A few days ago I was talking to my sister. We were catching up on the family sagas- you know the usual ones: A la “the daughter of an aunt of my mothers talking about her sister-in-law’s niece in a fashionably jealous way”. I don’t remember what I said to my sister, but whatever I said must have been quite smart. Because she suddenly said “you seem ready for marriage!”
This breaking news made me immensely happy, but I got a little pre-occupied trying to decode my own words to see where all the wisdom lay. After spending a considerable number of years in this world, I have begun to take my brain-waves seriously. Apparently whatever I said implied that I understood all the undercurrents of a family conversation- a requisite skill if you are to marry. More so, I think I demonstrated my ability to breeze through a multi-dimensional conversation to get to the gist of it all. This skill is a must-have when talking to females close to you, I am told.
Oddly, this reminded me of a very old comedy skit in Shoaib Hashmi’s TV Program Taal Matol. Anybody who was born in the seventies would perhaps remember this “Handa Hubaalne Ki Tarkeeb” by Muneeza Hashmi. A humble note to those who haven’t heard of Shoaib Hashmi, please google him and Taal Matol, and you would probably come across his weekly column in the Encore section in The News on Sunday- and hopefully you would enjoy reading that too.
How do you boil an egg? This mystery, in my warped mind, sounds very close to the formula of “being ready for marriage”. The complexity, hear this, lies in the simplicity of it all. It is like anticipating climbing a mountain, anticipating reaching the peak, and then expecting to say “was that it?” This anticipation, of course, does not actually come to fruition in real life.
I think there is an inherent problem in this anticipation of satisfaction, or the lack of it, in marriage, much like in boiling of an egg. How the intrinsic satisfaction is derived from a boiled egg can have many faces. In some cases it is like delaying the high point in pleasure and saving the hard yolk for the last. In some cases, the pleasure lies in discovering that the egg actually turned out to be half-boiled, and the yolk had to be had first because of the runny nature of it. In some cases the boiled egg goes in the middle of two toasts and becomes a sandwich.
Now if this be the case, what is the point in anticipating? Or to begin with, what does being ready for marriage actually mean?
I think its all bullocks, and one is never ready for marriage and one always naturally settles into a numb state of mind called settling down. Or perhaps, to duly present a floppy flip-side, one is always ready for marriage- puberty being the only pre-requisite…
Do we care, or do we have a choice to but to live through and learn?
Don't think. There is no point to whatever I wrote.
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4 comments:
Good one! I have been remiss in posting - my bad! I'll correct that the first chance I get - just a little swamped under tons of other writing tasks not to mention grading.
I like the boiling an egg analogy. Of course "Hunda Hubaalna" is unforgettable. I don't know if you can ever be ready for marriage per se - because being ready for something to me implies having all of the information necessary to make a decision but I doubt whether that's possible. I think you get married (or remarried) when it's time. How do you know? Well you don't in the rational sense, but you kind of do in an intuitive way.
On settling down - I've always hated that phrase. It seems to me to imply that being single (as opposed to being married) is somehow an unnatural, restless state. That one is 'looking' for "The One" to complete your life etc. Perhaps true but then that seems to me to suggest that marriage is the end-state whereas I think it's more a change in the journey you're already on. Once you're married aren't you looking for other things? So you're technically still restless in that you're looking for other ways to make your life fuller - and I don't mean having kids per se. So I kind of like to think of it as re-settling...okay not satisfied with that phrase either but it will have to do for now.
On a more important note, you better not forget that I'm going to be "The Best Man".
Asad we should shoot this one as one of our short films!!!
A wise person once said:
"There are those that settle down, those that just 'settle' and those that settle for nothing less than butterflies"
Great blog by the way - keep it up!
agree with bionic woman...being married is like wearing your hair short (er..almost)...it takes some getting used to...and once you are, your default state of curiosity/annoyance returns!
and settled is just wrong, wrong! since ive been married, ive quit my job, quit my country, learnt to cook and clean, looked for a new job and of course cut my hair!...thats hardly bloody settled! and damn if im settling for cooking and cleaning!!!
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