Women have a choice about marriage.

By Kamala Sarup

That's an actual story about my friend. I'm trying to show that women have options. 

Why does the brain get emotional when I walk? The word failure is such a sinkhole of life from which I constantly try to escape a never-ending journey.

I started the journey, maybe, to protect my days of sorrow.

Where sometimes I fell apart and now I'm crying all by myself. A human being has a short life, and I'm not the exception.

Why couldn't I confine myself to words?

Perhaps continuing to be shattered constantly is to escape from life. 

And not being able to shape circumstances, depending on the needs of time, is not keeping life in balance. I know that the ideal I pictured for my life will pull me down every day with my footsteps. And again, when I see my own life, I feel as sentimental as I do now.

I have a friend who is ill. It is incapable of dealing with a situation of enormous difficulties arising from limited financial revenues.

I know that her father, like in recent years, will not send a letter, will not offer communication - she does not know, is he dead or alive. My friend became chronically ill, still crying over the severe treatment of her father.

I'm trying to cheer up my friend and cry. These tears never end. There is no choice but to be emotional and to cry all the time. Her father left her and joined the foreign army when she was just six. She faintly tries to remember him, but a gloomy memory of a sheltered girl and her father is worthless.

Her Mother tells me of her first encounter with her husband at the market: My daughter, I was poor. He used to gather firewood and go to the city to sell. Until then, my husband was out of the army. He was quite handsome. I feel like we fell in love. I left the village and my dear friends, the forest, to come to Katmandu. He returned to his army, but returned to me once a year at the feast. He brought many things to me. I was happy, but I subsequently learned that he had married another woman. The mother told me. 

Her mother had lost control and wept bitterly. I know full well that, later on, his father did not send them any money and that he did not visit them at any festival at the time. Her mother began to make tea and they made a living. The tea stand was their necessity in the process of life and they spent years on it.

"Girl, you need a wedding." A handsome young man came in from the army. "When her mother told her that at our dinner party I was speechless, and later I asked, "What army are you talking about?"

"The same one who comes to drink tea everyday," laughs her mother.

My friend replied with an uncertain tone: Mother, when I leave after my wedding, you will be all alone. I don't mean to leave you alone, maybe I can't.

Her mother became serious and said, "Maybe after your marriage, I'll find happiness too. I heard about him making money in the army. He is a very appropriate and handsome husband to you!

I put a grin on her face. I want to laugh at words as an army, victorious, and decent. I naturally compare the man who wants to marry my friend with his father who is away at war. At any rate, the two faces merge into one and I have the impression that it is mocking. To be honest, their faces are more or less the same. In spite of that, the word 'marriage' makes my friend shy and she becomes sentimental and flees from the roof.

Flowers, trees and small plants dance to the music of the wind. Everybody will love me and say, "What a beautiful flower, how lovely! How charming! Perhaps people will put me in their hair and others will make poems when they see me.

On the roof of my home, one can see the military room. From his bedroom, where a dark lamp is burning, a continuous violin sound is also heard.

I learned that the man also sang, and I don't know why my mind makes me listen to his songs. And in truth, the man sang songs which sounded very gently. When I listened to his songs, I wanted to submit to music all night, sitting here. Many pages of my life are empty and I felt like coloring the blank pages of my life while I listened to the air of his songs.

Her mother told early in the morning, "Listen! This young man arrives today, your friend must tell him the decision. Your eyes are a little red, you may have been in bed early last night.

I try to escape it, but in my ears the melodies of the same songs resound and somewhere, the face of the man appeared in front of me.

Three guys were there, including him. My friend just showed up. The gentleman is smiling slowly and my friend is not comfortable with this. What was her weakness and sentimentality?

I try to remember my ideal, which includes a life I wanted to live, and the unexpected fight to get there.

Alas! Once she's married, she'll be bound. It means that she has to live like a slave as she has to spend her whole life in love.

Where will her ideals go?

Her wishes will propagate everywhere and she will be lost, unable to control herself. Without any reason, in a way, all of her hopes and all of her imaginations that were crammed into her a while ago, are broken into pieces. She feels like she's running from that guy and completely rejecting him. She glances deep into her mother and finds her smiling. He says something about getting married. She feels pressured inside and starts to breathe quickly. I also sense some kind of freedom. Her mom came in with a sad face, "What happened to you all of a sudden, sweetheart?"

I started to weep and say, Mother, she doesn't want to get married. You don't have to push her. She wants to live freely. She doesn't want to go through life again. She does not want a life of no success."

A mother tries to calm me: She's a woman! She doesn't get to spend her life with her mother. No, she needs nothing to worry about. He decided not to get a cash present. Plus, lately, it's really hard to find a good man.

Once again, a cold breeze enters the window. There's a storm blowing and there's a lightning bolt with me and the heart is screaming with a terrible situation. What am I supposed to do for my friend?

I don't obey her, but just stay in and slowly show her mother to her husband's picture on the wall. The mother keeps an eye on me.

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Kamala Sarup is a journalist and editorial associate of http://www.mediaforfreedom.com/.