A Rotten Society in an ugly Rat Race
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat" (Lilly Tomlin)
The systematic rise in infertility has prompted a sense of fear in every married couple if they fail to conceive in the first few months of their marriage, they feel like they don't have the capacity of coming to be parents and the society in which we are living is very cruel and they keep gossiping about the newly married couple who fail to show signs of coming to be parents, the couple themselves feel depressed when someone questions them about kids or even if someone from their families, relatives or friends slightly touch the topic of the failure of producing babies, it always tore them apart because it's something that makes them feel powerless, it takes away their confidence and the most affected are the husbands because for the society they are the culprits, they are being called impotent behind there backs, and they ought to get punished unnecessarily by the uneducated, unaware society.
Due to the disputed nature of Kashmir, anxiety disorders are on the rise since 90's when the infamous armed struggle had started against the Indian rule in Kashmir, and the late marriages are just shit smear on the porcelain throne, the sex ratio has changed tremendously since the rise of armed insurgency in Kashmir, and the lack of resources for employment had made marriage a far off thing here, the college out graduates find it hard for themselves to settle for a stable job, there aren’t any industries or MNCs here in Kashmir and people prefer a government job and it’s like catching a metro which is travelling at a speed of 600km/hr, so the unemployment is also a prime factor here for late marriages and all these factors add up to infertility here. The disputed nature of Kashmir as I already mentioned has caused, trauma, anxiety, stress-related disorders here and the majority of the population are experiencing these psychiatric disorders but it also needs to be pointed out here, majority of the population don't even know that they are suffering from these kinds of mental disorders and it's because due to lack of education and awareness among the people, and it's kind of a taboo for them to pay a visit to a psychiatrist.
Now if we go through the statistics of the fertility rate, in 2018, the fertility rate for Jammu & Kashmir was 1.6 live births per woman. The fertility rate of Jammu & Kashmir fell gradually from 2.3 live births per woman in 2007 to 1.6 live births per woman in 2018. Now after all the events that have been taking place since the '90s are just making the life of a middle-class family from bad to worse, Kashmiri society is one the worst society that I have ever come in contact with, even though there is a financial crunch and there are too many unmarried girls, their parents can't afford a lavish wedding, they just can't fill the rotten bellies with meat, gold and other expensive items, the so-called riches of Kashmir do when they get their daughters married. Although there is a rat race going on in the middle class, even though they can't afford such things but to keep their name and show off that they aren't poor, they prefer to put themselves under debt and they follow the path of riches, spent a hell lot of money on things that aren't required at all. Now, this rat race is turning not less than a nightmare for those parents who can't afford such things. After all, they are stricken by poverty and they are abandoned by their loved ones, people will take a back step from helping such types of people in Kashmir and that's why many poor girls are still unmarried and this type of society that in itself creates a void between a community is a curse on humanity and these late marriages are forcing both men and women to lead into committing adultery and it degrades the whole society, not the majority of them commit such things but still it does involve a fragment of the population into these evil things.
Things like late marriages, depression, anxiety, stress-related disorders give rise to many problems in society, like infertility, drug abuse, adultery, crime and other bad things and currently, these things are taking place on the ground level, I'm just not writing fiction, rather it's the reality of our degraded society, a society with no morals and ethics now, corruption had seeped into our roots and we've no values for humanity. We are sleeping and no one is going to wake us up, and my words mean nothing to you because you don't care about anything or anyone. You enjoy your life in your cosy rooms, and why would you care about those girls who lost their parents, brothers, due to the conflict that devoured half of the population, many got disappeared we don't even know whether they are alive or they end up in some deep forests in the secret pathways that connected this Kashmir to that Kashmir.
