It seems like yesterday, I was sitting in my balcony and chatting with my grandfather, about marriage. It was a ritual with us, me and Dadu, we would deliberate on diverse topics and marriage would come up during such discussions.
He was married to my grandmother for 40 odd years. I would on various occasions ask him, what were his thoughts on marriage. He would fondly remember his parents and recount that he would always accept theirs to be the best. Curious, I asked, why so? He promptly answered that his parents never had an argument, never did he observe them to differ in thoughts, they had 10 surviving children and that was it. When asked about his marriage, he said he was very unhappy as he was a learned scholar and my grand mother had hardly completed basic education, and hence he could not have intellectual conversations with her! I asked my grand mother how she felt with regards to her marriage, she said she was unhappy too, as her husband did not understand the worldly needs and that has always made her detest him.
Then there were my parents married for 20 odd years at that time, I asked my dad, what he thought about marriage, he said he absolutely adored my mother, but felt he was overwhelmed by her ignorance on various issues and it would have been better if he had not married at all. My mother on the other hand married my father as he was the most handsome man around, but she was quick to realise that it was a mistake marrying him.
I was seeing a man who seemed like a dream come true, well I am married to him for the last 24 years, and trust me there have been reasons to believe it is a nightmare than a dream! I am sure the feeling is mutual.
What I am trying to entail is this, all marriages are different, every relation and its realisation is different, how can one say whether it is LIFE’s FULFILMENT or an IMPEDIMENT? To EACH HIS OWN, is what I believe in, I personally have come to believe, that it a miracle that two people make a commitment to each other, and live up to it!
The fact that marriage is but a social sanction, nothing emotional about it! When we meet someone and fall in love and feel that we cannot live without them, eventually decide to live together, under one roof, sharing the most private and intimate space, whether metamorphically or otherwise. We sacrifice more than what we bargained for, and it is then that love dies a pitiful death, what remains is a social compulsion, a burden of duty, obligations, that is when the shoe pinches, one must wear it anyway, that my friend, is sad.
Marriage needs a lot of work from both the partners, compromise, understanding, support, love, mutual respect. The fact that both are equal stake holders, no one can take a back seat, in todays day and age both must contribute financially. It is the need of the hour that men and women work parallelly at home and outside. The man is no longer the only bread earner, the women cannot take up the role of a homemaker, these are shared responsibilities. I am glad that I am born and living in a time where both the stakeholders in a marriage are contributing, collaborating, and understanding that when one has a family to run, both partners are indispensable.
Life is worth living when there is harmony, when one is in sync with their inner conscience. If one finds that harmony with their partner prioritise it, if not, one can find their own harmony, own peace, by themselves. Marriage cannot be an IMPEDIMENT in one’s own quest of happiness, is what I believe, as it is a contract, which can be broken if it does not work. In all practicality to blame an institution, just because it did not work out for some people, and to live miserably the rest of one’s life seems ridiculous and insane. Leading a fulfilling life is a long-term process and not one that can be achieved in a short amount of time. This is my take of the topic; I leave it to the readers to come to their own conclusions.
Bijoya.