Yahoo! I’m getting married!

Yes I’m telling myself this everyday. Every single day. After all, it’s my first time. I’m going to get married only once. So what if I’m not allowed to choose the guy I want to spend the rest of my life with? At least whatever time I’m left with, I’ll be happy. Excited.

But I swear I tried Karthik; if I’ll ever get a chance to spend the next seven lifetimes with you, I will. Gladly.

Have you ever had one of those dreams when you’ve gotten so scared and it felt so real that you forced yourself to wake up from your sleep? I’m living that nightmare. I’ve been forced to. I’m scared I won’t be able to wake up ever. I have a constant heartache. I’m getting married in a week’s time and I’m too numb to care now. It’s all happening right in front of my eyes. But I’m tired. I’m tired of fighting to live my own life. It’s not allowed in my family and I’ve accepted it. And I’ve given up.

I didn’t know what I was stepping into when I took an off from office in Delhi to go see my parents in Bangalore, especially to tell them about the man I could spend hours with, just chatting, without alcohol and that I wanted to marry him because it just felt right. So that day I reached home feeling nervous, excited and every other feeling that existed in my system. All this because I had planned to tell my family about Karthik and that he is the one guy in the whole wide world I knew I will never get bored of, even if that meant spending each day of my life with him. He was not like any other guy I had met in the past.

But my dad had other plans for me.

On the day I arrived, my dad told me about the family that was coming to “See me”. I couldn’t speak another word and I was made to sit in front of them draped in a sari like a toy showcased in our very own drawing room. They belonged to a small village in Telangana, sitting there to judge an independent woman working at an MNC in the capital city. It clearly felt like shit sitting there at that point.

They instantly accepted me as their “daughter-in-law” and my father didn’t take a second to consider his only daughter ‘sold’. No I wasn’t asked. It isn’t important.

In the rush of feelings and fears, teary eyed I ran to my father. I told him I didn’t like the guy. The guy’s family noticed the expression on my face and they turned up the next day to know my answer. But they weren’t ready to take No for an answer either. The feeling I had in my tummy was something I had never felt before. Like a wild animal trapped in a cage for no fault of his.

I had proved and re-proved myself in life, just to make my parents happy and proud because I was the only child, their only hope. But what had I done so bad to deserve this? Was it that I respected them too much to protest?

Oh no wait, “Yahoo! I am getting married.”  I’m happy, please don’t take it otherwise. I just have a lot of baggage. So what. I’ll be fine.

Anyway, when all this was happening. My wedding being fixed with a stranger who I didn’t like, who was probably not half as qualified as the love of my life. I felt I should at least try telling my dad the intensity of the situation. About how I had fallen in love and I had dreamt of my big day with him and only him. I thought he’d understand and will give me some time to make up my mind. But he didn’t. He acted in a different way. He asked me to sacrifice my entire life for him. Yes, in those many words, he asked me to give away my life in a millisecond and I did. Today, I’m depressed, I take sleeping pills because I can’t shut my eyes quietly thinking of how my world is coming down right in front of my eyes.

My father asked me to sacrifice my life and I did. I did.

How do I tell my dad I had commitment phobia and Karthik was an exception. He pulled the phobia out of me and made me fall for him like I can never again for anyone. I can’t even think of staying with another man 24*7, they are irritating. But no, “Yahoo! I’m getting married.” Everything happens for a reason, I keep telling myself this every day.

Drowning under my depression and pills, I got so desperate that I told my future husband everything one day, hoping for him to understand. Hoping he would be a twenty first century guy. That’s how little I knew about him but apparently, he turned out to be something completely different. I met him and begged him to call this off from his side. The answer I got in return made it even more real. He said a plain No and told me it’d happen at any cost.

He went a step ahead and told his parents and soon my family knew all about this, I was emotionally blackmailed and told later that if I didn’t marry Kalyan, they will all gulp poison down their throats and die. It didn’t make sense but I was too drained out emotionally to fight it out.

Now it was just about getting it done with. My big fat Indian wedding. But the battle that I had lost had apparently just begun.

I was house arrested for a month in my village close to Bangalore, now I was not allowed to earn anymore because Karthik was in Delhi. Those were the days. The freedom to cry was taken away from me. I couldn’t even apply for leave because I didn’t have any access to my phone or the Internet. This was the time I was being taught to forcefully be happy and get excited to marry a dumb-fu** who doesn’t have a heart but my parents found him perfect to love me for the rest of my life. I was cursed by the whole family every day for falling in love with a person who wasn’t of the same caste and that I would die one day like a dog on the streets. BECAUSE I fell in love.

The marriage was fixed. Now I knew I didn’t have an option but to embrace this vile situation I had been forced into by the people who brought me to life. So I started speaking with Kalyan and he was possibly the dumbest human being I had come across.

But whenever I complain about him, my mom defends him saying, “He is a really nice guy, we know your character.” And my dear dad says, “Yours is a character of going with any boy, Kalyan should be God in your life”.

After my engagement, I was finally taken to Delhi to quit the job. My parents met Karthik there and Karthik tried to telling them that he loved me very much and asked my parents not to take stupid decisions in anger that would ruin my life. Karthik also promised my father that he would never see me again but asked him to call off my wedding so that I could get some time to recover. After speaking with him, my parents got some faith in me and gave me a month’s time to settle my job matters and asked me to come back within a month.

That was an even more difficult time I had to face, not being able to be with Karthik and fighting every day with Kalyan. My situation was that of an alcoholic. I needed temporary distraction so I started drinking and soon I couldn’t sleep a wink without a few drops of whiskey every night. I was shattered. Getting married to a dumb man was not half as scary as saying goodbye to Karthik. For good.

I even thought of committing suicide but I had to live for the promise I had made to my dad, that I would sacrifice my life for him.

After a lot of counseling and sleepless nights, I am now ready to get married. In a week. There is nothing else in the world that can ever hurt me so much. I am emotionally dead now and I don’t know if this is better or committing suicide would’ve been better. I’m a walking vegetable anyway. But then, if it makes my parents happy, why not?

Oh sorry! Did I tell you, “Yahoo!! I’m getting married.”

I don’t know what my future holds for me. For now I feel like torturing Kalyan to hell. That won’t happen till families are in the picture. It will all go smooth till the day I sleep with him without making any noise. If that doesn’t happen, a different story will start again. From every angle, I’ll still be the one suffering.

In the twenty first century, when we go on blabbering about “women empowerment”. This is women empowerment.

Give birth to a girl, be sad if she’s the only one you could manage, then give her love for some time and as soon as she’s ready to ‘morally’ lose her virginity, put her in a cage and sell her off.

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