The fear of silver jubilee!

IF: This is the year your parents are celebrating twenty-five years of their marriage- as a blissfully happy couple who have grown from strength to strength and raised a beautiful and normal bunch of children

OR

as a pretending-to-be-blissfully-happy-couple-who-have-grown-from-strength-to-strength-and-raised-a-beautiful-and-normal-bunch-of-children but who really are opponents in a 25-year old war where they have managed to make a few babies in between fights and raised them to be total screw-ups.


BEWARE.

Whatever kind of folks you have had the misfortune of being born to, do not let your sentiments of this big day dilute your otherwise rather blunt instincts. Let me tell you why.

Remember those Madhuri Dikshit movies in the 80s where the 25th anniversary celebrations were used by the couple to make unexpected announcement of their child's engagement much to the surprise of the poor child and in some cases the person chosen to be the future spouse of the child? Yeah, those images still fondly float in the minds of all parents.

I personally do not understand what the whole fantasy with holding your precious' engagement party with your own silver jubilee marriage celebrations really is. I mean don't parents crib enough about children coming in the way of everything they ever wanted to do, without adding children coming in way of such a major milestone in the parents' lives? Of course, from an economical point of view, it does save the expense of one party while ensuring that the gifts are different for the parents' anniversary and the child's engagement.

There is one theory that my analytical mind proposes to explain this crazy fantasy among the folks. This theory is called the "TIMELY TRAGEDY" theory, which is as under:

For every conventionally-thinking individual, it is not only important to reach out to each tragedy of life eagerly but also to reach out the same tragedies in a timely manner. So, if you have secured a Government job by the age of 21 years, you have achieved one tragedy timely. If you are married before you turn 24, you have timely secured another tragedy to your belt. The first child is a very important tragedy that must happen before you have celebrated your first anniversary to be timely. The second child should come as a wailing, head-splitting tragedy two years after the birth of its older tragic sibling but must of the opposite sex for the conditions of the TIMELY TRAGEDY theory to be fulfilled. By this arrangement, the eldest child would have reached out and grabbed the first tragedy of his life- a secure job by the time s/he has turned 24 and after letting your precious apple experience the biggest of all tragedies of life we call reality for about one year, you can safely reach out and grab your biggest milestones in the "TIMELY TRAGEDY" way of living- celebrating your 25th marriage anniversary as your child is engaged-to-be-married on the same day.

So for all of you who are obliviously planning a grand event to celebrate 25 years of your parents waking up to see the same faces every morning (at least that is the hope), do keep in mind that there is a reason why two people will smile bravely and pretend to want to celebrate a life-ruining moment, which ironically is followed by waking up to see each-other's faces again until merciful death doth do them part.