‘How could she?’, ‘Deshdrohi’, ‘Crazy Woman’, ‘Aren’t there any good guys left in her community over here?’, ‘Don’t talk about her, I’m too pi#@$* off with her’… These were the colourful reactions I got upon reaching office the morning after our beloved tennis ace, Sania Mirza, announced to the world that she was going in for ‘holy matrimony’ with ex-Pakistan cricket captain, Shoaib Malik.
I wondered if a similar reaction came from people decades ago when information about actress Nina Gupta’s love-child with West Indies cricketer Viv Richards was made public. Anyways, that was yesterday and this is a different ball-game.
I mean marrying a PAKISTANI? I’ve heard that those guys have horns on their shoulders and eat their wives’ flesh for fun. Or at least that is what I can gather from the shell-shocked faces of the eminently educated people around me. If at all, one has to have an opinion, why can’t we form it on better/different ideologies?
We a
re a species obsessed with each others' personal lives and have a worthless opinion about everything under the sun. Talking about things as redundant as ‘community/caste’, ‘marriage’ or even nationalism in the 21st century, when the world is nothing but a cheap Chinese imitation of the US of A, simply goes out to show that we live in a duality of sorts, where our ‘morals’ and ‘actions’ are two different realms. Face it, we rant more than we deliver or practice.
Coming back to Sania, we really gotta give it to the girl for loving so many, with so much privacy that the media gets a whiff of it only when she wants it to. From childhood love Sohrab to numerous link-ups to now ‘true love’ with Shoaib Malik, she has qualified in my books for being an Asian competitor to Britney Spears. Their career-graphs over the past six years or so are also similar (American influences, heh heh).
Her groom, Shoaib Malik is no stranger to controversy either. The guy has seen it all, dressing room fights, accusations, allegations, public and media ire et al. He’s a Pakistani cricketer after all and these guys know a thing or two when it comes to making headlines. A broken marriage, claims of financially manipulating love for his personal gains and what not are parts of his character CV. With such a colourful past, Sania surely has found a soul mate of sorts in him.
Interestingly, our dear Shoaib is also said to have done a ‘telephonic nikaah’ with Ayesha Siddiqui, another Hyderabad girl. A marriage that he refused to admit to and the façade ended with a similar divorce being issued.
After his unceremonious ouster from the captaincy and in-out status from the national squad, he would have like to be loved, and our Sania is an expert there. He has no World Cup and she has no Grand Slam; their souls might entwine to create some peace for both.
As far as I go, two ordinary athletes who are at the fag end of their careers are getting married for whatever reasons, end of the story.
Now, whether the love-birds actually marry and have a happy-after in Dubai, earning accolades for their respective countries in the realm of sports (true patriots is what they’d like themselves to be remembered as, just like you and I), or they simply move on to greener pastures of love, one thing is certain, their relationship has truly sparked the flames of ‘Aman ki Aasha’ for many and given another reason to bicker for many more.
With so much accomplished by just a marriage, I’d say the people in question have got their money’s worth. Rest as they say, is for all to see and debate and ridicule and imitate and write and gossip and what not.
(The views expressed by the author are personal)