Disclaimer: No offense meant to all those happily married folks. I'm extremely happy for you guys. :-)
Ok, lets talk about marriage. The one phenomenon and word that has the most varied variety of emotions attached to it. Second only to love I guess. Most people would say that they both are inter-related, on most occasions atleast. I'm not entirely sure though. See, we took one of the most intimate and personal of things and made it into this enormous societal phenomenon. And boy did it screw it up for most people or what.? Now instead of just bashing up this societal phenomenon(yes, it's a societal phenomenon. I will come to that point) with just emotions, lets look at it from a logical point of view and dissect it like the cockroach we cut open in our school days. And hey, just to clarify, I'm not against marriages. I'm all for it. Different sex, same sex, all of them(not child marriages though).
Now lets go back a little on our timeline(not the facebook one). You know, when it would have all started. Few thousands years ago. I would like to go on a little side track here. If you are one of those who believes in the story of Adam and Eve, that God created the world 6000yrs ago, you should stop reading this now. I highly doubt that someone who believes in the story that two people were put in a garden together, naked and were let to make babies and populate the entire earth with so many different races, could make any comprehension from this post. Also not to mention, whom did their children marry and make babies if Adam and Eve were the only people around. Won't that make them brothers and sisters.? It's a nice little story without the happily-ever-after theme, the only part I like about it. Lets just keep it as a good bed time story, for adults.
Ok coming back on the track. Where were we..?? Yes, few thousand years back. You know, when we were roaming around naked with only our bodily hairs to cover our privates, shouting ho-bo bo-bo jo-bo, dining out everytime, literally. I don't think marriage would have existed then. We would have just gone around humping around each other, fighting for our right to mate. Basically we were driven only by our instinct of survival. Everything we did, like hunting, gathering, fighting, humping, everything was driven by our desire to survive. It ensured 2 things, survival of self and survival of the species. If you believe in God, I think this is the original prime function He hard-coded into our brains. Everything else was added to support and abet it.
And when we started civilizing, like covering our bodies with leaves and animal skin, started farming, domesticated animals and settled down at one place, someone would have thought, "Hey wait, we are doing all these things so that our survival becomes easy and we still fight for having sex and making babies.? That's stupid". Bam. Here comes marriage. You know, an easy solution to make more babies, which means higher rate of survival of the species, with less fighting and more peace. Win-win for all. Yaay.!! But wait, why do you need marriage for that.??
Now lets say our ancestors had a very good knowledge about genetics. And they thought that if one strong guy went around humping all the females, the children that were born would then most probably be doing the 'thing' with their half brothers and sisters which will then lead to genetically and mentally problematic babies. *GoT reference start* Case in point, look at how Joffrey Baratheon turned out. A complete asshole. *GoT reference end* Highly unlikely ain't it.? Or lets just assume they finally figured it out that kissing your brother or sister or cousin is really gross and very uncool. So they made people live with each other and have sex with only them for their entire lives and produce children that were genetically ok to mate and produce more children that were genetically ok to mate. Win-win. Also they made sure that everyone in the community knew who was with whom so that they don't go secretly humping around others. More win-win. Lo and behold, thus was born the concept of marriage. The grand societal phenomenon. It also ensured another important aspect, the parental love and sibling love. Usually the males just fucked around and did nothing about protecting and bringing up the children. It was left to the mother. The less number of off-springs meant more care towards them to protect your genes. The ultimate nut-crack move.
I also assume that this is where the first discrimination came around. The guy who made these rules would in all probability be the leader of the group and also the strongest. He would have thought that if everyone had one partner and he too had only one, how would it make him the leader, the special one. So he made an exception. That he was above these rules. He can have as many partners as he wished. Why..?? Because he said so. Power rules, bitches. More partners means more babies, which means more copies of your genes. Which in turn meant better survival of the linage. Survival, baby.
See, how it all happened. It came around because it was a need. To survive better. Not because it was some fancy thing everyone wanted to have. As the society became more and more civilized(read crazy), we kept adding more stupid rules to this concept. And now it's all kind of fucked up shit. You are supposed to marry only certain people at a certain age in a certain way. They don't care if you love the person you are marrying. That's stupid. Love is for pets and smartphones. What they care about is whether the person you are going to marry belongs to the same religion, same caste, same sub-caste, particular gothra, belongs to the same or higher economic class than you, shits and washes the bum the same way you do. And yes, belongs to different sex. Same sex marriage..?? *Shudders* Shiva shiva. God is going to poke your eyes with his thrishul only.
Our society is a very paranoid one. We are like the Cold war era USA and USSR. Always afraid of what the other one is going to say or do. If only we could sit over a couple of drinks and have a good chat. Sigh. I mean, seriously. They are like, oh, he doesn't want to get married. I think there is some problem with his dong(not the Vietnamese currency), may be he cannot makes babies. Oh, she didn't get married? I know there is something wrong with her character. May be she has/had boyfriends, that's why no one else wants to get married to her. Oh, you are 25, haven't your parents started searching matches for you. I know of a person who is my cousin's father-in-law's sister's long lost son's neighbor's colleague's distant relative. About whom I have no idea of, but is very suitable for you. You should get married to him/her, soon. This is the right age. Your genitalia is perfectly ripe now, if you delay any further it will start to rot. And you will not be able to make babies. Your life will be meaningless then.
