Studio Lights, Kundlis, and Long Shadows
The television studio was dressed like most respectable marriages—golden borders, soft lighting, and an unspoken agreement to avoid uncomfortable truths.
Across from Akshara, seated with the posture of a man who had come to observe and accidentally stayed to think, sat SriJi—today manifesting as a senior marriage broker and horoscope-matching pundit. His forehead bore sandalwood paste, his voice bore authority, and his smile suggested he knew exactly where everyone’s life had gone wrong.
The anchor had just announced, “On the occasion of World Marriage Day, we discuss what makes a marriage successful.”
SriJi nodded gravely.
“Success,” he said, adjusting his shawl, “is misunderstood. Traditionally, the man brought ambition. The wife brought steadiness. A perfectly workable division—until steadiness quietly became the shadow.”
Akshara leaned forward.
“Not a very happy thought,” he said.
“No,” SriJi agreed. “But also not an insult. It is an environment. In that environment, the wife absorbed the heat. The silences. The failures. The small humiliations brought home from work and placed carefully on the dining table.”
He ticked them off gently, like items in a kundli.
“She managed the house. The calendar. The emotional weather. In many homes, even the finances. The husband stood in the light and called it success. She stood in the shadow and called it marriage.”
The anchor shifted uncomfortably. This was not in the briefing notes.
SriJi continued, unbothered.
“That is why World Marriage Day should celebrate marriages—not weddings. Weddings are noise. Marriages are endurance. Not collapsing is success.”
Akshara smiled thinly. “That should be on a banner.”
SriJi raised a finger. “Let me tell you a story. Stories explain what ceremonies conceal.”
The studio lights dimmed slightly, as if on cue.
“Sanjana,” SriJi said, “wife of Aditya, the Sun God, could not bear his fury. So she summoned her shadow—Chhaya—to replace her, and disappeared. Even gods required proxies.”
Akshara nodded. “Outsourcing endurance.”
“Exactly,” said SriJi. “But the shadow took on a life of her own. That is the part we forget.”
He leaned back.
“Be it a father, a towering tree, or a husband with unchecked ambition—the shadow swallows everything placed beneath it. Physical shadow. Psychological shadow.”
He looked straight at the camera.
“Ask a son how it feels to emerge from his father’s shadow—he hesitates, apologises, seeks permission. Our ideal son, after all, is Rama. Obedience sanctified.”
Akshara interjected, “And ask a husband what success looks like on an ordinary day—”
SriJi smiled. “He says, nothing went wrong. That is the shadow speaking.”
The anchor attempted a laugh. It died quietly.
“The real crisis,” SriJi continued, “arises when the wife becomes the sun. Then we panic. We call it imbalance. We say the shadow is taking charge—as if shadows are not acceptable to us. Yet everything we say and do is the length and density of our shadow.”
He tapped the table softly.
“Influence is not achievement. Influence is what others carry for us.”
Akshara nodded slowly.
“Strip the social hierarchy and mythology away,” SriJi said, “and a human being reduces to breath and shadow—especially inside marriage.”
He folded his hands.
“If the Ba of Egyptian mythology is the record of lived experience—our true name, where light and dark reside—then the Sheut is what spills outward. The shadow cast by compromises. By roles accepted without discussion. Sometimes it shelters. Sometimes it erases.”
The studio was silent now.
“A human being,” SriJi concluded, “is finally breath and shadow.
A marriage is an agreement about who carries which.”
He paused, then softened.
“Or perhaps more honestly—who carries what, and when.”
Akshara exhaled. “Marriage, then, is like trying on a coat you cannot return.”
SriJi smiled. “Exactly. You live with how it casts its shadow.”
The anchor cleared her throat. “Any final message for World Marriage Day?”
SriJi looked into the camera.
“Be it Sheut or Chhaya, we have not given shadows their due. Beware the man who casts no shadow—such a man does not exist.”
The camera light went off.
The marriages, everywhere, continued—successfully—not collapsing.
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