I respectfully decline the invitation to join your beheading... I mean, wedding

When you are of a certain age, certain things start happening around you. You are a male who has crossed the boundaries of 25, you see females from your school (whom once you used to hit) have uploaded a cute picture of them holding a baby on Facebook. You say nothing when THAT girl for whom you literally skipped your degree education for changes her relationship status to ‘Married’, you control your emotions when the girl who was once happy go lucky is seen on Facebook with a fake smile in the arms of an equally fake man. But all these emotions run lose, when it happens, the dreaded moment of it all… an invitation to the wedding of your fellow male friend.

You know its over, the end of the world is near because at that moment, the wedding invitation brings with it many many questions, some of which are better not answered.

An invitation to a wedding invokes more trouble than a summons to a court. There are two forms of an invitation, one that comes at your parents house and other that you can take your girlfriend with. While the former puts you in the merciless hands of the mother, who questions your growth, the later puts you in the merciless hands of your future wife, who questions your.. well... growth.

This invitation is better if it comes when you are not around, or you will find yourself in a very awkward room, filled with very awkward people talking about very awkward stuff. The real awkwardness comes once they leave the room (or whichever planet they are from).

“So, XYZ is getting married, did you see?” your mom.

“Is it, good,” as if I care.

“His parents are so lucky, he has given so much happiness to his parents. The girl is from their planet, caste, species blah blah blah (enter a obsene amount of description for the girl). The couple looks so perfect, see…” your mom.

“Okie…” still as if I care.

“See, he is so settled in life and has everything now. When will you get settled….” and so it begins the lecture on how the xyz person is good and how bad you are. So good that he is ready to tie a blindfold and stick with any girl his parents choose.

Holy Cow!!! Didn’t see that coming, didja?

Ideally, the boy is ideal. One fine day I come home only to find my mom saying, “Empty your comics cupboard,” she says.

Now this comics cupboard has a history in making ok, I am collecting graphic novels since I was in 9th standard. I saved pocket money, did odd jobs (distributing newspaper, working as a cyber cafe attendent and so on) just to collect these graphic novels. There was a time when this collection of graphic novels increased beyond any normal human storage proportion. My dad was of the belief that the comics are worthless waste of paper and refused to have them stored in the house. After a lot of argument, threats and promises, I was given an old steel wooden cupboard to keep my comics. Oh how magnificient I filled it, 8 big rucksack  full of books neatly stacked, classified and categorized.

But all of the sudden, “Empty the comics cupboard.” Even before I was coming to terms with the command thrown, she went ahead and pulled those 8 rucksacks out. Now this cupboard also had some secrets, which I won’t share on a public forum. Lets just say in my teens I was collecting something more than comics.

“This ABC is getting married and we are giving him the cupboard in his new house…” she replied proudly. So proud are the parents in emptying the cupboard of their own son to make sure it looks pretty in the house of someone elses son, without even consulting the one person in the whole world who is using it. There is a urban legend of the only man who was so really free, who turned down an invitation to a wedding without giving an excuse. I am yet to meet this man. None of us are.

There is a serious question in marriage, do I give condolenses or congradulations? I never understand. If you look at the bride and groom, they don’t even look happy. They just sit there as a decorated doll smiling as widely and fakely as possible. The bride is happy, she is more pretty than the prettiest girl in the room, the groom is happy with the prospect of honeymoon tonight, but not as a pair, as individual. Even if there was some other bride sitting there, the groom would be similar happy only.

The wedding invitations invade everywhere, you find them on the dinner table. They irritate you more while having dinner, more than the toilet cleaning commercials who are timed perfectly when I eat the morsel. They are there on the shoe rack, they are there when I need a piece of paper to note down an important number. One fine day they reached the email inbox, out of the blue.

I was busy doing some important work of editing the Wikipedia article when it happened, an email invitation.

Dear All,

It is with immense pleasure I invite you to the gracious ceremony of my marriage. The wedding is happening in a land far far away and I don’t expect you to come anyways. This is a humble notice to the jerks that I am no longer single, so stop hitting on me. I anyways am irritated by you all for 5 days a week and hence I did not bother printing you a wedding card as well. Come with your family so that I can rub it in their face how pretty I am and how you were hitting on me.

Do come. Attached is the scanned copy of my wedding card which I shamelessly used the office scanner to scan it.

Yours,

PQR

Oh the horror, and then one fine day on Facebook. You login to Facebook to have a quick glance of who is still single when it pops up,

You have 1 event invitation from MNO

Subject: My wedding in Hell

Seriously, I was so bored doing this wedding stuff that I decided to invite you on Facebook. Yeah, do come along to see my wife, whom I have myself seen only twice and hope my eyes are right. No gifts please, we don’t have patience and place to keep those cooker, ganesh idols, table fans and photo frames. Bye for now, have to get back to those crops who are whitering.

RSVP: Yes. No. Go to hell

Wedding invitations who would have thought? Oh yes and I got 19 wedding invitations on 1st of Jan, imagine how much excitement would be in 2012. Yeah right.

P.s. No I am not getting married and you are not invited.
P.p.s. Don't mind me if you are getting marriage, these are my views, I am not telling you to listen to them.