Come on, society. I know you are very much concerned about the survival of the species. You want me to get married to someone that you deem fit and worthy for me with your stupid concocted rules. That too as soon as possible. It might have made some sense eons ago. You know, when the life expectancy was around 30 or 40 and there were less number of humans around. But now.?? We are a strong 7.1 billion in number and steadily climbing. To put that into perspective, there are more number of humans alive today than the total number humans that ever lived on this planet. Ever. Yeah, we are the rodents the earth is infested with. We can do away with few people not reproducing. Also I'm very sure we are all going to kill each other anyway, in the not so distant future. Survival of our species is the least of our concerns. Sachin is going to retire, and cricket being the only sport that many Indians religiously follow and he being God, I do not know what we are going to do. Now, that is a problem.
To sum this up. Do we need to breathe? Yes. Do we need to be married? No. Not necessarily. Marriage is an over-rated phenomenon. Marriage is a very personal and intimate thing. And no one else has better idea about your marriage than yourself. If not, wait till you get a clear idea. So chuck all the norms that doesn't make sense. The way I see it, you can either try to make others happy by following the rules that were created by the people who were/are as stupid as we are. Or do what you like and make yourself happy. Because this society has a memory span the size of an ant's penis. They do not care about your marriage. At the most they might be concerned about your wedding. So that they could dress up and take pictures and post on their social networking profiles. Other than that, you are going to walk the path, better you choose it.
P.S: This is not a rant that is a result of some marriage proposal. Nope. And my parents are really cool about this topic, atleast until now. And I know this is a very long post. But I have much more to say. This is only one part. So this is not the end. It will be continued...
Ok, lets talk about marriage. The one phenomenon and word that has the most varied variety of emotions attached to it. Second only to love I guess. Most people would say that they both are inter-related, on most occasions atleast. I'm not entirely sure though. See, we took one of the most intimate and personal of things and made it into this enormous societal phenomenon. And boy did it screw it up for most people or what.? Now instead of just bashing up this societal phenomenon(yes, it's a societal phenomenon. I will come to that point) with just emotions, lets look at it from a logical point of view and dissect it like the cockroach we cut open in our school days. And hey, just to clarify, I'm not against marriages. I'm all for it. Different sex, same sex, all of them(not child marriages though).
Now lets go back a little on our timeline(not the facebook one). You know, when it would have all started. Few thousands years ago. I would like to go on a little side track here. If you are one of those who believes in the story of Adam and Eve, that God created the world 6000yrs ago, you should stop reading this now. I highly doubt that someone who believes in the story that two people were put in a garden together, naked and were let to make babies and populate the entire earth with so many different races, could make any comprehension from this post. Also not to mention, whom did their children marry and make babies if Adam and Eve were the only people around. Won't that make them brothers and sisters.? It's a nice little story without the happily-ever-after theme, the only part I like about it. Lets just keep it as a good bed time story, for adults.
Ok coming back on the track. Where were we..?? Yes, few thousand years back. You know, when we were roaming around naked with only our bodily hairs to cover our privates, shouting ho-bo bo-bo jo-bo, dining out everytime, literally. I don't think marriage would have existed then. We would have just gone around humping around each other, fighting for our right to mate. Basically we were driven only by our instinct of survival. Everything we did, like hunting, gathering, fighting, humping, everything was driven by our desire to survive. It ensured 2 things, survival of self and survival of the species. If you believe in God, I think this is the original prime function He hard-coded into our brains. Everything else was added to support and abet it.
And when we started civilizing, like covering our bodies with leaves and animal skin, started farming, domesticated animals and settled down at one place, someone would have thought, "Hey wait, we are doing all these things so that our survival becomes easy and we still fight for having sex and making babies.? That's stupid". Bam. Here comes marriage. You know, an easy solution to make more babies, which means higher rate of survival of the species, with less fighting and more peace. Win-win for all. Yaay.!! But wait, why do you need marriage for that.??
Now lets say our ancestors had a very good knowledge about genetics. And they thought that if one strong guy went around humping all the females, the children that were born would then most probably be doing the 'thing' with their half brothers and sisters which will then lead to genetically and mentally problematic babies. *GoT reference start* Case in point, look at how Joffrey Baratheon turned out. A complete asshole. *GoT reference end* Highly unlikely ain't it.? Or lets just assume they finally figured it out that kissing your brother or sister or cousin is really gross and very uncool. So they made people live with each other and have sex with only them for their entire lives and produce children that were genetically ok to mate and produce more children that were genetically ok to mate. Win-win. Also they made sure that everyone in the community knew who was with whom so that they don't go secretly humping around others. More win-win. Lo and behold, thus was born the concept of marriage. The grand societal phenomenon. It also ensured another important aspect, the parental love and sibling love. Usually the males just fucked around and did nothing about protecting and bringing up the children. It was left to the mother. The less number of off-springs meant more care towards them to protect your genes. The ultimate nut-crack move.
