The Night Before My Wedding

The Night Before My Wedding - 1

I paced around my room, running my hands through my brown hair. Frustration was taking over me, and I felt irritated. It suddenly felt hot, even though the AC was on.

"Alia, would you chill?" asked Myrah, who was sitting on the couch, watching me while eating a plate of cheese cubes. "You're making me dizzy. And it's not good for me to be dizzy."

Myrah, also known as Myrah Khurana Shergill, is my first cousin, about 10 months older to me, and is a financial lawyer. Well, she's also married and two months pregnant, but that's not the point.

The point is, she was frustrating the hell out of me. Heck, everything was frustrating the hell out of me. I yelled at my younger sister Soha just about five minutes ago, because she was sitting on my bed and talking to her boyfriend on the phone, telling him about my 'mental condition'. She just huffed and left the room, but I don't expect her twenty year-old self to understand what I'm going through. She's seven years younger to me, after all.

My name is Alia Khurana. I'm twenty seven, and a travel journalist for a company in San Francisco, USA. And I'm getting married in 20 hours.

Now that you say it, 20 hours don't seem like a lot, do they? But trust me, I, being the bride, am getting completely freaked out right now. My wedding lehenga is placed on a torso mannequin in one corner of the room, all set for me to wear tomorrow. There's mehendi (aka henna) on my hands and feet, and a golden solitaire engagement ring on my finger, which reminds me constantly of my supposed wedding that is to take place tomorrow.

And here I am, wondering why the hell I ever listened to my family and agreed to an arranged marriage, or a marriage, period. As a kid, I used to say that I would never get married, that I didn't need a man to take care of me, and it's true, I don't. I grew up hating the idea of being married. At sixteen, I used to tell my friends and my family that being in a live-in relationship was the farthest I would and could go with any guy.

But then as soon as I turned twenty six, my parents started buttering me up; they asked me whether I was dating anyone (yes I was), whether it was serious (not really, no), whether the boy was nice (does 'good sex' count?), and whether I would like to introduce him to them (NO to that - he was American, they would've completely flipped). Eventually, after a year of following up, I had to give in when I ran out of reasons to not get married (I even tried to convince them that I was barren, I couldn't have kids, but Mom said that in today's open-minded world, I could easily adopt. Sometimes I hate her for being so cool).

Why am I reluctant to get married? Well, here's the answer: I'm impatient, difficult to deal with, and have a bit of a short temper. I don't listen to anyone (unless I've been emotionally blackmailed) and I am really stubborn. Seriously, if there were awards for stubbornness, I'd be sweeping them all away.

I'm especially against an arranged marriage - you have to suddenly live with and be part of a family who, until a while ago, you didn't even know existed. And being Indian, you have to obey them and keep them happy just because they're formally your 'in-laws', even though you have zero emotional connect to them. If it's a love marriage, you still know the guy, you're in love with him, so you love his parents as well, and they too reciprocate your feelings.

But love marriages too have their BIG negative points. For starters, we're human beings, and we tend to get bored of the same thing after a while. After a few years of marriage, the man doesn't feel the love he originally had for his wife. So he starts meeting people, getting into bad company, and ends up cheating on her. The woman throws a fit, the man apologizes only because of his ego (sometimes not even that), and they get divorced.

This is the stereotypical story.

Now, it is also possible that the couple doesn't have the spark they had in the beginning. Their actions start being based on pride, not love. So they start arguing to make the other agree with their point. This slowly starts becoming a routine. When their kids ask them, they say it's just a 'discussion'. But, end of the day, everything's fine and dandy, and they make up and cuddle next to each other and go to sleep, which is a hell lot more confusing to the kids than the Math problems they have to deal with.