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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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Before expecting the daughter in law to love, respect and accept the new family, it is only fair that the family demonstrates all of these first.
If you are a married Indian woman, one of the first words you hear from your in laws is that you are now a daughter of the house. How true is that statement though? Are daughters in law really treated as daughters or is this only lip service?
A friend recently confided how hurt she felt when she wanted to visit her in-laws along with her husband but was told not to, because the in-laws wanted time alone with their son. Naturally, she was taken aback since she had always been fed this trope – that she was the daughter, not the daughter in law. Why then this sudden keeping at arm’s distance? Would a son in law ever be told not to accompany his wife on her visit to her parents because they wanted quality time with their daughter? That is unimaginable in a patriarchal society.
It is ok to want time alone with the married offspring but how does that meld into the Indian family system, where independent choices are less important than the whole family coming together?
My husband returns home tired after working & travelling. I, like other working women, return home refreshed after enjoying full day at office!
I am a working woman and mother of a 2 year old daughter. People say I am irresponsible and lazy because I have a house-help.
Yes, I’m irresponsible and don’t have any work. Except checking what groceries needs to be refilled and ordering them for home delivery, washing my and my husband’s clothes, drying and folding them, getting the work-wear clothes ironed, keeping clothes in place, cleaning bathrooms and toilets, changing bedsheets, dusting windows occasionally, hand washing my daughter’s soiled clothes in hot water, bathing my daughter twice, feeding my daughter breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Rest other work like cooking and house cleaning done by the house-help and my husband takes care of getting fruits and vegetables from the market every week. So I don’t have any work except those few mentioned earlier.
Joke with her, not about her. The next time you hear a wife joke, don’t laugh don’t forward it. It takes less than a minute to take a stand. Maybe try that?
I am one of the thousand or so Indian millennials added to family WhatsApp groups totally against their will. And I get the ‘good morning,’ ‘good night’ and occasional ‘good afternoon’ from a particularly jobless uncle or aunty. Oh and the forwards which will miraculously shower good luck upon me – if and only if I forward them to 11 other people (not one more or less, mind you)
And the recent, minute to minute updates and opinions on COVID-19. Right from conspiracy theories to realisations of how Indian traditions are more than enough to cure the virus – you know how it goes. Now, a lot of these messages are problematic and I should ideally be fighting against all of them. However, since that’s impossible and since I’ve got to be picking my battles and I pick this: Wife jokes.
Does the myth surrounding marriage really stand the test of time? What is the reality once the first flush in a marriage is over?
Once the ecstasy of the first few months wears out and the reality hits you, you find yourself very unprepared for what is lying in front of you.
If you had a love marriage, it is doubly difficult. During the courtship stage both the parties stay at their best of behaviour, but it is difficult to keep your tempers and difference of opinions in check 24/7.