The Curious Case of Not So Warm Feet

 

Meera sat drumming her fingers on the arm rest of her decked up chair. Her mogra laced chignon kept irritating her. She felt it constricted her hair. She was so used to having her hair flowing and free conversing with the wind. She looked at the deluge of people in front of her. Faces known and unknown. All bearing down on her. Every stare studying her in a microscopic fashion. She felt like she was put up on display. Middle aged women scrutinizing her every move. Or what little movement she could manage in her highly restricting, heavily embroidered 20 kg designer lehenga. She could almost hear people talking about her. Passing comments. Forming opinions. Their eyes sweeping her form from head to toe. Soon these very people would not be strangers. Just her extended family. She would have to treat them as she would treat any member of her own family. Wasn't that the norm? Isn't that what is grilled into every Indian girl's head since the beginning? That she is meant to be someone else's treasure?

Her eyes tries seeking comfort from the one who was beside her, her betrothed. He sat with his eyes focused on a new batch of guests making their way towards the happy couple. He instantly looked at her motioning with his gaze that they should get up to greet the incoming. Almost as if on cue she got up plastering a smile on her face.

She exchanged pleasantries with people or rather countenances with names. They posed for photographs. As her vacant eyes scanned the room from the podium something hit her sharp in the guts. The way she had felt as a little girl sitting on the ferris wheel. Like there was something inside her that kept fluttering.

A flash passed before her eyes. Of what it would be like if she went ahead with this. Everything would change. It would begin with small things. Where she went, what she did, what she ate, who she talked to, what she wore, how she laughed, was it too loud, why she didn't find it funny, the way she carried herself. He said that he loved her because she was independent and spoke her mind. Soon he would term her way of thinking and outspokenness as disrespect and lack of manners. She would start living as per a code of conduct designed by others. And they weren't even her parents! Then there would be unrealistic expectations, assumptions and assertions. Demands from everyone that scream to be met. She would have to diverge her attention and energies towards goals that she may not always want to achieve and also towards people who may or may not deserve it or who may or may not understand its value. Where was she in all this? How did her wants, needs, desires and ambitions figure in all this? And then there was that ugly word she rarely used.

Compromise.

She felt the entire room grow tiny in front of her ever expanding anxieties.

Nothing is what it seems.

It was a trap!

All she could think of in that moment was the air that combed her hair when they were free. And the bad itch that the innumerable pins in her chignon were producing.

********

An hour later, the bathroom was abuzz with commotion over a letter allegedly left by the bride. They said she had ran from her own wedding. A few feet from her apologetic note lay the aromatic mogra that adorned her hair.

 This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.