An incident took place the other day. I am at a loss for an adjective to precede that noun 'incident' in the previous sentence. I hope anyone who reads this will help come up with something befitting!
Sunday morning, 8 am, me snoring away in bed. Staff rushes in and wakes me up saying there's a girl at the gate saying she wants to meet you and knowing that I dont like meeting anyone at my home, he hastened to add that they have told her to meet me in office next day but she just wont listen and is sitting there and crying. Fearing the worst kind of trauma, I rushed to make myself minimally presentable and called her into the room I use as my office.
Her sob story was that she has an elder sister, 20 years old, who is refusing to marry the boy chosen by her parents and is instead insisting on marrying another boy. That her mother is going to have heartattack from all the anguish and crying and that her father has tried and tried to persuade the girl but she wont listen. I asked her what she wants me to do about it and she says shes hoping that I will call her and talk some sense into her.
At first, I tried to brush it off saying, beta, yeh aapki paarivarik samasya hai, bade buzurgon ki sahayta lekar aap parivar ke andar sort out karo and got up to show her the door. She burst into tears saying all that had been tried but her sister was adamant. Then I got curious as to whats bothering this girl? I can understand parents bringing the house down on this issue, but arent siblings supposed to standby each other? So I asked her why she was crying so much about it and exactly what about her sister's choice does she have a problem with ? To this , this 16 year old replies with the greatest trepidation in her voice, ma'am, woh ladka doosre caste ka hai. meri didi aise kaise kar sakti hai! kabhi aise suna hai aapne! And then went on to rant about how this other caste boy has trapped her sister in his net and how much her parents are suffering because of her harebrained sister's unimagineable love affair.
At that moment I went through a range of emotions. From anger to stupefication to irritation to plain surrender. I even asked her, why do you think its wrong? havent you been taught in school that differentiating between people on the basis of caste is wrong and meaningless.. she just rambled on something through my questions the essence of which was just that caste is caste , how can she marry outside it. Its such a sad and sorry testatment to our education system and to our culture that even now, this concept of caste is so ripe and so deeply ingrained in our children's psyche and the ideals are constitution glows with is academic at best.. no words can describe my disgust and disappointment with that girl and the entire episode and its larger ramifications..
So, how did it end? I stood up and told that bleeping girl that I will not and cannot counsel her sister and she should leave. And when she incredulously asked me why, I told her that I have had an inter caste marriage and I believe strongly in favour of it.
The only good part of the incident was the look on her face when I told her so :)
Love the climax :)
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