Arranged Hearts

“Seriously Mom, is it really necessary to do now? You could have chosen any other day. In the entire days, you choose Sunday? I mean it’s the only day where I am supposed to rest.”

“Shut up, …all the time you are at home…What rest do you want? For how long will you sit here and do nothing?”

“What do you mean by resting at home? Making a YouTube video is not that easy.” I told her with a grumpy face and she hit me with the comb.

“Mom,” I rolled my eyes. “I am a twenty-four-year-old girl, you lost the right of hitting me.” She repeated the process of hitting me again. Fortunately, this time she hadn’t that long tortilla roller otherwise for every Indian Mom, the roller is a compulsory device to beat up their child.

If someone believes in the supremacy that a girl child is more loved and never beaten up, I must clarify before it’s too late. Being the single child in the house, I was more prone to beatings in order to maintain the conditions of the house. Another time I was also scolded badly for doing silly mistakes and then my parents would make me sit for hours to get lessons of proper behavior and genteel manners from private tutors. Since my parents are very conservative, so by birth, they taught me how to be idle and courteous towards my elders and loved ones.

I was also a special child, not in terms of being handicapped but in the way of my parent’s care. I was treated like a rare princess, well-guarded and shielded by my so-called possessive mama and papa. They raised me in a very innovative way. I was never allowed to touch the glass. They say I may end up injuring my foot with the tiny particles and therefore a set of designed, polished steel glass was preserved for me before my birth, I guess so. Not only this, I was not allowed to touch heavy things for example a bucket of water or even a minor brick. Only soft tissue papers and cottons were allowed for me.

I was thus pampered like a princess, like a real princess in the modern world. And in the bed time story, my mom used to come and say a simple line me “we treat you like a princess and give you everything you wanted, so do not disappoint us.”

So far, I haven’t disappointed them because I do not get the chance of doing so. But not when I have turned twenty-five……who can stop me from turning into a maleficent?

TIME TO STRIKE!

For half of my teenage life, I have spent almost in my home. Wally and windowy are my friends by birth. Because my parents don’t let me out much. I remember, I once went to a stationery shop to buy a pencil and the next day I found a bunch of pencils and pens along with sharpeners and erasers. Once again, they said to me “If you need anything just tell us.” After the incident, I saw my house half turning into a shopping complex. Almost everything is available in my house, from thousands of sanitary pads to my future babies’ diapers, fruits and vegetables are always in stock and technically we never run out of other essential things. This scenario urges me to start my own sales business by selling out all the things.

I am Amayra Wadwani, the only surviving heir to my father’s property and to my mother’s gold necklaces. I am the prettiest daughter ever born to strict parents because it is believed that only beautiful faces get such parents.

My parents’ introduction about me is that I am very organized and disciplined, and my core character is that I possess happiness and am destined to give the same to others.

However, I am different, and I must not tell a soul until I find it necessary enough to venture out.

Singing is my passion, and I put much of my focus into it, however, I have completed business studies, and till now I haven’t got anything out of it. Sometimes I feel like returning my degree back to college and asking for the money back. My other hobbies include curiosity. English Philosopher Thomas Hobbes said, “Curiosity is the lust of the mind.” I am curious about the plain earth; I am curious about each little thing I see. And one such day, my utter curiosity brought me a disaster.

HELL!

Throughout my life, I thought why I never had a sister or a brother. I asked this many times to my mom and she replied “we only needed one child.” What is this one-child policy? Are we living in China? And one day, oddly in the middle of the night, when I banged on my parent’s room, asking them why they had turned the light on?

I thoughtlessly asked, “Are you making babies?”

Then what?......... I can proudly say, I received flying chappals.

I don’t know where I went wrong. Because they did not know, that night I finished reading the chapter reproduction. I just wanted to confirm if, everything written in the book is true, words by words, lines through lines. During that time, I never knew the weightage of this question because I was in class 8, and my brain cells were just developing. You won’t believe I got my first period in class 9. One year after I came to know about sex and life.

After that tragedy, I barely ask anything from my parents. Sometimes I laugh when I sit alone in my room, wondering if I would not have disturbed them in their mission that night, I would have got a sister or brother with whom I could share anything, as sharing thoughts with parents is way too complicated. But then I pacify myself with the thought that a single child is better than having two. At least you don’t have to share the piece of dark chocolate and pastry which my father brings when he returns from the office.

Another reason for supporting the one-child policy is because of the delivery pain. When I was still young, learning things and few of my friends would discuss with each other sex, pain, baby, delivery ….all of these random thoughts used to hit my brain. The way they discuss, it quite haunts me, how a woman can tolerate the excessive pain during childbirth? In the past times, sometimes mothers die. I wanted to ask the same of my mother but as I told you she is not too much friendly with me, all she said is you will learn soon once you marry.

What the fuck is this marriage? You can just normally avoid answering.

Is marriage a license? License to do anything? License to know everything? Can’t I just know before marriage or have I to marry, get pregnant to know what pain is?

Shitty rule!

I just did not want to get marry someone I never met, never talked to, and never seen. What if he appears to be authoritative? What if he is too soft-hearted? And what if he appears to be a normal human but instead, he runs a drug circle….? What if a hooligan? Or mafia man? He cannot be a CEO, that’s happened in movies ……. what if I just get married to a thin matchstick body, a puppet of his mother, ridiculous nibble footed, awful and crappy man?

Point to be noted, milord! My conscience said.

Next day, all my relatives gonna attend my funeral and the newspapers would print “Bride died finding Groom chickenshit”

HILARIOUS!

The conclusion was, I had to marry a sheep.

As in my parents’ eyes, I was a scented fruit, waiting to be eaten by hungry howls, so they wanted to bid goodbye to me to another house as a nurse or as a breeding stock which I totally despised.

Now because I had turned into a pretty princess, they were thus deciding a marriage for me. As an obedient daughter, I hence, therefore could not objectify them. Rumors say parents always think better for their children. I don’t know how better they thought about me but this time I have different plans.

I heard about my marriage stuffs six months back. And today the day has finally come, where I shall be presented as a doll to be accepted by them.