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What's with men and marriage jokes? If marriage makes men feel that trapped and unhappy, you'd think they'd stop going in for it!
A bus full of housewives going on a picnic fell into a river, all aboard died. Each husband cried for a week, one husband continued for more than two weeks. When asked, he replied miserably – “My wife missed the bus”
I got the above whatsapped to me this morning from one of my male friends. I couldn’t replicate the cute emoticons here of happy men faces and a rather mortified woman that came along with the message.
Two hours and about 6 different ‘good morning have a blessed day’ messages with coffee cups and flying hearts later, I got another one – again from a male friend, happily married for 6 years.
Before marriage : Roses are red, sky is blue, U are beautiful, I Luv u
After marriage: Roses are Dead, I have Flu, Don’t eat my head, pare mar tu (roughly translated as go to hell).
Followed by 9 yellow smileys indicating that it was time to laugh now.
My phone is subjected to at least 4 similar married men ‘jokes’ everyday among a slurry of other nonsense meaning-of-life quotes like – Life is like an orange. It is swishy, messy and has pips in it. Some people have one every morning. Now the quotes do make me laugh, but those jokes never do.
To the authors of these me(a)n jokes, (safely assuming they are all husbands), I would just like to say sorry on behalf of your wives. Sorry that they ruined your lives by marrying you. It must be really difficult for you to share your space with them and live in a nicely smelling house. For the Casanovas that you are, it is absolutely unfair that you have to come home to your wives every evening when obviously there are gorgeous girls waiting to throw themselves on you what with your baldness showing and paunch growing.
You sure lead a hard life getting treated like a king by your parents-in-law all the time, while your wife gels into your family like a fish takes to water. Oh what is a life without millions of expectations from your spouse’s family and their distant relatives, neighbors and pets? You must feel highly unimportant when no one shows interest in your life by constantly asking you about your family planning timelines and when no one at a wedding is bothered if your jewellery matches your clothes. You must be totally missing out on the luxuries of being told what to wear, how to talk, what to cook and whose feet to touch.
It is tough being you, I get that. But what you don’t get is that all that stress in your life is totally dumbing your brain down (I am assuming you had one to start with), which is taking a toll on your sense of humour. As a result you pass around these ‘jokes’ that are no more than a bundle of sexist, illogical and hideously unfunny balderdash – the kind that can only make a nincompoop like Navjot Singh Sidhu bounce off his chair like a chicken on hot plate. You forget a key point here – that the marriage you feel a victim of, involves at least one more person – your wife. While she is getting along with her fate absolutely fine and dandy, you for no reason have taken a self-pity route. Like seriously? Have you seen any similar wife ‘joke’ doing the rounds? Will you now say that there is nothing to joke about there, as it is always the man who gets trapped since a woman’s sole aim in life was to marry you and hence she is a happy bunny? Come on, say it aloud if you are man, so I can publicly pop the bubble you are living in.
But until then, please stop making such jokes and go check if your wife is still living with you.
pic credit: pratanti (Used under a creative commons license)
Shivangi is the author of the hilarious yet compelling book 'I made a booboo', published by Rupa and available worldwide. She also co-authored a travel anthology on Netherlands, titled 'Dutched up' that featured among read more...
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Women today don’t want to be in a partnership that complicates their lives further. They need an equal partner with whom they can figure out life as a team, playing by each other’s strengths.
We all are familiar with that one annoying aunty who is more interested in our marital status than in the dessert counter at a wedding. But these aunties have somehow become obsolete now. Now they are replaced by men we have in our lives. Friends, family, and even work colleagues. It’s the men who are worried about why we are not saying yes to one among their clans. What is wrong with us? Aren’t we scared of dying alone? Like them?
A recent interaction with a guy friend of mine turned sour when he lectured me about how I would regret not getting married at the right time. He lectured that every event in our lives needs to be completed within a certain timeframe set by society else we are doomed. I wasn’t angry. I was just disappointed to realize that annoying aunties are rapidly doubling in our society. And they don’t just appear at weddings or family functions anymore. They are everywhere. They are the real pandemic.
Let’s examine this a little closer.
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