Ever seen a bride shed those pearl drops from her eyes just when her father gives her hand away in marriage...or when the man of her dreams marks her a married woman by colouring her red or tying that sacred black string of beads called the mangalsutra around her neck.....ever wondered what those tears carried within? Some will invariantly question, why cry....why the drama....isn't it a happy occasion? Well of course it is, so you could very well term these as simple tears of joy.....but being a woman and having gone through the emotion in person I can safely say, it is much more than just that.....
Daddy's little princess, brought up with the utmost love and care, has to walk into a new world leaving behind a space which was her whole till that moment.....into a new world that she now has to make her own. She has her dreams about that pristine world. At the same time she's aware of what comes with it, that unseen responsibility of being able to become a part of the menage as soon as she steps into it.....with the same kind of solubility that one would expect from a pinch of salt in a glass of water. No matter the age....be it a bubbly girl fresh out of college or a lady who has seen her share of the world....walking into the boundaries of matrimony at once makes it mandatory that she should become that perfect image of maturity and balance who can just change herself in a fleeting moment to fit the expectations that the new family has.....and more often than not, no matter how tough the challenge, she tries her best to live up to it...... J
So here comes yet another question....why does she? If it is that much trouble indeed, who asked her to? She can choose to ignore the expectations and live as she pleases.....after all it's the age aspiring gender equality.....isn't it? But this is not about a battle of the sexes.....it is all about those tears of dreams and promises......she does it for him, and for the life she carried as a dream in her eyes.....that perfect life with him!!
Alas, life doesn't come all that easy and sorted out....does it? Time and tide take their toll, and life becomes this roller coaster ride of highs and lows......and somewhere in the everyday mundane struggle to find our place in the crazy rat race, the hopes and promises are consigned to oblivion... J
But somewhere in a tiny safe hidey-hole of the heart, the dream lives on, peeking out at every instance that serves as a reminder of bits and pieces of that phantasm.....sometimes as wistful tears and sometimes as a sigh of an unfulfilled wish....
And what is life without hope....without a yearning for the unattained.....and so she keeps the ball of life rolling....holding on to the tears of promises....waiting for the day when she can finally live her dream!!! JJJ
