An Open Letter to My Indian Parents for If & When I Get Married

    Dear Mom & Dad,

It’s happening. I’m finally old enough to commit legally to another family. Have, another family. It’s been a long journey that we’ve travelled together til here and as much as I’m anxious about the next journey with this new guy (or girl, hah!) by my side, I’m also VERY anxious about this days long ‘ceremony’ that’s expected of us.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve been telling you that I do not wish to have an elaborate one because it’s quite meaningless for someone who grew up with you. Two hardworking people whose entire lives have revolved around their respective careers and upbringing us. Me, didi and bhaiya.

You were never religious or cared enough to drag us to any of the ceremonies in our own community, ever since we were little. Honestly, I’m pretty clueless about almost all of those rituals, as i’m sure you are, too.

So what happens next? Somewhere between the years when you were working hard for that tender, papa.. and you learnt how to operate every single application on MS Office, mom, a lot of other changes did occur. For example, many of my friends sprung their own careers out of opportunities in what has now become, an industry.

Yeah, marriage has become an even more elaborate industry now, than it used to be in your time.

For families like us, that have been on shaming-radar of our own community, apparently for not getting married us sooner, there’s a new system in place. They’re called wedding-planners. They’ll manage everything from the fireworks for when my groom (/bride) and I would be exchanging var-malas on the excessively blingy and shimmery spinning-elevated platform-cum-stage to the drone-videography of that event.

Ofcourse, in older times, we would’ve had to depend on our extended family members to manage all of this. And given their lack of faith in us because of my delayed (possibly non-consensual with them) marriage, they might desert us. And hence, these wedding event managers would definitely be our saviours.

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But here’s the thing, mom and dad. All of the things they plan are done keeping in mind the ‘trends’. There’ll be pre-wedding shoots, a shot of you and I hugging, before my Vidai, dad. Oh there’ll be hundreds and thousands of pictures taken. Re-takes, because, it’s mandatory they get the appropriate angle for my non-photogenic face *smh*.

And here’s what the problem is, we’d be spending god-knows how many ‘kilograms’ of rupees (Ahemmm, pun only because, Digital India) on something that your daughter sucks at.

Your daughter hates getting clicked.

Your daughter hates looking at, posing for the camera.

Your daughter hates fireworks.

Your daughter hates excessively crowded places, let alone a situation where she’s the centre of all attraction. Oh, I’m pretty sure I’ll either run away or faint because of a panic attack and not knowing what to do with so many strangers staring right into my eyes or my ‘get-up’.

They’ll have exclusive music tracks for every single footstep that I would be taking. Remixes, even. I grew up with you. I blasted Green Day and The Cure when I was 11, at home. By the next 10 years, I was exploring the shit out of “I’m Cyborg But It’s Okay” Youtube channel. I will not be able to take it, those remixes while spinning on an elevated platform, putting the var-mala around my partner’s neck. I might as well strangle him (/her) in anger to make it stop.

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How are we going to survive this? We’re both stuck in the middle. Sometime when the trend shifted from being 'extremely religious+respected' to 'extremely religious+trendy+trumpet-gloat-glory', in regards to getting married, you and I were lost somewhere in our own worlds. We’ve become aliens and I do not know how we’re going to overcome this major hurdle before I can happily start this beautiful new phase of my life.

Yours Truly,

An Anxious Daughter with no regrets whatsoever

but only love for how you’ve raised me up.