The Soap Opera

THE PAST:

Dear Society

You are the best soap opera writer I ever came across. Sadly, nobody has honoured or even acknowledged your creativity before. Well! Better late than never, I do. You are the reason behind this:

‘Swarg ko koi indradhanushon se bhar de aur shachi ko zeher pila de, kuchh aisa hi lag raha tha wah ghar.’

‘Yeh zindagi thi, jahan pyar haar jaata hai, muskane haar jaati hain, aansoon haar jate hain – tashtari, pyale, kulhad, pattalen, kaleen aur dariyan aur baje jeet jate hain. Jahan kisi ki aatma ki udasi ko apne aasuon se dhone ke bajay pattalen dhulwana jyada mahatvpurn hota hai.’

-Jaishankar Prasad in Gunahon Ka Devta

All God fearing people abide by your code and stay fearless. You want to know the code. It goes like this - ‘ Jo tumhe pata nahi, us se tum khafa nahi.’

According to you, an honest person is not the one who always speaks the truth. The honest person is one who learns when to hide the truth and hide it well. According to you, it is ok for a boy to stabilize his career before marriage. Girls Toh you raise and bring up for the whole and sole purpose of Paraye ghar jaana hai. According to you, it is difficult for a woman to live alone. You, my dear are the one peaking inside the open windows of my house thereby making it nearly impossible. You are the neighbour who comes outside to check who rang my doorbell. You are the one taking the U turn and looking at me unabashedly from top to toe if I decide to dress differently. You are the one who watches like a hawk for every missed step to chastise me. You are the one who says it is ok for a guy twenty years a girl’s senior to get married to her. But the girl should mandatorily be junior in every which way. The girls, we have to be twenty-something, fair and tall to have a fair chance at it or just accept whatever is being offered for the fear of not getting anything better than this. Imagine how easy it would have been if it all worked according to your wishes and plans. If it did, all guys will wait till they are in their late twenty’s to get married and all girls would have been at least engaged before graduating from college.

You are the one who says ‘Are age ho rahi hai tumhari, jaldi karo.’

The same society which will sit on the Tapri and discuss the pros and cons in full and unimaginable details. You influence decisions in a subtle and the most horrible way. You always want the upper hand and the first-hand knowledge of what is wrong with the world. The worst thing is if you do not know the truth about something, you invent your own. You are the one who has stereotype working women into a class of their own. What social code have we broken love? We seek solace in groups when we go out because you think it’s not safe for us to venture out alone. You conveniently ignore the fact that if we do, you are ever ready to fill our day with the horrible experiences like cat calls or worse. You are the one who sets up double and unequal standards for men and women. It’s high time you stopped writing the story of my life…Don’t you think?

PS: Please don’t take it personally Yaar. Everything is fair in love and war. Us, we were always at war!! So bring on your big guns and shoot…

THE PRESENT:

In words of a famous philosopher

‘A transparent society is much better than a Hippocratic one.’

Fortunately the society is slowly mending itself. Disintegration has a life after which regeneration follows. When our social structure does that, marriages will be based not on tags and labels but mutual understanding and love. What we have now is a mix of both old and the new. Some still abide by the old way of life and some have adapted this fresh new change. Some are still in between.

Don’t be stuck – adapt one of them. Take a stand, express your opinion. Meanwhile, please don’t distort someone else’s beliefs to your own advantage.

Disclaimer: The story I share with you all today; may or may not be true. For as a writer I am certainly influenced by what I see around me. At the same time, I retain what I call and known as artistic liberty.