I'm
18. And from my ((365*18)+5+354) days here I know a thing or two about
love and marriage. Life is not a formula. Love is not an arrangement.
Marriage is not a 'game'.
How do I know this? I know this because I'm the son of my parents. Had my Punjabi mother, daughter of an Indian Navy Admiral picked out a photograph from a dossier of research on 'compatibility, taste and education', would she have ever married a Telugu clerk's unemployed son? Would he have even made it to round-1 of "back-end work and filtering"?
I'm tired of listening to the 'love is a distraction, study first' argument. Love can be such an ever-burning hearth of inspiration that can spur you higher than you'd ever been.
There's this thing about love--it comes knocking at the unlikeliest of times and if you can plan it, then it isn't love. When my parents 'ran away' to escape my mother's impending forced arranged-marriage to an IAS officer, between the both of them they had a couple of M.Coms and a single job. My mother married a jobless, penniless, part-time crossword-setter (cruciverbalist, he will insist) who wrote her off-the-cuff poetry on restaurant napkins with a crazy glint under his tousled hair.
Everyone predicted with the air of a Divination Professor that they had destroyed their once-promising academic lives. Her parents, his parents, their friends, every single person they knew--"objectively" told them this was a bad idea. Everyone seemed to 'know' that, it was certain, they were 'too different'. Everyone other than my parents. They coached each other to clearing the M Phil entrance. She taught him Statistics, he taught her Math. And then came the Ph.D entrace at one of India's top universities. My mum never intended to do a Ph.D ("too much effort for two letters in front of your name"). She sat for the test purely because "I am smarter than him, and he be called Dr? Kabhi nahi". There were two seats in their Department in the Open Category that year. Out of the few thousand unmarried, undistratced, not-in-love applicants who sat for the test , my mother ranked first and my father finished second. (She takes care to remind me her entrance rank every now and then within his hearing, he alleges it was her girly handwriting that made the examiners fall in love with her)
'First study, go to a great college, get a great job and then a girl will automatically want to marry you'
Who is your wife marrying then? Is she marrying you? Or is she marrying the ivy-league degrees and the five-figure job? I'd rather spend my life with a girl who loved me when I had nothing and was a no one, who'd love me for me--the chick-flick loving, Titanic-crying, deep-feeling, crazily adventurous, Physics obsessed, poetry spouting bag of chemicals I am.
I'm not the money in the vault or the degrees on my wall. I'm the lilt of my heart and the song of my soul.
The Indian family system that a lot many wax about is the grave of the Roark-ian hero. The killing-ground of individuality and a cesspool of collectivism. If you live in a sandbox created by your family, build castles according to their whims and finally let them decide who your sand-castle princess should be, then who are YOU? Where is the YOU in all of this? I don't see you. I see THEM. Where are you? How is it your story if they're writing it?
Dating isn't for the weak. It takes courage to go down a knee, it takes bravery to face rejection. It takes character to be someone more than the colleges you attend and spirit to be someone who isn't only breathing but is also alive. While their European and American peers are risking heartbreak and growing emotionally, Indian men are cosseted in their parent-regulated cocoons waiting for their wives on a platter. The low divorce rates stem from this very cocooned upbringing. Divorce is a big big decision and if you've never had the guts to date do you think you can find the strength to fight a divorce, that too when your parents and everyone you know will disapprove of it?
I've been in love. It is a wonderful wonderful feeling. It cannot be simulated or faked or arranged. An arranged marriage is a feeble shot at some watered down version of love. You simply cannot throw two supposedly "compatible" individuals together and tell them to fall in love. Love is a spontaneous reaction. And some basic chemistry will tell you that chaos-creating spontaneous reactions tend to be exothermic ;)
I'm sure love is possible in an arranged marriage. But why take a chance when you can start off a marriage from scratch being in love? Why take a chance to live a loveless life? You risk to lose more than you will ever gain.
When you marry someone, you forge that ONE relationship that you get a say in. You get a choice. I couldn't choose who gets to be my parents, who gets to be my brother. It was all a 'default' setting. But when it comes to my wife, that choice is all me. The very nature of the choice puts that relationship on a different level--it exists because it is ALL me, I initiated it, I worked on it, I willed it into being. And this one girl destined to be my wife is too special to be picked out in a cattle-fair.
People aren't sheep to be traded based on set factors like the color of their fleece, the family they were born, the meadows they've been made to graze on--things that they had no control whatsoever of. Most arranged marriages stand on fickle earth. Caste. Religion. Family-background. Nationality. Occupation. Labels. You're marrying labels. Stop marrying labels, start marrying people.
If you've never loved or seen love, the romantic, earth-shattering kind, how will you know what you're missing out on? You who have slept under ceilings painted by others, know not the grandeur of the starry skies. What do you know of a soul kissed by a will o' wisp and a heart that pumps fire?
I have seen first hand what my parents have and I can't settle for anything less. I want those random dreamy-loved-up looks across the room, I want to not hang-up on the phone 20+ years into marriage, I want framed restaurant napkins with poetry, I want 'I'll-carry-you-up-the-st
I know how beautiful marriage can be. I want all this. I want more. There is no one who knows me better than me. And the one great decision--of whose face every morning's sun-rays will bounce off to meet mine--will be mine and mine alone.
