Why has the institution of marriage lost significance?????

First of all let us analyze why we actually have a question like this. What happened to the eternal or assumed to be eternal institution of marriage? What is going so wrong with this institution, and where are the actual lacunae that are making this age old institution nothing more than an archaic philosophy?
I gave this lot of thought and came to some inferences, I would not call them as conclusions because for such a grave and such a time tested social practice, nothing can conclusively determine its end of life or its virtual extinction in metaphorical sense. What I really have inferred I just wanted to Jot down.

Financial Obligations of Marriage VS Emotional quotient:

It may seem to be a bit absurd but marriage has a direct variance with the financial obligations that it actually brings upon. Marriage, in its traditional sense, is more of a responsibility intake for the masculine counterpart than for the feminine instance. More of the financial responsibilities after marriage are on the shoulders of the male and the female is more of an emotional pillar that binds the family together. This concept, however is very suitable and very amicable in a deflated economy scenario, however an economy where inflation is at 11% or even more, where price rise is now a daily news bulletin, this balance of economic responsibility and emotional load sharing is a bit imbalanced. I don’t mean to hurt the fairer sex by making such a comment, and with due respect to them, it may also be noted that emotionally binding a family takes a lot of guts and courage, which is not a task that a man can do. This essentially is the crux of the problem.

Now because of a huge financial requirement both the husband and the wife have to share the financial obligations in the family. There is nobody called as the bread-earner and the home-maker. Now bread-earning is the portfolio that both the counterparts have to take care of. When such a thing happens there is a kind of void created in the emotional space. This is plainly due to the fact that the person who is actually an expert in filling that void is now sharing the financial responsibility and not able to devote time or energy to fill up the void. Also it would be inhuman for the male counterpart to actually expect her to also discharge her emotional duties even after being a critical element in the bread-earning process. However, in some families this is also happening to a great deal and this puts the women under immense pressure and under the onslaught of unrealistic expectations that need to be fulfilled.

This principle of the woman now being an active part of the financial stability and also the only part of the emotional stability of the family now takes a toll on her, and this destabilizes herself. She now has no time for herself or for her own upliftment. This makes her life miserable, even more miserable than the lives of various women who are actually being sympathized for their miseries that they actually face.


Man can never fulfill the emotional necessities:

By this I may be de-favoring the masculine gender, but somehow it is true. The male side is more logical and less emotive in nature. It is the identity of a man that emotive splurges are a representation of weakness and feeble confidence, which by the way is wrong, but then this is how it is. So it is very difficult and almost impossible for the man to emulate the emotional self that a woman actually carries. You can say that when God created the human being, there was a kind of a reverse psychology God used. I believe while creating human beings God never wanted to create them like animals. So if we see the animal kingdom or the avian architecture, it is basically the male species which is more refined and polished; e.g. a Lion is more of an attraction than the lioness because of the hair, a peacock is more of an attraction than the pea-hen because peacock is more colorful and so on. However, in the case of human beings the male species was the blue-print and the female incumbent was actually the optimized version. So probably, God forgot to put an enhanced hypothalamus in the legacy prototype and this makes the man less emotive and less prone to multi-tasking.
A female brain is always able to think in different ways at different times, and that is probably the reason that men never understand them. However, in case of males, being a more legacy and raw prototype their brains always go in one direction at a time, and this makes them more predictable and less emotional. Combining all these limitations it becomes impossible for the man to actually optimize the professional obligations and the emotional necessities of a family.

So in a marriage where initially the emotional domains were controlled by the female and the financial responsibilities were actually with the male, these imbalances lead to conflicts. This results to a paranoid response, especially from the female side, towards marriage. This is because it is the female side that is more emotionally oppressed after an urban marriage. Marriage for her becomes only a social sanctity for a relationship, which loses its significance as time progresses.

Fantasizing the Mafia

I was seeing the promos of the film “Once upon a time in Mumbai”. It reminded me of the smuggling flicks that rose to the charts of popularity in the 1970s and the 1980s. In those days people use the fantasize Gold Smuggling as a lucrative proposition for an alternate profession. Glamorous, filled with thrill and you get opportunities to deliver lines like “ye jung tumne shuru kiya hai aur khatam main karoonga” (this war was started by you but will be ended by me. Strong punch-lines and stronger impacts on the minds of people who looked for inspiration with entertainment in the movies and also wanted to be a part of this lucrative bandwagon were the news every Friday. There were English flicks like Godfather and Mafia to add more fuel to the fire and also lure the elites to have a consideration about smuggling as a profession.

Honestly speaking even I was not away from it. Although, I started watching these movies in the late nineties, when they had already overshot their prime times but I developed a kind of fantasy towards the life of a smuggler. I always used to believe that these people in flashy suites have their way in life, for them spending money was like throwing water in the toilet or even trivial than that. They never used to talk less than millions and would always have their ways even with the law and the system. It was so surprising to see a so called anti-social element being also revered by the society at large and feared by the system which was in place. Smuggling heroes like Rana (marte dam tak), Vijay (Dewaar) and Dharmatma (Dharmatma) were the inspirations of various young minds that were watching these movies.