I also assume that this is where the first discrimination came around. The guy who made these rules would in all probability be the leader of the group and also the strongest. He would have thought that if everyone had one partner and he too had only one, how would it make him the leader, the special one. So he made an exception. That he was above these rules. He can have as many partners as he wished. Why..?? Because he said so. Power rules, bitches. More partners means more babies, which means more copies of your genes. Which in turn meant better survival of the linage. Survival, baby.
See, how it all happened. It came around because it was a need. To survive better. Not because it was some fancy thing everyone wanted to have. As the society became more and more civilized(read crazy), we kept adding more stupid rules to this concept. And now it's all kind of fucked up shit. You are supposed to marry only certain people at a certain age in a certain way. They don't care if you love the person you are marrying. That's stupid. Love is for pets and smartphones. What they care about is whether the person you are going to marry belongs to the same religion, same caste, same sub-caste, particular gothra, belongs to the same or higher economic class than you, shits and washes the bum the same way you do. And yes, belongs to different sex. Same sex marriage..?? *Shudders* Shiva shiva. God is going to poke your eyes with his thrishul only.
Our society is a very paranoid one. We are like the Cold war era USA and USSR. Always afraid of what the other one is going to say or do. If only we could sit over a couple of drinks and have a good chat. Sigh. I mean, seriously. They are like, oh, he doesn't want to get married. I think there is some problem with his dong(not the Vietnamese currency), may be he cannot makes babies. Oh, she didn't get married? I know there is something wrong with her character. May be she has/had boyfriends, that's why no one else wants to get married to her. Oh, you are 25, haven't your parents started searching matches for you. I know of a person who is my cousin's father-in-law's sister's long lost son's neighbor's colleague's distant relative. About whom I have no idea of, but is very suitable for you. You should get married to him/her, soon. This is the right age. Your genitalia is perfectly ripe now, if you delay any further it will start to rot. And you will not be able to make babies. Your life will be meaningless then.
Come on, society. I know you are very much concerned about the survival of the species. You want me to get married to someone that you deem fit and worthy for me with your stupid concocted rules. That too as soon as possible. It might have made some sense eons ago. You know, when the life expectancy was around 30 or 40 and there were less number of humans around. But now.?? We are a strong 7.1 billion in number and steadily climbing. To put that into perspective, there are more number of humans alive today than the total number humans that ever lived on this planet. Ever. Yeah, we are the rodents the earth is infested with. We can do away with few people not reproducing. Also I'm very sure we are all going to kill each other anyway, in the not so distant future. Survival of our species is the least of our concerns. Sachin is going to retire, and cricket being the only sport that many Indians religiously follow and he being God, I do not know what we are going to do. Now, that is a problem.
To sum this up. Do we need to breathe? Yes. Do we need to be married? No. Not necessarily. Marriage is an over-rated phenomenon. Marriage is a very personal and intimate thing. And no one else has better idea about your marriage than yourself. If not, wait till you get a clear idea. So chuck all the norms that doesn't make sense. The way I see it, you can either try to make others happy by following the rules that were created by the people who were/are as stupid as we are. Or do what you like and make yourself happy. Because this society has a memory span the size of an ant's penis. They do not care about your marriage. At the most they might be concerned about your wedding. So that they could dress up and take pictures and post on their social networking profiles. Other than that, you are going to walk the path, better you choose it.
P.S: This is not a rant that is a result of some marriage proposal. Nope. And my parents are really cool about this topic, atleast until now. And I know this is a very long post. But I have much more to say. This is only one part. So this is not the end. It will be continued...
This is a very debatable topic. Extremely debatable infact. I'm happily married, so I might have a different take on it. For those who are not, will have eons to talk about it.
ReplyDeleteEveryone has their story. Every one has an opinion. You were bold enough to put up yours. Kudos.
P.S: Nice to meet you :)
Yes I know. But I didn't say marriage is bad on a whole. Only the ones that happen due to the societal pressure. People who get married because someone said so. That is bad. See, your marriage is one of those that are on the better side. I'm talking about the opposite side. Peace.
DeleteP.S: The pleasure was mine. :-)
On Family: "The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn't the family. If you don't have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don't have much at all. Love is so supremely important."
ReplyDeleteOn Having Children:"There is no experience like having children...If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children." These lines are from the book "Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom.. and I personally believe in the same, which means that is the reason why I want to get married and have kids
I get the point. And totally agree with it. But what if that notion was thrusted upon you. The idea of marrying, having a family and raising kids. I never want to get married because someone wants me to. And to a person whom someone else chose for me.
DeleteAnd again, all this is very subjective. To each their own. :-)