All three of ‘Student of the year’ are now married – Varun, Alia and Siddharth. A while before Anushka-Virat, Katrina-Viky, Deepika-Ranveer had tied the knot too. Good for them. Hope they stay that way.
A friend’s son who is of the marriageable age is however worried because some of his married friends are already getting divorced. Not surprisingly he’s all the more disinclined to get married.
It’s not easy on the guests either. They may have to gift wedding gifts multiple times to the same friend. Not surprisingly there’s a suggestion doing the rounds that couples should receive half the gift upfront and the other half after 7 years of marriage.
Jokes aside, marriage is an enigma, one could say. There will never be enough evidence to conclude if marriage is a good institution or not, and in that sense one can never be sure if it’s needed either. Because there are too many examples of joy and suffering to support either side of the debate.
On the one hand you have this fabled song, “Mujhe Meri biwi se bachao”, and Woody Allen adds with his cynical, “Marriage is the death of hope.”
And on the other hand there are many happy couples, especially closer home, like our parents who evidently benefited from marriage and hummed ‘Aap ki nazron ne samjha, Pyar ke Qaabil mujhe’.
In the earlier days they would debate between the success of arranged and love marriages. But today it is more like choosing between ‘arranged-love’ marriage or an ‘arranged-cyber’ marriage.
Why? Because an online research suggests that 65% of young Indians prefer arranged marriages, because they aren’t too sure of how to get themselves a partner, or they feel their parents understand the world better, or because they are wise enough to understand that marriages in India don’t just involve the two individuals alone but also both families.
So if one is so unsure and if marriage is so fraught with risks, one may ask why marry at all?
In ‘Shall we dance? Susan Sarandon educates Richard Gere about marriage – “We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does anyone life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness’.”
Clearly she has a point. Yet the cookie must crumble the way it must. Some marriages will work, some won’t, and some were never meant to be.
While some marriage will keep giving as the kids and grand kids come along.
pic courtesy: Pexels
