You are next!

What strikes you first after reading this title ‘You are next’? Is it a ration card line? Is it an interview room? Or are you thinking about a hospital queue? Okay here I clarify that no I am not in a hospital waiting for the nurse to call out my name and say ‘You are next’. I am not standing in front of Physics lab waiting for Mrs. Ganguly to shout my name for the viva and say ‘You are next’. Nor am I waiting for the interviewer to speak out my good name and say ‘You are next’. Not any amongst these. Then what does this phrase imply? Well it implies that you are the one next for marriage! Seriously!

The other day I met my friend, 3 years older to me, on my way to office. I knew her as a lively, energetic, and a passionate girl who became my friend in college. But to my surprise, the only visible shade of color which I could decode from her face at that time was of nervousness, confusion. As a reply to my curiosity, she then put forward an explanation which compelled me to pick up a pen and paper and write this article. She had recently been to her cousin’s wedding and now was the only unmarried woman left in the complete Khanna dynasty. Knowing this fact, every single person of Khanna clan had cast a remark ‘You are next’ which had left her completely restless.  

Since times immemorial (may be!), identifying remaining unmarried girls and boys in the clan is one amongst the thousands of rituals of wedding ceremony taken hold over by innumerable aunts and uncles. These uncles and aunts (in particular) might forget to take their daily Blood-Pressure pills; might forget the way to their homes; might not remember who wore what BUT once identified, they will forget you only after you tie the knot. And if it is not an arranged one, they won’t leave you forever.

Looking at my friend, it is certain that dealing with the family pressure of getting married is a million times more difficult than the work pressure of achieving your targets. First, in most of the cases, you have to decide a person in one or two meetings only. It seems as if you are there to bargain something in the whole-sale market. We want you to spend some 20-25 Lac. Girl should be working but earn lesser than the boy. She should be ready to leave her job, and sacrifice her career anytime after marriage. And if she demands to continue working she should not expect any support for any sort of work from anyone. She will not be able to share her salary with her parents. She should have all the qualities of a good Indian wife even if the boy is a dumb ass. And if you are not for arranged one, then May god be with you! The first step itself is the most difficult one. And once you ‘book’ your life-partner, you will start arranging for money to have a lavish big fat Indian wedding. That money will be put to a major waste and will cost your parents a loan of lifetime. Why not have a simple temple wedding and invest that lavishly wasted money instead to buy a property for yourself or something useful? And if something goes wrong with the decision at first step, your life will become a living hell. You will be left alone singing sad Bollywood songs. Total loss: negation of happiness, wastage of hard-earned money, bereft of solace, and a sad tale to be told for the lifetime.

See the repercussions! But, like every problem, there is a solution to my friend’s tension too. Two factors, wisdom and family support, are of utmost importance in making the most important decision of your life. With love, affection, support and wisdom of family, an enthusiastic girl might not ruin her present in needless worries; decisions taken might not prove disastrous. Marriage as an institution might establish firmly. And above all, life will have its meaning.

Slow living

It is not very often that a statement, a beautiful statement made by a person compels you to think. And of latest the term ‘Slow living’, brought to my notice by my Paulo Coehlo obsessed friend, is stirring me to look for its grave definitions and explanations wherever possible.

And till now, I might have gone through some 10-20 web pages related to ‘Slow living’. I had read about numerous movements in my school history books but nowhere could I find the description of slow movement! Slow living has its origins in Slow movement which began in Italy with the concept of Slow food! Who might have thought that here, on this earth exists the world institute of slowness with the motto ‘everything worth doing is worth doing slowly’? It is totally bizarre to think about the paradox of time, “In order to perform fast you have to be slow’. Hard to bear the fact is that summits by the name of ‘Slow Living Summit’ also take place. And Greg Foyster has embarked on a cycling journey with the ‘Changing Gears’. And we have a slow coffee in this world of instant food! Amazing!

All I knew about slow living till now was some catchy lines like ‘living every moment’, ‘achieve your dreams’, ‘consider life an adventure’, ‘you can win if you think you can’, etc. And I had also watched “3 Idiots” which is against the “Life is a race” phrase. My contemplation about slow living would always take me to this. Since childhood we have been taught, we have seen, and we have observed people running everyday to make it for their lives. They get up at 5, spend their day doing monotonous, moribund chores, eat as much as possible, and lament on their lives becoming melancholy. This process repeats with every passing day and they give a damn to what course their life has taken, whether they have achieved what they wanted, or if they are doing what they admire; let alone the thought of increasing their knowledge be. Charles’ Darwin’s theory of ‘survival of the fittest’ rules this world and they synonym fitness to money. They unconsciously use every single minute of their lives in making money. They constantly worry about their job and thrive to provide a good living to the family.

In all this hustle-bustle of life, they are forgetting to enhance personal, community and environmental well-being. They are perhaps failing to introspect. They are forgetting simplicity in the glitter, glamour, and shimmer of the modern life-style. They are forgetting the requirement of ‘survival of the fittest’ theory: “In order to be efficient, productive, and perform fast, you have to have a peaceful mind and for that you require to be slow”.