Arranged Marriage – a cooking pot and twisted tales

‘You have to look relaxed and smile Nkeonyelu. Abi, you don’t want them to give you the visa?’

‘I hear that they look at people’s picture to decide who they will allow to go abroad o.’

‘Aha! That’s a better pose.’

‘Oya, Patrick snap it like that,’ Nkeonyelu’s mother’s insisted.

‘Make sure she looks beautiful o!’

‘Can you believe it? You, my daughter, will be going to Germany.’ Her ceaseless excited chatter attracted the eyes of other customers.

Nkeonyelu was not as enthused as her mother. Patrick’s busy photo studio was the best that the little town had and not far from it, was another shop where her heart lay.

Secretly in her mind, she wished the visa officer would look at her picture and dislike it.

She silently prayed that they would deny her the visa to join her unknown husband.

It was marriage by proxy and the past few month’s following the ties, she has nursed an unhappy heart.

Her secret love for Ekendili only seemed to burgeon more with each passing day, but she knew that her family would never welcome the suit of the poor cobbler when a golden opportunity has been handed to them right on a platter of arranged marriage.

Inlinkz

In response to the FFAW photo prompt above. Thank you, Uday for the picture and Priceless Joy for this enchanting story platform.

Quick glossary:

Abi – Don’t you?

Oya – Quickly

There are really some days that I wish that time is not an intangible object, but something that could be adjusted to fit one’s purpose through the years.

There are days that my to do list is as tall as my 5 ft 11″ if not taller and there is insufficient time to get it all done in one day. There is so much to do and so little time.

Sometimes I sincerely wish that these years will go at a snail pace, so that I will have enough time to savour those I love through the years.

You wake up in the morning and before you turn around it’s evening and the day has just flown past, which is why the phrase of making hay while the Sun shines never fails to reverberate in my mind.

Even if you refused to make the hay, time will still zoom by and the bales of hay to be made still awaits you.

I can remember when I was a small girl which seems like yesterday, and people in their thirties seemed ancient to me.

I can never forget a would be suitor *arranged marriage* that came seeking for my hand when I was barely 18. He was a doctor in his 30’s residing in Italy and I can still recall my horror at the thought of marrying someone who was possibly my fathers age.

Now, here I am, older, wiser, yet still very young in my head at times.

Sometimes, I do nothing, but just ponder over the essence of time and life.

Would I wake up one day and find that I have been dreaming my life all along?

Ever since my sense of how fast time goes by became acute, I try to make each day count, live in each moment and get the best that I can out of it.

With the conscious reality that the best things in life are for free, the onus rests on me to endeavour to enjoy these best things as much as life makes available to me.

There is no time to spend over inane issues. We can’t stop time, but we can embrace what we have and be the pilot’s of our given moments.

The Daily Post Pace Oddity

If you could slow down an action that usually zooms by, or speed up an event that normally drags on, which would you choose, and why?