Skip to main content

Can I marry the person I love?

Durga Vahini poster
"Can I marry the person I love"? my daughter confronted me with the question.

 "Well," I fumbled.  What could I answer?  In the pre-Modi days I would have said something like, "Can I talk to him before I give an answer?  What kind of a person is he? Good enough to look after you?"  But in the Modi days I stand more confounded than Ann Frank's father was when Ann's nubile sister was asked to submit herself to the Nazis.

 "What well?" she demanded. This is the problem with today's generation.  They want immediate answers like instant coffee.  Or chai or instant conversions.

 I'm old.  I don't wear the bottoms of my trousers folded.  I don't dye my hair.  I don't shave my beard just like my Prime Minister.

 "Darling," I put on the best tone I could muster.  Not master, of course.  Only Mr Modi is the master now.

 "You have to get the permission from Durga Vahini, not me," I said candidly avoiding the ums and errs.

"What's Durga Yoni?" she asked.

 "Gosh!" I said to myself.  "Don't you watch the TV?  The Durga Yoni, I mean Durga Vahini, has asked Kareena Kapoor to divorce her husband and return home.  Ghar Vapsi, they call it."

 "What the f**k does that mean?"

 "I don't know, dear," I opened my palms helplessly.  We now live in a country ruled by an emperor whose organs decide who will love whom and marry whom.

 She spat out and walked away.

 What am I to do? Old man with shrivelling veins?  I want to help my daughter.  But I want to be a patriot too.


PS. I have no children.  Given the situation in India, I'm glad.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Amrita SabatJanuary 8, 2015 at 7:07 PM

    OMG! Mindblowing post Sir!

    But I have a qn- has Kareena Kapoor converted to Muslim or has she just assumed the title 'Khan'?! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 8, 2015 at 7:13 PM

      She has not converted, Amrita. There is no conversion in the high class circles. All conversion takes place in low classes. That's why I posted this. I'm curious how the PM will handle this. He is unleashing the monsters beyond his control. I pity him.

      Delete
  2. Saru SinghalJanuary 8, 2015 at 7:25 PM

    I can summarise the state of our country in one word - pathetic.

    ReplyDelete
  3. NajmunJanuary 8, 2015 at 8:19 PM

    This is the worst case scenerio! What could be worse than this, I can't wait for Modi days to be over now :/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 8, 2015 at 8:45 PM

      In a way, it's good. They are targetting somebody important and not just the Dalits who can be bought for a few dollars donated to the BJP from Indian Americans.

      Delete
  4. Vinay NagarajuJanuary 8, 2015 at 8:22 PM

    Funny thing, I wrote a post on the same topic today :) .

    Well to be honest, I really do not know what Modi's true perspective towards this is. I do agree that there are traces of strong association in the past and if they are present in the present too, they are well hidden ;).. Either ways, I can unequivocally say that it is extremely wrong to drive religion into personal choice, it kinda defeats the whole purpose of religion..

    ReplyDelete
  5. ManiparnaJanuary 9, 2015 at 1:18 AM

    Things are getting worse...religion is individual choice, so is marriage. State has no right to interfere in such matters...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 9, 2015 at 9:44 AM

      Let's hope that the activists will understand it. Perhaps this is not so much about understanding as about wielding power.

      Delete
  6. KalpanaJanuary 9, 2015 at 8:23 AM

    Well said! This whole thing is ridiculous - wrong on so many levels. Overzealous idiots interfering in people's personal lives with no idea of nuances. Such uneducated and blinkered thinking is disturbing.

    ReplyDelete
  7. IndraniJanuary 9, 2015 at 10:07 AM

    Ridiculous!
    I like the humorous way you have put it across.

    ReplyDelete
  8. UnknownJanuary 9, 2015 at 5:23 PM

    If govt would have been optimistic they could ve used 3 khans as ambassadors for promoting secularism and make india a unique place in world. As shah rukh. Aamir. Saif all married without caring of religion

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 9, 2015 at 6:22 PM

      True, inter-religious marriages should be encouraged by the govt and other agencies so that communal harmony strengthens in the country.

      Delete
  9. UnknownJanuary 14, 2015 at 11:21 PM

    This is shameful. Rather, it is ridiculous. Are Indians walking back in time?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Aayesha S HakimJanuary 18, 2015 at 1:23 PM

    Pathetic state. Nice post, sir :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more