A Stupid Choice

Satyajit Nath was a retired Supreme Court judge. He had two daughters. The elder of the two Ruchi was a gynecologist and was settled in New Delhi. But she was dead against any further proposal of marriage. She had loved a non-Odia boy. Kamlesh Agarwal was the boy. Facebook had forged their ethereal bond. She was twenty one and Kamlesh was twenty-three. She was full of dreams and for a full period of two years, she had lived in a colorful world of imagination. Then her castle of rosy dreams had crashed leaving her forlorn and shattered beyond expectation.

Kamalesh now lived in London with his fifty-six-year-old girlfriend Amy. Ruchi had clearly realized that in the West, in America, in India too, and soon everywhere else in the world, for a marriage to happen two things would be the prerequisites--a male body and a female boy. These are the only criteria for the maintenance of this newfangled short-lived animalistic bonding. The 'celebrated' novelist D H Lawrence must be rejoicing in his grave watching people have realized the essence of his cheap marital ideology: "To touch is to understand." Now touch alone matters. Man badly wants to touch a woman; woman equally badly wants to touch the man. After the touching continues for a few months or two or three years, the couples separate and search for new pastures. Children have to experience a lot of pain and torture internally. Lawrence was too dense to understand that touching cannot go on for a long time. This is why wife swapping is getting popular; having new partners means more excitement. Who cares for small children....? Sex first and then the children. But there is intense delight awaiting them all, I mean the children. They are unwittingly encouraged to toe the line of their elders. They are gifted with smartphones by their pampering parents. So it is all a sex-hungry animalistic world of utter selfishness, greed, indiscipline, and total chaos.

Age is not at all an issue. The man might be seventy-five and the woman a mere eighteen-year-old schoolgirl. Or a woman could be seventy and her husband only thirty. It doesn't matter at all. There was a time when old men married young girls; now with women empowerment, the latter are strongly asserting their rights and marrying boys who are younger than their sons. They seem to be highly civilized and perfectly liberal and the coloured people who follow their age-old marriage laws are culturally backward and inferior to them.

An Englishman(William Carter) told me in Spain last year that we Hindus of India were very superstitious in this matter. I had protested saying, "Bro, just come to India once and watch a program of our actors and actresses. They are far far ahead of you. They are never lagging behind. You can find our modern civilized actresses in the nude on the internet. They are terrifically bold. They have established a long and glorious tradition of stealing other women's men and have downed many happy families!"

The white man said, "You sound very bitter about us indeed."

"No my dear Sir...I have always respected the 'white man's burden." You have civilized us Asians and Africans.....! I still adore your 'civilizing mission.' You are still civilizing us. In reality, I have given expression to the fathomless disappointment of an Indian girl called Ruchi because a white old woman stole her lover. She is spewing venom on the cruel selfish cradle-snatcher."

Ruchi's father Mr.Nath knew about the heartwrenching story of his daughter being jilted and dumped by her lover. He was worried:"Will my child stay unmarried all life...?" Previously he used to hint at his concern for her. She ignored him. Now he directly told her to allow him to find a boy for her. He made a final attempt to persuade her to accept his decision. This time she agreed but it was again to be her own choice.

On Saturday evening, Nath watched a television program based on legal studies. On one such evening, he received a call from his daughter announcing she had decided to give up her job.

He had roared at her unpredictable impulsive behavior with which he was veritably familiar. Later on, he had some regrets about having so harshly spoken with his daughter. After evening tea, he disappeared into his own world. He thought of Nandita, his once glamorous wife, and wondered how he and she had never approached and talked to each other. He was desirous of marrying the Class-10 girl Nandita who was her cousin sister's friend. However, even after being a dashing law professor, he had never dared to tell his parents that he wanted to marry Nandita. His cousin sister Sikha had sensed his fondness for her friend. She had dropped a hint in his mother's ear. Then everything had happened as per his wishing. What beautiful days ...!Then he lived in a world of endless beauty and wonder. Now no such thing existed. A boy and a girl just message each other twice or thrice and then a meeting in a cafe or restaurant and then kissing each other behind a wall or having sex in a dark place. Then comes marriage and keeping a sharp hidden watch over each other and browsing the internet to know how to find out if the girl or boy is cheating on him or her. It is no wonder then that apparently "a most cordial marriage" (like "An empty vessel sounds much")fizzles out in a few months or years.

Mr.Nath had pondered a lot as to what the generation gap particularly meant. In his time boys and girls used to get attracted towards each other; some would fall in love and if at all they had to be frustrated, most preferred to stay unmarried or married being strongly pressurized by their parents. They preserved their sweet memories to their last breath. The iron discipline of those days served a most useful purpose. Life was not a mess as it is today as far as the family and conjugal life of the youth are concerned. Some people who call themselves intellectuals hardly have the insight to unearth the bright side of life then. The old order no doubt had its pitfalls but it was not so utterly chaotic, inhuman, and anarchical as we find it now.

Everything starting from the youth's dress sense, the music they love and cherish, and the movies they watch is designed to be sexually stimulating. This is how aestheticism has been smothered and banished from the sphere of artistic pursuits; eroticism had taken its place.No one seems to be interested in genuine creativity because sexuality has replaced it. This is the prevailing trend. Girls are the happiest because they are legally armed to fight those who cry foul on their sartorial tastes and skimpy tight-fitting clothes leaving nothing to the imagination.

Mr.Nath took an evening walk if the weather was enjoyable. Most of the time he would see young girls and boys in bizarre outfits smoking together.

There was a girl's hostel he had to go past on his way home. He would find empty wine bottles in a BMC garbage container placed close to the girls' hostel wall. In a nearby field, he could she so many pairs of boys and girls engaged in talks lasting hours and hours. For the girls it was routine." When do these girls study..?" he would ask himself.

Mr.Nath was also worried about his younger daughter Suchi who was in the final year of her postgraduation in zoology. He was scared someone might trap her and spoil her future. When he was worrying thus, Ruchi called him and told she was returning to Odisha soon. He was thoroughly embittered about her decision this time too since she had again made the same mistake of choosing a Facebook user boy for herself.

Ruchi had made a very strange choice indeed. She had chosen a village boy for her.The boy's father was just literate enough to write his name in Odia.The boy was unemployed and was thinking of starting a dairy farm.He was just a commerce graduate from the local college. Mr.Nath strongly criticised the match.Then he decided to keep quiet and allow the marriage to take place. Now he blamed her 'stupid' choice on his late mother. Ruchi had a special fascination for Mr.Nath's village.The person she had loved the most in this world was her grandmother.The old lady had captivated Ruchi with her unlimited love and compassion. She was an inexhaustible storyteller. Whenever Mr.Nath brought her to the city to live with his family, she would go back to her village.Her complaint was that she wanted to talk to people, and no such willing listeners were available in the city.

After the marriage Ruchi lived in her husband's village and started worshipping the gods and goddesses in her grandmother's fashion. Athough she opened a clinic, she engaged in helping her husband. In a span of two years they had established a bustling dairy farm.When she felt they earned enough to live happily, she served the poor peasants free.

After a long time Mr.Nath decided to make a visit to his daughter's house. While driving to the country,Ruchi's words were echoing in his mind:

"Do you know the names of your neighbours..?Have you ever had a hearty chat with the man living opposite your house..?I mean in twenty years...?"

Mr.Nath thought about the rat-race in the city to make money and outshine each other,about the noise, the pollution and the incidents of crime. He thought the growth of new industrial cities was going to create a nation of denatured brutes living in a world of rank opportunism and extreme cruelty.His conclusion was:"Nobody belongs to you in a big city."