satire: You dare not touch me!

 

 

In a small Indian town, a newlywed bride, on her honeymoon waved a knife at her husband and declared unequivocally in no uncertain terms “Touch me, and I’ll chop you into 35 pieces!” Now that’s a kind of boldness the world hadn’t quite seen on honeymoon, ever before—at least not in the name of women’s empowerment. If this is the new definition of empowerment, we might need a dictionary upgrade.

 

Let’s be honest—what is marriage for, if not companionship in every sense? A platonic marriage sounds like a self-contradiction. Platonic love is fine before the wedding, but once the garlands are exchanged, such idealism starts sounding suspiciously like punishment. Now imagine the groom, decked up and hopeful, hearing his bride say, “Don’t you dare touch me!” That alone would be enough to turn his face fifty shades of pale. But that wasn’t the end of it. The poor man barely had time to blink when the bride pulled out a knife from under her pillow and, with the dramatic flair of a Bollywood villainy, hissed, “I’ll cut you into 35 pieces if you touch me!”

 

The groom had only ever heard the old romantic song, ‘Is dil ke tukde hazaar hue…’ (My heart was shattered into thousand pieces). But this was a new twist—thirty-five pieces, not of the heart, but of his entire self. That’s the kind of math that doesn’t add up to love. One can only imagine the man’s expression: one moment pale as chalk, the next flushed like a tomato.

 

Somehow, he survived that night—what they call the night of murder. The day passed, but as evening fell, so did his peace of mind. The same horror repeated the next three nights—each time, the bride’s voice, the knife, and thirty-five pieces. By the fourth morning, the groom’s nerves had given up. He couldn’t take anymore. He spilled the entire story to his family.  Naturally, they were stunned—especially at the oddly specific 35 pieces. Without wasting time, they rushed to the police station. Soon, the bride’s parents were summoned too.

 

When confronted, the bride calmly declared that she loves someone else, her heart belongs to her lover. In short, she belonged to someone else. She was, in her own words, “I’m a promise made to someone else” and one must never betray a trust. A poetic sentiment, no doubt, but perhaps a bit late in the day—say, four nights too late. That very night, she disappeared from the house, leaping over the courtyard wall and vanishing into the darkness.

 

I belong to someone else, don’t crave for me

You’ll never have me, so don’t pursue me

 

A tragic ballad if you like poetry; a scandal if you prefer news. 

But the real question is—why didn’t the bride tell her parents all this, before the marriage? Why did she let an innocent man and his family suffer this humiliation? It did no credit to her family either. Her parents, too, could have asked her clearly before tying the knot. What’s the use of arranging a wedding when one party has already booked her loyalty elsewhere?

 

In the end, everything turned out just as destined. Somewhere, a frightened groom still mutters under his breath, “So this is women’s empowerment?” while carefully checking under his pillow/mattress/bed for knife before going to bed.