Guest ColumnistRelationship
Matrimony of The Classy: Thought on Maryam Sanda, By Abdulwarees Solanke
At the marriages of the glamorous, wine flows endlessly.
Uncountable bottles of champagne are popped.
Aso Ebi comes in different shades, shapes and colours.
Dishes range from the exotic to the continental and traditional.
The bridal train is stupefying and long. The photo session is tiring.
Music bands are in competition. There is not just ‘naira rain’, there is ‘dollar deluge’, and there is ‘pounds and euro avalanche’.
The honeymoon is metaphorically in the moon.
The bride must have imported her fabulous gown from perhaps, the best fashion house in Paris or London.
The groom’s suit is customised. The latest limousines or exotic cars of the royalty and the state are on parade.
Saving for the wedding is inestimable.
Dubbed fairy tale, it is so expensive that matches are rare.
But too soon after the world literally stops for such once a century celebration of love; we are regaled with tales of marital indiscretions.
The marriage becomes a Facebook affair.
Soft sells make huge sales. Gossip columnists have field days.
Romance publishers get good stuff for their print shops.
Like a pack of cards, the marriage crashes. And we are faced with a stark reality that the matrimonies of the glamorous are the most insecure, most threatened.
I was a secondary school student in the 1980s when the marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana was beamed from London to the rest of the world.
I savoured every moment of the wedding on the tube.
I was an assistant editor on the foreign desk of the defunct National Concord when Lady Di crashed with her lover boy Fayed in a tunnel in Paris while trying to avoid paparazzi trail of her stormy love life.
Her end is the classic tragedy of the matrimonies of the glamorous.
In the music and movie industry, it is a rarity for the glamorous to keep a home, to sustain a marriage.
In the sporting world, the family life of many stars is something else.
The so-called yuppies and yummies are nothing more than show boys and party girls without stablemates.
Many upwardly mobile career men and women are hardly successful at keeping partners.
For each party or outing, there is a different partner.
In my Reflections at Fajr, I realise it is almost a futility for the glamorous to settle down to happy matrimony.
A relationship that is profanely celebrated on the newspaper glamour pages is usually a fake show, not built on deep love.
The failure of marriages of the glamorous or the turmoil that characterizes their union is not surprising.
First, matters of the heart that is ordinarily private are not so in their case.
Each of their glances, their body languages and everything concerning their lives is a public affair.
Often their odious past and relationships are headline items.
But they also undo themselves in many instances to break their own homes consciously or unknowingly.
They still want to live in their past.
The glamorous are almost always engaged for one public show or the other.
As much as they want to keep a home, they never really have the time.
So they abandon their kitchens for their maids.
They may also abandon their beds for the comfort of First Class cabin on air as they are regular travellers.
Living Five Star lives in exotic hotels around the world as showstoppers, they forget that such a life is not natural.
It does not last.
The relationship of the glamorous is not helped by the society or the environment, not helped by friends and well-wishers.
There are those whose love lives are woeful that would not want a success in that of the fellow glamorous.
They have tale bearers as friends.
The bride’s maid may be a silent competitor.
Some of the groom’s men may have eyed her too or might have kept intimacy with her before.
So, large room for suspicion is usually available in the affairs of the glamorous.
But many of the glamorous too are not natural homemakers.
As they are bred on Mr Biggs, and the Tantalizers, they are fast food babes and guys.
They are good only on the Red Carpet.
They may be experts on the dance floor.
They may have very good dress sense.
They are excellent on fashion magazine covers or as models.
But few of them have the patience to keep the family together.
So when differences arise over home finance or a secret affairs comes open, they can pull the roof down over their heads.
They can smash their screens into China plates.
They can even break bottles on each other’s head or pull dagger or the pistol trigger.
And so many a matrimony of the classy often ends in tragedy.
Olohun ya wa ya biliisi.
- Abdulwarees, a Fellow, Chartered Institute of Public Diplomacy & Management is Ag. Deputy Director Strategic Planning & Corporate Development Department, Voice of Nigeria, Lagos. korewarith@yahoo.com, 0809085723
