Watch: The Crucial Conversation That Made This Young Couple Cancel Their Wedding

By Sanskriti Pandey:

Indian weddings are a beautiful affair. So is marriage, for many. But what’s not beautiful is that the typical Indian heterosexual marriage presumes that a docile woman will mold herself to suit her husband’s life. The changed surname, the steamy dinner waiting faithfully at the table, the abandoned job, and the abroad project ‘tag-along’ wife – these are not questionable routines, but what’s accepted as “Normal”.

In this no-frills short film, a conversation between a couple unravels the stereotypical ideas about life after marriage. The things he says hit home. Like his ‘tolerance’ of her flexible timings, his perturbation upon learning about her sexual past, and all of his lofty expectations. This exasperation about wanting a no-questions-asked wife is a subtle manifestation of gender inequality. What if, before deciding to live co-dependently, two people had just one uninhibited talk? How many people out there let the erasure of one’s wants be normalised and don’t even realise it? Let the familiarity of this beautifully wrapped conversation unveil the obscure nature of marriage inequality for you! Watch “Happily Ever After”.

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