The marriage mania

Few years back we would know that the wedding season has started when lots of wedding invitations would pour in our houses. Now-a-days we just have to open Facebook. FB walls are flooded with personalised wedding invites, pre-wedding photo shoots and wedding pictures first from friends and relatives of people getting married and then the professional ones from the married ones.

My outlooks towards these things have changed over couple of years. First I was in the batch of peeps who would say, “Oh my god, why is everyone on earth getting married!!!” and sentences similar to this. Now, that am in the other batch of married peeps, I say “Okay those are lovely pictures!!” or sometimes reluctantly realize “Ohh even my wedding pictures would be on walls on my friends last year…was it a pleasing sight for everyone!!” (I have personally put limited number of pictures!!). However, giving this a deeper thought I have arrived at some firm point of views.

Likes and comments can’t quantify appreciation

Marriage is of course not just about the number of likes and comments on your FB wall. Getting married is still the same old feeling as it was when all of us were not all the tech savvy. It’s just that now there is a so-called measure to appreciation i.e. no. of like or comments. In my opinion, this is not a pre-requisite to feel good or admired. My grandmother’s appreciation saying “ Kiti goad distiye majhi naath, drushta kadha hichi” (she is looking so pretty, may god protect her from all evils) means a lot more to me. Yes, of course the FB comments and likes makes me feel special and loved, but the main point is, one has to realise that it’s not a pre-requisite or the only thing. (B.t.w. –Let the likes and comments on my posts continue!!).

Fewer the merrier

So we all love to see marriage invites and snaps of our friends and relatives. Sometimes, we recollect being a part of the celebrations else are pleasantly surprised to see an unexpected friend getting married. But one should not overdo it. We are definitely not interested in seeing each and every ritual, all the awkward poses the photographer asks to get, on our FB walls. So one should ideally give it a little thought and time before loading all the pictures in the memory card. On the other side, friends should also realise to appreciate what’s good and ignore the rest of it. Nothing else can be done anyway.

Don’t judge a book by its cover

What many silently or at times even in groups engage is passing their own judgement on these pictures. “Ohh the girl is very pretty but the guy is just strictly ok” or “My god, the guy is so tall compared to her” or worse “Ohh what did this girl see in this guy???” sentences like this don’t go public on these forums but are often discussed off the record. It doesn’t stop there; people go further and judge their entire life only guessing things from some pictures posted on FB. That’s definitely not a healthy thing to do; neither was FB or any other social networking sites started for this purpose. I believe we should refrain from passing any judgemental comments about anyone’s personal life and discourage others from doing so. What a person really feels at that time, or what all efforts he/she has put in to live that moment are no where captured in the picture.

It is a life event after all

As we all know, it is stated as a life event, which carries an underlying meaning, ‘this is very important to me’. While we get overwhelmed by the number of wedding pictures and notifications, we shouldn’t forget that it was an important day for each and every one of them.  They want to share this happiness with the whole world (i.e. the FB world) which is not something to be irritated with. We must feel happy for them, as they are our friends (at least on FB). If it bothers you, irritates you, remove them from your list. Now that I am married (i.e. passed this phase of updating a life event), I understand what excitement and happiness goes behind uploading these pictures. The motive is to share these moments of happiness with family and friends in different corners of the world. No one intends to cause any discomfort anyone.

Ignorance continues to be bliss

The phrase –‘Ignorance is bliss’ means not knowing something makes you happier. I guess this was meant for the world without so many means of communication. Now-a-days, the social networking platforms are well established and have become a part of our lives. We get to know anything and everything about anyone, even if we don’t wish to know any of it. Hence we have to stretch a bit further and train ourselves to ignore the inputs we don’t need in our brains. Same applies to this whole marriage mania both online and offline. We can’t stop people from getting married or announcing it on a grand scale on these networking sites. If we don’t want to take notice of this, maybe we should just ignore by scrolling it up.

P.S.: Hopefully you guys haven’t scrolled up this whole note and read at least some parts of it!!!

- Dipti Abhyankar