Young Writers Society

Techno-marriage

It was 5 years back when we received a rather strange invitation from a family friend’s son on his wedding. I hadn’t met him before but had heard of him, yet owing to some problems I was the one zeroed in on by my family to attend the party.
I call the invitation strange because of its dress code, which said all of us the guests would have to wear masks. Besides the ladies were supposed to wear gowns and gents three-pin suits. And even the bride and the groom were supposed to wear the same. I thought-‘are we going to school wearing similar dresses or rather-uniforms?’
And I also heard that the groom was a bit cracked kind of scientist. But these all were not enough, the climax was yet to come. I couldn’t avoid the invitation.
I arrived on time and was enjoying the party, when all of a sudden someone pulled my hand and I was standing right there in the ‘mandap’!!!! To be married with the groom.

Well actually as I mentioned earlier the groom was a cracked fellow. He had invented a strange machine called a ‘marriage-machine’. Now I need to explain what it was, well it was an instrument with a network set within the floor that it could detect the weight, height and other physical features of a person standing within its field’s reach. It had four programmed arms. The first was meant to detect the bride from amongst all present there by matching the physical features of each person present with the pre-inputted data. The second arm was meant to pull the wife from her position to the prospective place called ‘mandap’ and the third was meant to focus a weird blue light on the bride and the groom who would be standing underneath it before hand when the bride is pulled. The fourth one would shower petals of flowers from its held stand on the couple and the marriage would be considered solemnised!

Now somehow my height, weight and physical dimensions coincidentally matched with the wife and I was pulled. But before I could understand all that the third arm was on its way and then in the wink of an eye the fourth completed the task- yes I was married!!! Married to a man whom I never knew, married off when I was actually a guest. I don’t know where the silly real bride was!
It was after all a machine and it was too fast to actually allow me time to collect myself and protest. The guy surely could not recognise me from his would-be wife as I like him and others was wearing a mask, so he like others there instantly joined in the loud celebration. Crackers were burst, loud drums music partying was waiting to be kicked off and it instantly did as the marriage was over. I was the only poor fellow, still trying to shout and make a point that I was not the bride. No one was hearing me or paying any attention to my protests. They were too occupied with celebrations. As I was about to lose my hope of getting out of the clutter I found I had no way of escaping but whom to tell and what.

Right then when everyone including the groom was dancing away to glory, I noticed a lady quietly moving to a corner and standing silent. I could guess this must be the real bride, she must be here. I went upto her, hoping my guess were true. And yeh…for a change it was!

Baffled as to what to tell her and what to do I questioned-
“Why are you standing here like a fool? Can’t you stop them all? Cant you protest?”
But like me she too had no listeners she admitted. Hunting for another question, I enquired-“ ok but then what about your family members, cant they protest and how come they don’t recognise you…and your dress-its pink mine is yellow. How come they join in celebrations?”
“Ah…” she said confessing-“ actually not their fault, they’ve seen me just once before!”
“What?!? Why?”
“Then let me tell the truth, my own parents were not ready to marry me off with this fellow as they took him to be crazy with all his flowery ideas but I ran out of my house, but it was important for his parents to get my family’s approval, so I had to hire parents and relatives. So these guys you see enjoying are just those hired people and the only time they have seen me is when I gave them the deal.”
Now I took just about two and a half seconds to ingest that. The third question in my mind as to how the groom who had been in courtship with her couldn’t distinguish me even though masked from his girlfriend seemed baseless- the inventor of marriage machine could not be expected to do anything better!
Then I asked the million dollar question-“ Now what?”
That chic was as good as her groom. And after all the things she told the answer was not too unbelievable. She casually nodded and said –“ come to the washroom”
I went in without a query like a schoolgirl trying to get out of a mess without the scolding. There we just exchanged our gowns and masks.
“ Don’t worry, this isn’t a marriage at all, so never mind. Go there and enjoy the party. With this costume and mask now I will be considered the bride”, she said.
And yes, thank god it was so.
The celebrations continued without knowing our secret.

And same for their marriage, they continued to be together without the guy ever knowing our little secret. But this got the girl and me closer and I indeed have now really close ties with the couple. Last week they called me for lunch. As we were sitting in their drawing room, the guy resumed to talk of his grief- the unrecognising and rejecting attitude of the society towards his sole invention-the marriage-machine. Yes the society hasn’t accepted it and that’s why his was the only marriage to use the machine. He couldn’t even convince a close friend like me to use it in my marriage. He was lamenting like usual-“ a prophet is never honoured in his own country. This is such an orthodox society and too rigid to accept a change.”
Boasting of his great philosophy behind the system he said-“ look this is the only way of marrying when your religion, surname, zodiac and all the usual nuisances never come into play. No pandit, priest or maulavi required. The ultimate union between two persons who agree to be with each other! It is the ideal techno-marriage for this era and of course a fore-runner for the wanna be cosmopolitan culture of today.”
We were so accustomed to hear all these it would never make a point to us (me and his wife). But he made a strange comment (at least unusual for him).
“ I was thinking if by chance say two people are present in a marriage whose physical features are alike then what will happen?”
His wife and I looked at each other. But he continued with fluency-“ No but you see both of you are pretty much alike and when two of you were together my machine obviously chose the right person! Ha…its such a sensitive dynamic machine…blah…blah”
Only we though, his wife and I, knew how much right the person’s choice was rightly done by the silly machine! But he was far from all that and went on with self-praise until coming to a halt at a rhetoric-“ When will the silly society realise the greatness of this grand invention?”
To which his wife simply could not but murmur-“ the longer that realisation takes, the better!”