“We only want ‘Virgin’ Bride for matrimony.”

A casual stroll in the park that evening led me to a group of gossiping aunties who were engrossed in some discussion. I barged in to find what’s amusing them this week only to hear “You don’t know? Mr. Sharma’s daughter is not a virgin it seems, and her marriage broke due to this reason! These days youngsters are too fast….it wasn't the same in our times…..” went on the banter.

I was shell-shocked to find that a guy rejected the beautiful and educated girl just on the basis of her hymen-status! It’s a sickening feeling that the society associates virginity to purity and chastity and see no scope of happy married life for that girl. What they fail to recognize is, the groom may not be a virgin either, but the bride should be “virgin, fair, tall and slim, preferably educated!”

Our society is very ironical at times. We tend to think the girl’s attire is responsible for her to be attacked by anti-social elements. We still have love jihads, honor killings, dowry practice; yet we boast of Indian culture and how it’s being adulterated with modernism!

There’s always a chance that the girl could have been in love and was hoping to get married, but when things didn’t turn out as planned, she walked out of the relationship. The girl invests emotionally and physically but when the matrimony doesn't favor her status of being a non-virgin, although it is perfectly alright for the guy who was involved before to get married with no questions asked about his virginity, imagine the heights of chutzpah the society exhibits!

Some uncles and aunties claim that the marriage can’t prosper if ‘she’ is not virgin before wedding. Experts say marriage can only progress when both the parties involved can confide in each other. When the groom is ready to trust and love his prospective wife, where does the question arise for the in-laws or the aunties of the society to even tag the girl as ‘impure’ or even make her undergo a virginity test! It becomes a different scenario when the male ego looks at the girl as a sex machine where the performances of different males are evaluated and hence won’t prefer him to be graded, eventually asking for a virgin bride! Its appalling how the survey conducted by Hindustan Times says 63% of men in India prefer virgins for marriage. For such individuals, marriage could never be a healthy relationship and the girl will always be in the shadow of the dominant male.

Image Courtesy: http://d.ibtimes.co.uk/

Well, its not just in our society. Lady Diana of England was asked to undergo virginity test before her marriage into the royalty. With so much hype around virginity test, experts say that one could never tell if an individual is virgin or not. And recent developments in plastic surgery has brought a new procedure called Hymenoplasty which re-constructs the hymen, which people fancily call as “re-virgination” which is just as ridiculous as preferring a virgin-bride in the first place.

          

The problem arises with the narrow mindset one cultivates and the herd-mentality people develop.  Its not just the grooms that ask for virgin brides, but there are demands for virgin-grooms too! The whole hullabaloo revolving around who is virgin and who is not is pointless. Unless one can start to trust their partner and not consider sex as something vile and accept it’s a natural process, there won’t be any end to the arguments regarding virgin-bride.

Its high time every girl owns up what her body is; hymen or no-hymen, she can have a fulfilling marriage if she wants to! 

The not-so-perfect Love Story

Staring at the screen of my friend's laptop; i reminisce the old times with my laptop when it was in working condition with its soft keys that never made noise while typing incessantly like i am now, with an additional nagging from my friend to stop the goddamn typing. I will, once i tell my story. Here it goes......

It was Summer of 2012. Elated with the completion of my first year of Engineering, i came home to a brand new laptop my brother bought for me, which will be my love of life for the next two and a half years.

The first few months were great between us. Our chemistry was mesmerizing, the machine worked flawlessly and i loved every aspect of it and its safe to assume that my laptop loved me back too, selflessly! And then within few months, as every relationship encounters problems, we had one too. The genuineness of Windows 7 software became a glitch to the almost perfect system. I started disliking it; for the initial infatuation was lost and i tried switching to other Operating System. Ubuntu seemed a better option. Easy to download and great software and never gets virus! I indulged in the idea for a while. Well, i did more than just indulging when my poor Windows 7 suffered.

After a lot of attempts and giving up on Ubuntu; for different reasons; a solution came up. A software that can overwrite "windows is not genuine". Once again, everything went back to normal and we resumed our relationship. Sometimes, things just fall back into place even when everything seems hopeless. Soon as time passed, another component got added, the 'external keyboard' to make things easier; for typing of course. But you know, who would like the idea of carrying the keyboard everywhere you go with your laptop?! It was tiresome, yet something i made peace with. We were happy that way!

An year passed and still no problem and i boasted of my laptop. And then the storm hit us. It suddenly stopped working and upon consulting a technician; i was told i should format or rather have an upgraded version instead of Windows 7! I was always told to have a backup for times like these and i gave a deaf ear for that. Its almost like losing a whole 10000 word essay with a single 'close' button accidentally clicked only because you forgot saving it earlier! Without any backup, without the working laptop; it just feels like some deficiency in life. But it goes without saying that we did good. The machine worked without any major flaws for a long period. Afterall, its Lenovo! That my dear reader, is my love story with a Lenovo B570 i3 Core Processor with 8GB RAM, 650GB HDD!

So what went wrong? Was it the backup or was my attempts at installing Ubuntu previously weren't good enough? I am still figuring out while the other part of brain is busy finding out who's got a Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit cracked version to format my C-drive.

Please notify me if you have it. Its utmost needed.

Guess its time to 'stop typing'. Adios.

Image Courtesy: deviantart.net