Mobile v Mangalsutra!!!

 It was another usual day for the students at a Chennai engineering college canteen but important for a few girls. They were discussing the hot topic for next day's debate competition. It concerned -  A Woman's Freedom In Marriage. This is the story of two college students - Saroja and Suchitra. Saroja was talking in favour of wearing the Mangalsutra while her close friend Suchitra argued against it. Suchitra said if the groom wanted her to wear it, then he too has to wear one, despite being an added weight. One could imagine the 'for & against' such topics. Saroja had little support for her case from her contemporaries who thought she belonged to another generation in her votes and Suchitra won the popular votes among the girls. The debate was held as scheduled the next day. Even though the two friends did not participate they actively supported both sets of participants. The judge for the event the principal of a near-by women's arts college could not give a definite verdict. The mood of the audience was intense. In the end the judge declared that both sides were equally good but she could not decide a winner as there were was no definite answer to the debate. So the competition ended there only with appreciation for the participants but did answer the curious audience for their much-awaited answer. Life moved on as usual, years flew by and the graduation year neared. It was also that time of the year when companies/firms begin visiting colleges to recruit potential candidates. The Employment Fair was in full swing in this college too. Moods were swinging like pendulums amongst the students. Some were in high spirits others appeared dejected. Suchitra was in very high spirits as Software Company of her choice selected her. She was jubilant as she felt this job t would take her to different places and greater heights in her career. Saroja, on the other hand, declined offers by I.T. firms based outside Chennai. She wanted to remain in Chennai and be with her family (her parents and two younger siblings.) She found herself a suitable teaching job in one of the Engineering Colleges. Time passed on and Saroja met a gentleman named Anand (who was willing to support her family), liked him and subsequently married him. Meanwhile years rolled by without waiting for anybody or anything.

 Visiting the many big, flashy and trendy malls and doing window-shopping or just hanging out on weekends has become a norm among the young techie generation of Chennai. On one such weekend during the summer Saroja and her family also do some window-shopping and entered a coffee shop. At the same time a group of young men and women were seen entering the coffee shop. Among them was Suchitra. By the time coffee was served she spots Saroja helping her baby to see the outside traffic through the window. Looking at Saroja's mangalsutra, Suchitra looks at her own I.D. card and cell phone hanging around her neck. Then she recalls that pre-debate day during her college years, when Saroja and she discussed the issue of the mangalsutra. Now on seeing Saroja happy with a family and the mangalsutra, Suchitra feels shy in not being able to hide her own identity. She couldn't help but notice that her identity is in the form of her company I.D. card and the cell phone. Now every working class woman and man wears them around their neck openly. These forms of identity have become symbols of status, fashion and a necessity. Suchitra had been refusing to get married for a long time, never revealing the real reason behind the refusal, her strong dislike to wear the mangalsutra. On seeing Saroja she is reminded that how much ever she hated wearing a mangalsutra around her neck and looked at it only as an identity of her marital status, today she has to wear an ID card around her neck all the time at work and sometimes even on the road as an identity without which she would probably just anybody. She feels very embarrassed with this realisation that an identity in which ever form is part of one’s life and there is no escaping that she was so obstinate with her attitude towards mangalsutra and hence was missing out on an important facet of life of having a companion and a family which she had nothing against . With a new insight to life she quietly excuses herself from her friends and leaves the cafe (still lost in her thoughts!). Perhaps after this incident probably Suchitra has started viewing matrimonial websites!!

This a short story my dad wrote.My belief is as far as mangalsutra's are concerned, nothing wrong in wearing them. In the tam-bram culture, it is as much a part of a married woman's identity as anything as basic as wearing clothes everyday. I also have gone through the phase of not believing in this and wondering why men never had anything to prove their marital status. But today most men even the tam bram ones wear a wedding band! May be if we look a little deeper we may find some answers! I guess the point in this short story is that sometimes without realizing the true essence of something, we may well be running away from it........