Marriage

Envy and Jealousy are most contagious than any other diseases. How much stamina or determination you possess, how much immunised you prove yourself and how many inoculation processes you go on...you cannot escape it.

Day by day your goodwill gets wilted till it reaches the extinct zone.

When a family rears up a boy and a girl it infuses all the characteristics, idealisms, and traits the family carries. When the boy or girl gets married they enter another family that differs from their own. And if the difference proves unmanageable clash starts from then on.

Krishnan, a boy from a middle-class teacher family married a rich Brahmin girl who used to be his classmate at university. Their degrees match but not their backgrounds and their level of thought.

Krishnan's father Mr Mathur was a humble schoolmaster in a village. Krishna's mother was a mere village woman, a housewife. Mr and Mrs Mathur brought up Krishnan with their ideologies of plain living and high thinking. His brother was handicapped in his left leg from his birth and his sister was unmarried and struggling in her career. But they were happy despite their inherent anxieties as their bonding was firm and their love for each other was pure.

But when Richa came into Krishnan's life as his wife their life took a catastrophic turn. Richa abhorred the humble hit of Krishnan and their ordinary lifestyle and values. She felt Krishnan's siblings were a burden as Khrisnan helps them financially. She was a girl from a materialistic background who only learns to count money. Being a high-ranked officer in a govt department she earned money and her only concern was to horde money and got richer. She started buying gold jewellery and then started pressuring Krishnan for a four-wheeler and then for a big house. She demanded money even from her pension holder father-in-law who was naive and too gullible. Krishnan's felt suffocated under the threat and ragging of Richa, mentally and physically. Even in Richa's family, her parents started ill behaving like Krishnan's family. They only learnt to worship gold over human virtues and human progress was measured through their yardstick of accumulated wealth. A man's social status was marked by his or her bank balance. They used education and knowledge for holding a great post in the employment bureau.

Within a week the new bride unveiled her disguise and terminated all the relationship with her in-law's family and forces her husband to do so. She called an astrologer and he told Krishnan that he would be the owner of his own house and be a rich man with a huge car. Richa started manipulating Krishnan in every way. She wanted to detach him from his family. And her mother's sincere and non-stop advice helped her a lot in her way. She taunted the lifestyle, idealisms, and physical deformity associated with Krishnan's family and started making a fuss over trivial things. Now and then she found faults and misinterpret their ways of behaviour. Even she started blackmailing Krishnan with ugly hints and threats of danger.

Krishnan who was a modest and introverted boy could not stand boldly and sold his spine to her for peace.

 For peace of mind, he gave up. She forced her husband not to visit his own family except once a month for one hour. Even in that time, Krishnan's parents used to send her sweets and money to keep a good bonding though they realised everything. Krishna's in-laws started living with them and even when Krishnan's parents got ill he could not come.

At first, Krishnan tried to balance and tried to make Richa understand. But Richa started behaving like a mad woman, yelling, shouting, cursing threatening. Days after days Richa went on poisoning Krishnan's mind till he felt irked and number. He abandoned his habit to visit his family and even when he used to come he stayed behaving in an abusive voice just like his wife.

It seemed the transmission of hatred was complete and the devil had won the game. His undermining of abusive language and attitudes towards his siblings became unabashedly prominent.

No longer the healthy, loving relationship of parents and sons, brother to brother sister to brother got collapsed. The old memories of eating together, laughing ad gossiping sharing little joys and happiness everything halted. As if a sudden rain cloud covered the whole area. No one smiled. Agonising silence and mute trepidation went on lurking in the mind.

Krishnan forgot his childhood, his growing up with his siblings. He only became over-conscious about their faults and how they prevented his smooth life. He could only feel the burdensome existence of his family members. Whatever he said or wanted to say got filtered in that sieve of hatred, and jealousy that had corrupted his original lenses.

The seeds of jealousy and hatred, the negative thoughts got imprinted day after day in his mind. Now he had completely plunged into it. He was blinded completely. Nothing could break that tough membrane of viciousness.

His family members got coiled when he visited them in his bossy mood. It appeared that he was from a foreign land, an alien. In his suppressed irritation, and grievances it became apparent all the seeds that Richa once struggled to sow had sprouted successfully.

Krishnan now looked firm and confident in his new ideologies. He looked at his impaired brother as a 'burden', his sister as 'ugly and worthless' and his father as 'impractical' mother as 'illiterate'. His mutation had been completed through marriage.