A Kiss on the Cheek

I was no different. Having despised arranged marriages with all my body and soul, I was now all set to go home and get married to this I-know-nothing-about girl. Is this where it all ends? Is this what they call growing up? Is this how it happened with my parents and their parents. Taking this linkage further, all of a sudden I have this image of a couple of monkeys sitting on a tree top getting to ‘know’ each other in the most primal of ways!!!

Maybe I need to accept it. That is how it has been for ages and that is how it’s going to be for me. Another bag of air will now finally succumb to the weight of tradition, explode and vanish into thin air. All these thoughts buzz through my mind as I am on this plane headed towards a marriage of individuals and a funeral of ideals. I try to appease myself with thoughts like: ‘This is not that bad!!! People have sacrificed higher ideals just to keep the bigger picture intact.” But then I imagine my self as this middle-aged father of two, who has no ground to stand on but his little insular family. His family, which is all that his realm of global and social ideals has shrunk to. I suddenly begin to fathom the idea of the ‘family ego’ as explained by Plato. Hey, there is something good in all this. This ordeal is now helping me understand ideas I was struggling with earlier. Yeah right!!!!

The whole journey is a smooth flight but a roller coaster ride for my overactive mind. The whole passage from one side of the globe to the other is a series of extreme thoughts that take me deeper and deeper in to confusion. The whole situation is not just right!!!!! And the worst part is that what I am about to do is nothing out of the extraordinary. I mean, people have been married (under an arrangement) for centuries. Why do I feel like Jesus being taken to the cross? I mean what’s the big deal here. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the luxury of such objectivity in that predicament. I did feel like an innocent virgin being taken to a fatal sacrificial ceremony. Yes. I did feel that bad.

The plane touched down and I reached home. I could feel a sense of jubilation in my family and all the people around me. It all seemed at a distance. I was so engulfed in the cacophony of my thoughts that every external object or feeling seemed to be originating from many a light-years away.

With all this turbulence within and outside, the wedding ceremony began. It seemed that I had exhausted my mind by keeping it in overdrive for too long. Also a gift of scotch from some well-meaning friends helped and throughout the ceremony I remained ‘comfortably numb’.

All I remember are these thoughts:

Nothing

Nothing

“Hey, my wife-to-be is beautiful. OK!!. So is Catherine Zeta Jones and so is that lady who reads the financial news on CNN. Does this mean that now I have to spend the rest of my life with one of them? A big emphatic NO!!!!”

Then nothing

Then, “This version of the song ‘Mahi Aaway Ga’ by Shazia Manzoor is really cool. I wonder who did the music for this song.....”

Then nothing.

And then, all of a sudden, I am a married man. Can you believe that? I am now a day in to my newly married life. Yes, my ‘wife’ and I have already spent a night in the permitted privacy of our bedroom and that is all we have done- ‘spend the night’, nothing else. The night had passed without any exchange of words or actions. As far as I am concerned, no one exists outside the periphery of my self.

The next morning is not any better. I wake up hoping that I was having a dream only to find out that I was not and the noisy thoughts once again fill my mind. My ‘wife’ is not in the room, so I get up, get ready and go downstairs to the crowd of people waiting to pass witty comments to the just-woken-up just-married couple. My ‘wife’ is downstairs, mingled with the crowd. I make an effort and go and sit next to her. The comments are coming in and my programmed responses are going out. My ‘wife’ is near me somewhere. And then all of a sudden, I get an idea. I think that for me to carry this charade further I should kiss my ‘wife’. We are sitting on the floor, so I move sideways and give a short little kiss on my wife’s right cheek. She looks at me and reciprocates with a short one on my left. Spontaneously, I reach out as she does and we hold each other's hands and keep holding on. And then, to my surprise, everything turns upside down.

First of all my mind drops the inverted commas that I had around her (from ‘wife’ to wife). Suddenly, I feel color returning. I start feeling musical again. I feel a tremendous amount of energy pouring out from her saying ‘I don’t know you but would definitely like to know you. Maybe we can get to know each other and fall in love and work towards making our lives happy.’ I feel the same energy leaving me and going towards her. We are now suddenly connected. All it took was this most basic of gestures.

The comments return and everyone has a ball at this public display of our affection. But this little gesture changes everything between her and me.

They say that it took a week before I was able to wipe that stupid grin of my face which I had when she kissed me back. That stupid grin is still in there somewhere an it comes out every once in a while.