My case against marriage

I have never been a believer in marriage and even less so in the grand wedding that happens before the onslaught of your life-long torture. But everytime somebody would ask me why is it that I do not believe in the great institution, I would fumble and say "well it does not make sense", which obviously did NOT make sense to the other person who then thought I was just trying to be cool in rejecting marriage.

There are a few obvious reasons- living with another person for the rest of the days and thereby subjecting self to the unexciting ways of not just one's own family but that of the spouse's too. Take for example the sibling I cannot write about. I see this sibling's partner struggle with numerous phone calls from my family and everybody only ever wants to know if my sibling has talked to the partner about the relative on the other end of the phone. Of course the sibling has (not)! With a family of 20,000-odd members and growing, what else does the poor bloke have to talk about? But somehow these very valid reasons fail to strike a chord with the listener(s), who will quote the marriages of everybody around and make them appear (much like the women on beauty-cream advertisements) flawless and happy. When we all know the truth , right!! Another argument that I do not understand is one where the older folks insist on marriage so that one has a companion in the old age. Clearly, there are a few rather prominent flaws in this argument, which I shall list for you here:

1. The spouse does not come with the guarantee that s/he will linger for all that time

2. The spouse does not come with the guarantee that her/his company will be entertaining and especially entertaining right up to the point of the proverbial kicking the bucket

3. Companionship in the old age will obviously mean companionship throughout one's adult years, which seems quite a hefty price to pay just so you have somebody to grumble about arthritis and the rotten younger generations with

4. Dogs are good company too. Or cats for that matter. And you don't have to get them when you are a young adult in order for them to stick around when you are old and feeble. In fact, even if you did get them when you are a young adult, they won't stick around until you are old and feeble.

But try as I may, I cannot bring the other person to see reason in my points. So I have come up with the most stunning, flawless ACE in my case against marriage.

I call it THE REASON to not marry.

Tiffin boxes. Yep! Remember those wretched 12+ years of school when you would wake up at unholy morning hours to get ready for school, including BATHE? Dear God the horror! Now push the soul-numbing torture of your daily, early morning odysseys in the background and focus instead on the person, who in your memory was the harbinger of the daily disaster- Mom! So you now know that the poor woman (or man if you are from one of those really fantastic equal-opportunity families you see on TV) got up about half an hour before you did to pack lunch (tiffin), and simultaneously wake you and other children she may have had the misfortune of bearing/raising, shove them into bathrooms in turns and later get them to gulp down milk and a piece of toast and then stuff the tiffins in their respective bags and race them to the bus stop.

Now the one thing I know is that when most people think of marriage, they think of the wedding- those deceptive few days of bling and kaching and dressing up and dancing. But what then? Skip a few years down the road... yeah just right there when your child (good heavens!) is old enough to go to school. Can you see yourself waking up to the alarm ringing not-so-gently at 5 or 6 a.m. and then going to the kitchen to cook and then pack lunch for your offspring? Dear reader, this is exactly what you are getting yourself into.

And you know you will have to do this for more than twelve years unless you choose to have your kid drop out of school and become a hippie. Now if you see your present life of partying late into the night, drinking without a care, getting up only when you know you cannot absolutely snooze another minute on your damn alarm clock and living the way one should live- i.e. in the most selfish manner- and compare this with the life you will end up having in a few years from now when all traces of selfish will be drowned in the incessant bawling of your little one, I do believe we have arrived at a moot point.

Fancy a marriage, anyone?

I rest my case.