Not much has changed post marriage, only everything .One
year, 3 months and 11 days into marriage I now know what the fuss was all
about. All the jokes, all the shaadi ka ladoo metaphors, all the hype, I don’t
shy away from concluding, at the risk of concluding too soon, that marriage
sucks. It makes one bat shit crazy. Its hell lotta work and no, I was not and
am not a fan. There! I blurt it out. Its outta my system. I love him, I love
him but marriage sucks. I might sound like Mark Antony but I really mean it.
I’ve read and thought about the box metaphor where it is proposed that,
marriage is a box wherein you mustn’t look forward to take away things but put
in it together to help your marriage grow and sustain and bla bla. The more I
think about it, the more it drives me to insanity. But ab pachtai hot kya jab chidiya chug gayi khet? Which is why I’ve
decided to not cry over things and begin to accept shit as it is, served cold,
salty or bland—Eat it!
I’ve quit my job back in Bangalore and relocated to his
hometown—I was told I’m crazy for doing this and that this will turn to be a
nightmare etcetera but some things are neither right or wrong and you must do
it for your soul, I don’t regret my decision one bit but this is the most
difficult phase of my life, hands down, his hometown, the steel city of Orissa, encircled by rivers
and pretty hills. I wake up every day to the chirping of birds and a sight of a
gulmohar tree blossoming red flowers. But not everything is pretty, for the
uninitiated, I do not know the language, Odiya,
which is a blessing in disguise of sorts. On the first day, I was asked to wear
a saree with silver toe-rings, anklet, red bangles, mahroon sindoor and a
ghunghat, I suddenly felt like my teen self, the girl who cried when she was
first hit by the monstrous menstrual cycle, mostly out of embarrassment and not
being able to comprehend what the fuck was going on. This time, I felt a
similar discomfort, a feeling of disconnecting from my own self. It was like
putting on a garb and woosh, in a split second I was someone I didn’t know.
“Its just the clothes, don’t make it a bid deal” I told myself repeatedly after
weeping in his arms for hours. Of course, he had no clue why it was such a big
deal for me. Apart from hating the hideous clothes, which wasn’t that big a
deal, honestly, being told what to do and wear was what hit me the most. I’ve
always hated being told what to do, wear, eat, not proud of it, but that’s how
I’m wired. That’s how I function, I know no other way. I am was
convinced that in this quagmire of subservience, I’ll lose myself in the most
dramatic way ever. I wake up depressed most of the days, having the hardest
time just to survive one more day. When I manage to survive a day, its
like crawling up a pitch dark hole, only to lay flat on the surface staring at
the clear blue skies, thanking the lord that you didn’t die. I hope I make it
till the end.