I also used to imagine myself growing up to be a smuggler of Gold, who dons all sorts of attires (designer ones) and then leads a luxurious life. He only has his dinners in five stars and has more female admirers than one can ever imagine. He only uses the telephone to make deals worth billions of bucks and doesn’t worry to spend millions on his security. He always carries a gun, which is always loaded with lots of bullets. He has rivalry with a gang that is always trying to catch up with him but is never able to be as gritty as he is. He always wins in a gun-battle and is never defeated unless he is in love with this girl who tries to bring about a conscious change in him to turn him towards the path of honesty (how I hate such girls!!!!!!).


Such movies are really not made these days. These days we have stupid love stories and some really off the hook subjects with some sleazy doses of steamy scenes. We no more have dialogues that are spoken over the roof-top like “Bhagwaan ko yaad karle zaalim singh” (recall your God Zalim Singh) or dialogues like “Kam se kam apne honewale bachche ke liye to yeh rasta chhod do” (leave this path of crime at least for the sake of your kid to be born). We only have some hard hitting lines that hardly make any impact. I am really looking forward towards watching this movie.

Racism at its worst in India!!!!!

In India the word racism has a different meaning. Most of the time racism is actually favoring the citizens of a particular country, which is also a wrong way of interpreting it, but a very logical way of assessing racism. However, in India it is the other way round. In India racism is more against the Indians than the foreigners who are actually coming to visit India. Of course Indians believe in the concept of “Atithi Devo Bhava” (treat your guests just like God), however having said that, worship should not be at the cost of debasing your fellowmen. This is what I want to highlight in this article of mine.

There are many places in India that actually practice this habit of discrimination, especially joints where you see more foreigners entering and enjoying, in those joints the Indian counterparts are always given a measly treatment. To give an example let me tell you about Leopold Café in Mumbai. The café came to highlight in the recent 26/11 attacks. However, apart from the gruesome and condemning act that happened in the café that night there is a dark side to this place which I want to share. By this article I nowhere want to prosecute any foreigner who may be visiting our country. India is always a country that accepts everybody with warmth and affection; however I just want to highlight the amount of mental discrimination that an Indian actually does with another Indian.

It was a Sunday afternoon when I and one of my friends paid a visit to this café once. I had been a regular visitor in the café and a real admirer of the food and beverages that is served in the café. That day too like other days I went with my friend to have a good time in the place. We also planned to watch the formula one race on the LCD screen that is on the upper first floor of Leopold. In the afternoon there is not much rush so I just went ahead and we entered the first floor. We were given a table near the LCD as there were not many people to watch out for. There was this usual crowd of foreigners in the café who had also come to have a good time. We ordered our food and beverages and waited. First of all it took a long time for the waiter to attend to us. He was always engrossed in attending the visitors from outside India and didn’t even bother to listen to us. When he was free, thankfully we could order our things. Then it took him more than half an hour to deliver our order on our table whereas the foreigners got an express service within 5 to 10 minutes. We didn’t bother about this as we were keen on seeing the formula one race and were enjoying it.

The climax came at around an hour later when the café was virtually filled with people. We were enjoying our food and the race near the LCD. Now suddenly the waiter comes to us and urges us to sit in a separate table which we had to share with some other people. This was because there was a group of four people, from west, who wanted to have a seat near the LCD. I was furious at this request. It was as if we were eating there for free and were unlikely to be billed, or as if the other “guests” were going to pay them double the amount. It was racism at its worst done to an Indian by and Indian on Indian soil.

Sometimes I feel that the country has still not been able to come out of the foreign rule that was there in this country for 200 long years. We still have people who would rather prefer a foreign rule in this country than a sovereign democratic republic. The proprietors of Leopold Café are definitely one of them. I don’t blame the waiters because at that position you are more commanded upon than asked to take your own decisions. The waiters were just probably following the dictum set by the Leopold proprietors of just ignoring countrymen to foreigners or even insulting them at their cost.

The café boasts of being in existence since 1871, however it has just forgotten that this is not the 19th century India where locals were treated equal to dogs. Today India is one of the forces that is shaping the world economy and politics. It is a country of billion people with billion ideas that are capable to changing the face of the world and influencing decisions on a global scale. It is a country, where businessmen, just like me have proved to be competent enough with the international business scene. Despite all these the racist proprietors of Leopold only feel that we are a country still struggling with our existence. They dare to deny the law of the land and carry out their open discriminatory policies against Indian guests that too on the Indian soil.

My question is, how long can this go on? Are the torch bearers of this society not seeing this? Where are the organizations who are more interested in lifting the national spirit high? Why are they ignoring such activities that are happening in the most happening place in India? Will there ever be an end to this racial nonsense that Leopold is carrying out? How can Indians be treated like second class citizens in their own country? What about the constitution? What about equality in the country itself? Should we allow such racial joints to even operate in India?