The rising trend of runaway brides and grooms

Random scene: The make up artist is dressing up a bride for her reception party. She is getting intermittent calls. Half of the calls consist of requests from would-be brides for appointments…the other half consist of cancellation of pre booked appointments.  Reason? The wedding has been called off.

These days it has become the trend to call off the wedding at the last moment to run away with “the true love”. Why this epiphany has to strike just before taking the vows I fail to understand.

In the olden days people did not have much say about their own weddings. So running away was often the only way left for the rebellious bravehearts. But nowadays even the “arranged marriages” are fixed solely at the will of the girl and the boy. Now that should guarantee an incident-free wedding. But in reality people are breaking off marriages…even love marriages at the eleventh hour. It has become the latest style statement. They think they are really cool if they display the guts to be the runaway bride/groom.

What gave our society such a heinously warped idea one might wonder…

Rachel ran out at her own wedding in the popular TV show “Friends”

Her defense: She was marrying a rich dentist guy to secure her material comforts, once she realized that she didn’t love him she chose to flee the wedding scene.

Kareena Kapoor’s character dumped her fiancé (twice) in the movie “3 idiots”.

Her defense: She fell for another guy. When this guy vanished into thin air she went back like a wimp to her ex-fiance only to dump him again at the altar.

Abhay Deol’s character decides to call off his wedding at the behest of his two best friends during his flashy bachelor party.

His defense: She was stifling him and he had not really proposed marriage. It did not occur to him that clarifying the confusion at the right moment could have saved a lot of heartburn. 

And the winner: Deepika Padukone’s character leaves her newly married groom to run after ex boyfriend in Love ajkal.

Defense: The love of her life had always been the ex boyfriend. Since he refused to commit she had decided to marry a nicer guy. When she sees a chance of getting her ex boyfriend back she runs away putting the nice guy's life at stake.

And all the while we sitting at the audience took sides with Rachel, Kareena, Abhay, Deepika…because the plot had placed them as the heroes and heroines. We clapped, we cheered, we wiped away copious tears and left for home satisfied. We never thought how unfair the portrayal was until the trend went viral in reality. In real life when the same thing happens we all condemn these people as villains.

I do not see any solution to this. May be someone needs to take charge and glorify the value of promise.

Remember how in your childhood some kids asked you to promise in the name of god to ensure the secrecy of the just imparted information? We promised and did our best to keep our words. What went wrong since then?? Why did we grow up to be such messed up people with little regard to promises??

Why do we so often forget that records are made to be broken…promises are made to be kept??

The (n-1)th step

Can you identify a single goal as the defining purpose of your life?

It’s good news if you have answered the above question in negation.

Human beings have been blessed with too many senses to have just 1 dream in life.

After the seemingly unending monotony of the womb when we take a look at the colourful world our senses are hit with a deluge of emotions…we fail to give the strange feeling a name. It’s a mixture of shock, pleasure, anger, surprise, annoyance and amazement. We cannot simply call it happiness…we can only compare it to being high.

And from that point onwards we get addicted to life and start fearing death. We are driven by the hope to experience that high feeling again and again. We start weaving fantasies and strive to change them into reality.

But the flavours of dreams are complicated. Every dream feels the best at the (n-1)th step.

(n-1)th step gives us the feeling of being high.

nth step gives us the feeling of happiness.

Any sane person given the option to select between the feeling of being happy and the feeling of being high would choose to be high.

The uncertainty of the (n-1)th step accentuates our senses. Happiness is definitely better than sloppiness but it is rungs less than the feeling of being high.

Uncertainty makes way for happiness…happiness makes way for emptiness…

Being high gives us the will to live…being happy gives the power to give up life.

In a way it is good if we have some unfulfilled dreams in life…although we never really admit but they are the ones which keep us alive and ticking.

Criticism

No one likes to be criticized.

Behind every “Constructive criticism is always welcome” there is a silent growl which people fail to hear. It says “Praise is always welcome you idiot…criticism never is.”

There are 3 types of stances that can be assumed by a person against criticism.

I call them the 3 A’s of response to criticism.

Absorb-Attack-Avoid

1. Absorb: In this case the recipient absorbs the criticism and it erodes his/her confidence. The recipient has a very flexible mindset and hence she/he tries to accept all suggestions including the ones that go against her/him.

Social response- The general idea is that this kind of behaviour promotes peace and   harmony. Every one’s opinion is incorporated and hence every one is supposed to be happy. The truth is this kind of attitude promotes self doubt among every one and the whole society becomes weak and crippled.

2. Attack: In this case the recipient counter attacks the criticizer with a venomous response and dissects him/her with such violence that the person is forced to take a step back. 

Social response- The criticizer would issue an apology or at least would refrain from an encore. To slice the brunt of our attack we can always coat our vicious words in a liberal dose of sarcasm.

3. Avoid: In this case the criticism hits our psyche and glides off just as a water drop slips off an oily leaf. This method is adopted by the most secure people on earth. But let’s be truthful here. Deep down we all want validation and approval of other people to varying degrees. That’s why great people like Sheldon Cooper exist only in fiction. But we can do one thing…we can at least pull off an act of being indifferent to criticism…that will also provide the same effect. 

Social response: The criticizer would be left feeling inferior to you once you choose to ignore her/him. Now that their criticism spate has boomeranged the criticizer will leave you alone and choose a new target.

Clarification: This really wasn't an attempt to stop people from giving me negative feedback about my blog. :-)