Go Y Zen, GO! Do not fear anyone
Once again I am writing at the dead of the night… 3 am to be exact. I don’t know which part of this hour excites me to write such blasphemous stuff. But you like it, I think. Because, but I always seem to want to talk what’s going in my mind at 3 am.
A deadly hour, but I often do not need to correct my work after that.
A few observations: My daughter-friends are all living my dream : Happily settled in their careers, doing the things they love, living-in with the persons they love, adopting girl-children and living life exactly to their own terms. I am so happy for you. No dears, don’t get those rings underneath your eyes because you are not finding a partner to marry to make everyone happy.
No Dahlings, you are already settled in your life. Even if you have a partner, ask yourself, do you want to get married and get into the rut of a boring-hating-grocery-laundry-kids-grocery-screaming-homework-kind of a relationship, ……………or watch the sunset holding hands? So please have the courage to turn around and tell everyone who confronts you. “Thanks. I am settled.”
My son-friends too are fine, but wished they’d get out of this rut of being in a Multinational company, living an imprisoned life of earning too much money they don’t need, being an engineer or a techie, exuding this false smile to their gloating parents whose dreams they are living. Instead, they have their own dreams, which they cannot seem to pursue. My daughter-friends seem to be a little ahead of them, as they have managed to silence their parent’s crushing pressure about getting married quite well. But how can you even go near your engineer father to tell him, “I want to be a musician?” I know how tough it is to gate-crash out of the golden box that you are in now. The only way you can get peace is by marrying a fair-complexioned, convent-educated, slim, homely girl. Wear that monkey-cap and garlands, and set your coffin ablaze.
And if you don’t want peace and can withstand a few temporary hysterical cries, you should pack your bag-pack and head for the nearest taxi-stand. Once the taxi is running, you can decide where you want to start your dream journey from.
Believe me, at 21, which is 28 years back I did try to do something like that but didn’t have the courage to sit through the drama. I got a job as Junior reporter in Shillong Times and my mother didn’t let me go. “Get married and go wherever you want!” She cried. So I had to wait till I got married and get this “cup of honor” from the society and my mom, that a man was ‘beside me’. The fact that I wore the pants from then onwards, is another story, of course.
But you have moms who are from my generation, who have rebelled and had given up halfway. Just like me. So it may be easier to convince them without much of an emotional drama.
I always tell my y-zen friends: Never listen to your parents just in 2 things. You can listen to them whole day doing everything they tell you to do. Byas, just never listen to them about 2 things in life: : 1) Marriage 2) Career.
My generation was perhaps the last one who HAD to get married to prove their existence, whether they are engineers or doctors. “Toh kab settle hona hai?” “Kab shaabi hogi?” As if, if someone didn’t get married, she/he had some disease. Despite this pressure, a lot of my contemporaries are, thankfully, single, divorced, have walked out of marriages when things went all wrong, and their children are doing just fine, contrary to what the morons believe.
Astoundingly, some much-married friends of mine are living single life by choice, despite being socially married to a wrong man and despite living under the same roof (primarily for logistic and financial reasons). They live their own lives and do not much interfere into each others lives. They appear in social occasions — like a slap on the hackneyed societal cheek who blissfully believe that they are a quintessential happy couple, and then having their own ‘so-called’ extra-marital affairs. I welcome such new kind of “adjustments” you can make in an “irrevocably damaged” marriage, which you cannot dissolve for technical reasons.
The fresh new generation is all living my dream. Which I had to give up to please my parents.
Till the last day of my life I will discourage my son to get married until it’s absolutely a necessity for him, and he cannot live without the girl. He doesn’t even want to bring up children, so my headache is really over. I don’t have to save for his marriage, nor plan what to gift my grandchild, each year, every year till she/he too yells at me : Grandmom, STOP!”
Some of you may speak like those Aunties, “What about your family tree?”
F*** the tree! The world is populated enough already. If My son attributes to one less human, he’s be only serving mankind. And I have no objection to it.
And hence, for the future of humanity, I encourage all my young friends, do not be afraid of what you are doing, because you are doing JUST the right thing. In fact, it may seem lonely right now, with half of your friends married and with kids, but it won’t be long, since some of them may join you after parting ways with their spouses.
And kids? They will be just fine! You don’t realize they are the NEXT generation, and will come with an absolute new set of rules, which a swanky grand mom like me too won’t be able to fathom.
But Yo!
(April 15, 2017, 3.41 am)
Filed under: For a thought....
