FAREWELL TO A DAUGHTER JUST MARRIED

  

FAREWELL TO A DAUGHTER JUST MARRIED

 

Dedicated to parents who have married off their daughter!

 

In India, marriage is an institution symbolizing the union of not just two hearts but two families unlike the western world where it is a mere contract or convenience between a man and woman.  And there, children, I am told, remain with their parents only up to an age and thereafter, would be on their own.

 

However, in India, it is different! For a newly married girl, it is like the procedure followed in raising the rice crop, namely, ‘transplantation’ wherein seeds are first sown into a nursery and the seedlings are then transplanted into the main paddy field, once they grow up to a stage. Like a sapling getting transplanted, after marriage the bride leaves her maternal home and gets relocated into the family of her husband and in-laws where she grows full-fledged. She adopts and adapts to a new setting and environment where her role gets transformed, rather enlarged - substantively and substantially. In fact, females are ‘relationship-builders’. Relationship-building is, in fact, the source and soul of ‘heal for stress and strain’ in human relations, if any. Marriage is a Nature’s design to maintain the human race. In a nutshell, she is a relationship weaver and bridge!

 

After the acme of delight and euphoria of marriage celebrations hitting a crescendo with relatives and friends around, a moment of reckoning comes when finally the bride leaves her parents and maternal home to join her husband and his family. The tears of joy would suddenly turn into tears of discomfort. Parents, siblings and other close relatives would glumly burst into tears while bidding adieu to the bride setting out to join her new home, who was their darling thus far. Not that she severs her connections with the maternal home and the near and dear ones - lock, stock and barrel - but her going away from their midst would necessarily cause some unease till things settled down. A ritual followed on such occasions in most Indian families included, inter alia, is throwing three handful of rice, wheat and/or coins typifying her gratitude to their parental home which brought her up with love and affection from birth and as a token of wishing and spreading the happiness and prosperity in that family. If she were to go abroad after marriage, with emotions running high, there would be still more sensitive, moving and touchy scenes around than in case she were to settle down in her home state or in any other part of our own Mothrland. However, she would not only maintain her roots in that home but also strengthen the bond further. And whenever she visited her maternal home thereafter with her hubby and/or children she would be a VVIP there.

 

Thereafter, parents would go into nostalgic bouts recalling the days of their tiny tot with a teddy or any other doll or toy in her hands running around the house and more specifically having to bolt the main entrance door so that the little girl didn’t stray out. And, as a toddler, she would have given the family many joyous moments to be cherished in memory! Wouldn’t have she? Now that she is a grown-up and married, the doors are always open for her to leave the home, and join her husband and her natural new home. However, she is always welcome to her maternal home for enjoying her sojourns!

 

 

R.SAMPATH

5/6/2020