Window Shopping!!!!! :)
What does ‘Window Shopping’ remind you of? Walking on lane and looking through the huge glass windows of big branded stores or malls and admiring their new season collections…Right?
But I mean it in a different way here. This was a termed coined by my previous head of the department (HOD) and a very good friend. You will be surprised and laugh your heart out when you read this conversation…
HOD: “So, Asma how was your weekend?”
ME: Good…as every weekend is…wake up at noon…no breakfast but a direct lunch…watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S on Zee café…sleep again…wake up at 6 in evening…enjoy tea with biscuits…do the laundry…listen to mom’s taunts on the pending dusting of my room (which still is pending)…watch some movie…dinner time…again TV…then GOOD NIGHT!
HOD: Ok! Good! Mine was interesting! (Says with a broad smile on her face)
ME: What was interesting? Saw some new movie?
HOD: Noooo! It was my window shopping! (Again with that broad smile)
For a moment I thought she had gone to some mall and had fun doing window shopping but the expression on her face bespoke some other tale to which my reply was a frown filled face and she started laughing.
HOD: Arey Asma! My Window Shopping!
ME: I still didn’t get you. (The frown remains in the same position on my forehead)
HOD: I mean that yesterday some guy’s parents had come to meet me and my family. My family presented me in front of them like a decked up walking talking show piece who is assumed and presumed to be Miss Perfect in every aspect of her life. So…My Window Shopping!
ME: Hahahaha…hahaha…hahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I could not stop laughing at her sarcastic but a very true comment, which at times is not as hilarious as mentioned above.
All girls, women, mothers and many others (which includes men also) reading this piece may have been a part of such a window shopping sometime in their lives. There is immense pressure from the society on girl’s parents. It sometimes appears as if she is daughter of the society and not of her parents.
“Oh Lord! Twenty seven and yet not engaged? Don’t you want your daughter to get married?”
(Yes aunty! Please give that marriage bureau’s number, which after two years of gruesome hunting, helped you in finding the most apt son-in-law)
“Our daughter got married at the age of 22…just after her graduation. Are you not worried on your daughter getting older?”
(I still have my teeth in mouth and my hair is yet to grey…And if you wouldn’t have gotten your daughter married then you would have never known whom she ran away with as her list was a long one!!!!!)
“If you don’t get girls married at the right age then you will have to hunt for a bridegroom who could be a widower or may be a divorcee with two-three kids.”
(For Heaven’s sake! To marry off at the age of 19 to a guy whom your daughter does not like and then after having two kids she suddenly decides to elope with her former lover ….makes sense to you my beloved aunty. Hat’s off to your daughter!!! But please, I am not in for this.)
“All my daughters got married very young. By twenty three years of age, they had two kids.”
(Old age is doing tricks on you uncle! Check their birth certificates…you will come to know their right age!)
…And many such comments. Sometimes you laugh at them but sometimes they are way too hurting. Such remarks can raise your mother’s BP…she can even get an angina…and get hospitalized. All thanks to these narrow minded stock of the society.
It is not that I am against arranged marriages but sometimes the surrounding public makes this process much agonizing. Marriage is a personal choice. A person – be it a girl or a boy – should decide herself/himself when to settle down and have a family. One cannot just tie-up two strangers into wedlock. With the increasing rates of divorces, it is quite conspicuous that one decision in haste scars your life – the impact of which will follow all through out your life. Why make such a mistake when you have all reasons to stop it?
But then it is difficult for one person to bring revolution. And it is impossible when it comes to changing the minds of your mothers. There are always those tear filled eyes to emotionally blackmail you. 😦
Sometimes you do it for fun…Sometimes in anger…But yes, you ultimately deck up and serve tea, farsans and sweets and speak in your sweetest tone though you despise it from the core of your heart. You prepare for this ‘Window Shopping’ more than you must have done for the interview you gave in that remarkable MNC.
In this generation it does not appear to stop but I hope our generation will not get carried away by such inflexible gossip mongers’ comments on our children. I hope we will give them the time to make this big and right decision of their lives.
Well, my HOD got married to a software engineer early this year (Ofcourse through window shopping process only). They make an awesome couple. Touchwood!!!!! 😀
And my window shopping is currently an ongoing process. But I have hopes. I know that…My prince charming is out somewhere…Destiny is yet to unite us…They say there is a right time for everything…So, I am waiting for that Right Time…For that Mr. Right …And for that Right Window Shopping! 😉
…Ashu Bolar 🙂
PANORAMAA 