Wednesday 23 March 2016

Are marriages really made in heaven?

They say "Marriages are made in heaven". I wonder if that is true. Last night I was travelling in a train with my friends. Because we had booked tickets last minute, my friend and I had only managed to secure RAC tickers which means that both of us were allotted only one berth. Nonetheless, we invited two other friends, who were supposed to leave the next day, to join us so that all of us could have fun even if it meant four people share one berth.
So anyway, as we boarded the train we found a lady sleeping on the sorry side lower berth that we were allotted. On asking her to move, she called out to her husband who was sleeping in the adjacent middle berth. The woman complained that she had a bad leg and could not climb onto any other upper berths, but gave us our berth nonetheless. The husband in the meanwhile got off from the middle berth and promptly climbed the berth above us and lay down comfortably. The lady kept standing and complaining to her husband that he had booked bad tickets and how he should be more careful. She said, "tumi erom ticket ketecho, ami ki korbo ebar?" meaning you have booked such tickets, what do you think I should do now?. In reply, her husband, almost showing a temper, says, "tomar ja iche tumi koro, ami jani na." meaning do what you feel like, I do not know. Helpless the lady made a failed attempt to climb on the one of the empty middle berths. Then having no other option she took out one of her sarees from her luggage and spread it out on the ground. Not being able to take it anymore, we insisted that the middle berth was not very difficult to climb and if she agrees we would help her to climb up and down whenever necessary as it was not possible for the four of us to manage in a middle berth even if we tried. We also offered to request some other male passengers on her behalf to let her sleep in their lower berths. However, she said she had other relatives in some other berth and left. All this continued for almost half an hour and all this while, the husband silently lay on his berth not uttering a word of concern or worry. Just as we were thinking she has managed to get a proper place with her relatives she came back saying they were on the other end of the train and she could not find them. We again offered to help in any way we could but she said she will just lie down on the ground and that it was okay. All this time her husband, instead of offering to help, kept insulting her and abusing her publicly. At such a point what shocked us the most was the fact that after she spread her saree on the floor, she started offering her husband tea, food and snacks and insisted that he went to sleep and made himself comfortable. He obliged. In the morning, when he woke up after being woken up by her a million times, she said "how much will you sleep? do you care that someone has stayed awake the entire night", and he says "So what should I do, that is none of my business". Then he ordered her to give him tea and while sipping the tea he kept going on and on about how he will fight with some relatives, how he is not at all selfish and everybody else is and so on.
Are marriages really made in heaven? Maybe they are. There are only two explanations to situations like these. Either marriages are really made in heaven so that the perfect woman is matched with a man so that in spite of such behavior she is capable of being a loyal wife and making the marriage last. Or, a far sadder explanation would be that most women in our society have grown up the believe that this is the normal male behavior and it is their duty to put up with it and serve him and to go on with the marriage no matter how much torture or humiliation she has to put up with. Out of the two which one would be a happier explanation, I wonder.

Disclaimer: To any man who is reading this, I do not mean any offence or do not mean to make any generalizations. It is merely based on my experience being a girl and on certain incidents in my life.