "Oh Really ??"   

A common question has always plagued the young generation. The question of when someone will say an “I Do” or “Kabul Hai” or walk 7 rounds around the fire.

And while an opposition to the institution has always been there, anti-marriage stances have always been considered blasphemous.

The recent uproar is due to a comment by Eva Mendes who went on air saying,” It’s (marriage) a very old-fashioned, archaic kind of thing! I don’t think it fits in my world today.”

This is exactly what we need to look at, in today’s time. Marriage was never supposed to be a binding; it was always about bonding. But this is one area where we are stuck as a society, if not perpetually, for quite some time now certainly.

We still expect the trajectory in a boy’s life will be a career and a marriage then; the girl’s will be a marriage and if possible, a career then. Any deviation or detour will draw a thousand jeers, questions, frowns, pointed fingers. Introspection. Compromise. Self-imposed exile maybe.

The flow of relations, however, has always been the same. People have fallen in love -- fallen in love without prejudice, without expectations; most importantly, people have fallen in love without the promise of a haloed marriage.

Yet, the fixation with the institution continues. The beautifully framed picture, about the inevitability of marriage, keeps adorning our drawing-rooms. The hangover still strong, the belief in this empty rhetoric is maddening.

If we follow the ideologies strongly, we get to see that right from the communists to the post-modernists, people have always denounced the institution of marriage. But it is the strong feudal and patriarchal air that hangs around, which is still calling the shots in today’s world. Imagine this, in a Hindu marriage, the tradition requires the groom to hand over a pair of sarees to his newly-wed bride and say – “From today onwards, I will take care of your food and clothes.” Down South, the tradition is more pathetic. The groom will have to leave the ceremony-house; the bride’s father is required to coax him back and persuade him to marry his daughter.

Then what if the wife runs the house? Maybe a divorce makes her raise their 2 kids single-handedly? Where’s the respect then?

And then we talk of women-empowerment and celebrate Women’s Day?

With such a thick air of rigidity and obstinacy around such a concept, breaking free or thinking of a world minus the M-word falls just short of a utopia.

But when I look at the Bachelors’ Club, I go moonstruck. When people think and staunchly believe that without marriage, a person’s life will be miserable, it’s time we take a look at “The Club”.

From the yesteryear to the realms of present, from the reel-world to the world of comics, the Bachelors’ Club is colourful to the last alphabet, the list comprising of a complete Who’s Who of all the worlds.

While we have right from Sir Isaac Newton, Helen Keller, Florence Nightingale, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Franz Kafka, Vincent Van Gogh to our very own Lata Mangeshkar, Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, Dr. B C Roy and Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy – we also have George Clooney to Al Pacino, Sherlock Holmes to Tintin – all the accomplished achievers are right there in that club.

And while we are re-reading the names, let me add a small disclaimer – the fact that all of them were/are unmarried does not signify that they were/are against the institution of marriage. This is only to prove that marriage never is the only/sole purpose or objectivity of life. Life can be much more worthwhile during our lifetime.

But again, as I look at this strange institution called marriage, I gape in awe at the stupendous stupidity-trap we have created as human-beings. Human race has always felt the urge to bind him to rigid rules, sometimes bordering on insane logics even. The intransigent crowd is too much bent on giving name to relations.

Al Pacino once said the right words – “Why have I never proposed in the past? I hate to say this, but marriage is a state of mind, not a contract. When I think about the law and the marriage, I ask myself ‘When did the cops get involved?’ “

This has to be the order of the day. Society needs to understand, we have to get used to the notion that it’s basically love which holds us together. Not 4 walls and 1 ceiling.