The Letter

Ayan was going through the stack of paper from his drawer, when a photo fell on the ground. He bends down to pick up the photo which landed on the wrong side. Picking it up, he saw himself and Jhanavi in a traditional Kashmiri outfit, sitting on a yak and smiling gleefully in the picture.

Looking at the picture brought back all the memories of Kashmir and the fun they had. Among the stack of papers, he began to search and found holding a letter in his hand. A letter he had written to Jhanavi.

He read the letter again. He had expressed his love for her and what she meant to him. He had thought of giving her the letter by slipping it on her bed side table on the eve of her birthday. So that it would be the first thing she would read it in the morning.

What he did not anticipated was the turn of events the day before. He reached his home in the evening only to find it empty. On the table, a letter was kept with his name on the top. As he read the letter, he found himself shattered and heart broken.

Jhanavi had left the house and in the letter she revealed her love for another man and hoped he would understand...

Marriage Talk

This is one of my favourite topics that I like to read/know about. I guess it was from the time that I was a teenager that the “arranged marriage” system intrigued me.

I know someone who said “yes” just because she thought that she might not get good proposals after a ‘certain age’. I even ended up writing an uncompleted story on the arranged marriage.

I have came across posts few weeks back that was dedicated to the same topic. I have seen girls worry, wondering if the one they are marrying is the right choice. Not came across any guys until a few weeks back, my friend made me wonder about that.

Whenever I spoke to this friend, the topic would get diverted to “Marriage” and I was wondering what was wrong. I asked him but the answer never came. The last phone call cleared the air.

He called up and the first question that was put to me was “When are you getting Married? (Reminded me of my post). I was like after you. It was then a volley of questions were directed at me like “Whether you would go for someone working or not and why?” and other similar questions.

For a moment, I thought I was the one being scrutinized and wonder if my friend was trying to play a matchmaker. After a lot of prodding, the beans were spilled out.

He was on the process of seeing marriage proposals and this was his way of having a discussion on the subject. The discussion went further until my friend felt that he knows what he needed.

In an arranged marriage system, I don’t understand the traditional setup of a boy meets girl in the presence of families. After a supposedly 10 min or more talk they are required to take a decision of their life time. If they are lucky, they might get a chance to meet again to see their compatibility.

Even today, most of the families are not open to informal meeting between the boy and girl where they can talk & discuss openly. Which I think should be the norm On the top, a boy can go on to see as much more than 10 girls to decide his life partner but a girl (in some communities) cannot do the same and if she does, she gets stereotyped. Does this represent the so-called modern society of India?

I am not sure if this approach will change in the coming years but the mindset has to. As for my friend, I wished him luck for his search who is also seeking divine intervention like matching horoscopes.

Looking Out

 

People walking down the road, vehicles passing by was the view Shimir saw outside his window.

The calmness on his face hid the turmoil from within. For a moment being isolated from the world into his own gave him the sense of tranquility that he was trying hard to seek.

The calling of his name brought him back to the reality. He turned around and started pushing his wheel chair forward...

P.S.: In case you are wondering why a lot of fiction lately, its because I have not been able to jot my thoughts in a better way. Hope that changes. I have also created a new social blog called Freedom Expression (do check it out) and am experimenting with Twitter too :)