How do I know this? I know this because I'm the son of my parents. Had my Punjabi mother, daughter of an Indian Navy Admiral picked out a photograph from a dossier of research on 'compatibility, taste and education', would she have ever married a Telugu clerk's unemployed son? Would he have even made it to round-1 of "back-end work and filtering"?
I'm tired of listening to the 'love is a distraction, study first' argument. Love can be such an ever-burning hearth of inspiration that can spur you higher than you'd ever been.
There's this thing about love--it comes knocking at the unlikeliest of times and if you can plan it, then it isn't love. When my parents 'ran away' to escape my mother's impending forced arranged-marriage to an IAS officer, between the both of them they had a couple of M.Coms and a single job. My mother married a jobless, penniless, part-time crossword-setter (cruciverbalist, he will insist) who wrote her off-the-cuff poetry on restaurant napkins with a crazy glint under his tousled hair.
Everyone predicted with the air of a Divination Professor that they had destroyed their once-promising academic lives. Her parents, his parents, their friends, every single person they knew--"objectively" told them this was a bad idea. Everyone seemed to 'know' that, it was certain, they were 'too different'. Everyone other than my parents. They coached each other to clearing the M Phil entrance. She taught him Statistics, he taught her Math. And then came the Ph.D entrace at one of India's top universities. My mum never intended to do a Ph.D ("too much effort for two letters in front of your name"). She sat for the test purely because "I am smarter than him, and he be called Dr? Kabhi nahi". There were two seats in their Department in the Open Category that year. Out of the few thousand unmarried, undistratced, not-in-love applicants who sat for the test , my mother ranked first and my father finished second. (She takes care to remind me her entrance rank every now and then within his hearing, he alleges it was her girly handwriting that made the examiners fall in love with her)
'First study, go to a great college, get a great job and then a girl will automatically want to marry you'
Who is your wife marrying then? Is she marrying you? Or is she marrying the ivy-league degrees and the five-figure job? I'd rather spend my life with a girl who loved me when I had nothing and was a no one, who'd love me for me--the chick-flick loving, Titanic-crying, deep-feeling, crazily adventurous, Physics obsessed, poetry spouting bag of chemicals I am.
I'm not the money in the vault or the degrees on my wall. I'm the lilt of my heart and the song of my soul.
The Indian family system that a lot many wax about is the grave of the Roark-ian hero. The killing-ground of individuality and a cesspool of collectivism. If you live in a sandbox created by your family, build castles according to their whims and finally let them decide who your sand-castle princess should be, then who are YOU? Where is the YOU in all of this? I don't see you. I see THEM. Where are you? How is it your story if they're writing it?
Dating isn't for the weak. It takes courage to go down a knee, it takes bravery to face rejection. It takes character to be someone more than the colleges you attend and spirit to be someone who isn't only breathing but is also alive. While their European and American peers are risking heartbreak and growing emotionally, Indian men are cosseted in their parent-regulated cocoons waiting for their wives on a platter. The low divorce rates stem from this very cocooned upbringing. Divorce is a big big decision and if you've never had the guts to date do you think you can find the strength to fight a divorce, that too when your parents and everyone you know will disapprove of it?
I've been in love. It is a wonderful wonderful feeling. It cannot be simulated or faked or arranged. An arranged marriage is a feeble shot at some watered down version of love. You simply cannot throw two supposedly "compatible" individuals together and tell them to fall in love. Love is a spontaneous reaction. And some basic chemistry will tell you that chaos-creating spontaneous reactions tend to be exothermic ;)
I'm sure love is possible in an arranged marriage. But why take a chance when you can start off a marriage from scratch being in love? Why take a chance to live a loveless life? You risk to lose more than you will ever gain.
When you marry someone, you forge that ONE relationship that you get a say in. You get a choice. I couldn't choose who gets to be my parents, who gets to be my brother. It was all a 'default' setting. But when it comes to my wife, that choice is all me. The very nature of the choice puts that relationship on a different level--it exists because it is ALL me, I initiated it, I worked on it, I willed it into being. And this one girl destined to be my wife is too special to be picked out in a cattle-fair.
People aren't sheep to be traded based on set factors like the color of their fleece, the family they were born, the meadows they've been made to graze on--things that they had no control whatsoever of. Most arranged marriages stand on fickle earth. Caste. Religion. Family-background. Nationality. Occupation. Labels. You're marrying labels. Stop marrying labels, start marrying people.
If you've never loved or seen love, the romantic, earth-shattering kind, how will you know what you're missing out on? You who have slept under ceilings painted by others, know not the grandeur of the starry skies. What do you know of a soul kissed by a will o' wisp and a heart that pumps fire?
I have seen first hand what my parents have and I can't settle for anything less. I want those random dreamy-loved-up looks across the room, I want to not hang-up on the phone 20+ years into marriage, I want framed restaurant napkins with poetry, I want 'I'll-carry-you-up-the-st
I know how beautiful marriage can be. I want all this. I want more. There is no one who knows me better than me. And the one great decision--of whose face every morning's sun-rays will bounce off to meet mine--will be mine and mine alone.
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