Sometimes your fears appear in the form of nightmare....And its rare that you care..... but even rare that you dare to think what would happen if it were a reality affair. But in my case...the chances are pretty fair !
In school days, many a times, I wrote essays on Dowry...the social evil. And I was so damn used
to write it again and again that I still remember its contents. It stated the demerits, the trauma it causes to parents of a girl, the social inequality and hatred it creates and finally called for the eradication of the social evil. And by the time I grew up to college, it was heartening to see that because of increasing number of love marriages, the evil was breathing out its last days. However, being obsessed with the habit of thinking weird... it was real funny to think, if it were the other way round... I mean if guys' parents had to offer dowry! The bride-side coming to groom's home with the procession and etc..etc.. In fact, to materialize this the-then-weird notion,
we staged a play, which was an instant hit since it was a comic subject then.
But not now, as recently, I was reading an article titled,No job, No love. And as the title suggests, it talked about the recession in the romance biz due to economic meltdown. It illustrated views of many liberated, economically self dependent and practical love dealers.
Don't ask me why, but it contained views of power-puff girls only, and each word reminded me of
old-bollywood-in-law-vamps, who cursed the protagonist for not fulfilling their dowry expectations. So, these modern-gold-diggers were justifying dumping their boyfriends, who had either lost their job, or didnt fetch big bucks as expected. And of course, they had no regrets at all ! And I instantly realised that dear, the time has come...the fixed deposit of atrocities on women has started paying off the dividends. And that too quite generously!
Obviously, today the pay packet of a guy completely outweighs his qualities. The parents regretting the birh of a male child, doesn't seems to be a distant possibility. And I cant help thinking about my old weird thoughts of the "turn-table-idea". And so, I conducted a survey among my friends of course.... And here is the summary:
Many of my friends were damn sure that they would not take dowry and others were damn sure that they(read girls) would not give dowry !! Many of them (read guys) dont have any expectations whatsoever from their would-be..but girls have unanimity in their opinion (surprising and shocking both....) that their beau should be well settled, should have enough savings, should be able to provide a luxurious life-style and much more than a single etc ! For instance, one practical must-bees being, a girl working in a national MNC doesnt wants anything less than a guy working in international MNC !! Obviously, I did not dare to ask them the reasoning behind the verdict.
But my question is, have we really eradicated dowry or it has just transformed itself to suit the present societal circumstances. Whatever the truth may be....... I am really scared because sooner or later, I ll also have to come under the hammer ! And till then, I can just hope that my once staged comedy doesnt become my real life tragedy !
