Once a firm believer in the practice of made marriages, I accidentally stumbled upon Gita Hariharan's "The Thousand faces of the night " and Jaishree Misra's "Ancient Promises" in the college library and life has never been the same..
It's not a very practical thing to take everything a book claims and live in the unreal world of romance fiction.True. Both the novels show you the cons of marrying and living with a man you scarcely know.Of course, I'm not biased against similar experiences men undergo, but being a woman ,myself, I can identify with the angst of the protagonists' search for..fulfillment, through freedom , as in Devi's story or through love, as in Misra's novel.
I used to think ,and still do ,that when parents take our lives into their hands and decide who we spend the rest of our lives with ,they're doing it with open eyes.But things could either be all rosy or all ugly after that first step. The question is," How compatible a man and woman are?" and can the short period of engagement to him tell you exactly what kind of a person he is? What if all of that is just an act? They say it's all about fate,karma.But how many times has an innocent woman been victimised just to keep her family's honor, respect intact?
It's all unfair, I say.
It's a gamble...some of these marriages work and others just don't.
Imagine living with a stranger, day in and day out,sleeping with him, and even having to have sex with him some..all this and much ore with a man who you haven't come to love yet.My parents would laugh if i told them I want to marry a man I love,especially if I asked them to wait for some more years after my 25th birthday.To them it's a matter of responsibility,and taking that one thing off their to-do lists,and some years later, expecting a grandchild or two(of course,who in the ancient days married for love.All they wanted was to find a suitable man to have kids with).So once the marriage happens..they can breathe free.
But what about what I want for me? Sure, some day I want to get married and have kids,what woman doesn't want a family? But wait a minute,what woman wants to live and procreate with a stranger?The mere idea of letting a man I hardly know make love to me shoots fear up my spine!
Again, why am I calling it Love making? There's hardly any real love between the couple early on in the marriage. Lust, then? Might be.Of course there abound numerous books (some even literary) and movies waxing eloquently about the "Marriage first,Love second"thing. One can choose then..to believe ..or not to believe!
Some people are happy with that kind of an arrangement.YOU cook.Clean.some times work AND Take care of my parents etc. I work.Enjoy life with my buddies.Flirt with every other woman.And bring home expensive gifts to bribe you and blind you with.
(I probably sound more cynical than I actually am about arranged marriages.But it can't be helped.Tonight, I am on a rampage.)
Coming back to the relationship, I know my parents after about 23 years of living together can't imagine living without each other, and all those sweet things.But, like many other couples of the previous generation, do they really LOVE other? (may be they do)Or is it just some kind of an affectionate attachment that comes from getting used to living with the same person all the time? Considering the notion of divorce is sacrilegious around here?
Where i come from,families don't kiss, hug or tell each other stuff like "I love you" a thousand times a day.Expressing your emotions can yield disastrous results. Then what on earth was I thinking when I thought arranged marriages were cool!
But of course,I am being entirely negative when I say all this.Because I know that despite the fact that falling in love once is enough to make you scorn arranged marriages, women have always and will always make adjustments, and live , if they have to , in a loveless,passionless marriage just to make someone else happy-their parents, in-laws,friends,and even their children.This is not to say that men won't do the same. Just that I know more women than men who've compromised on happiness to preserve all outward appearances of stability.
Arranged marriages are often about compromises than love. I,certainly,don't want to be in the shoes of Devi ,forced and emotionally blackmailed by her mother into an ARRANGED marriage with a RICH man,living lifelessly with the coldest man one can ever encounter,add to it a very Manu-like misandrist Father-in-law(whose wife has the good sense to leave him and go away!) or for that matter be a Janaki who loves this real nice guy,but if forced to give him up and marry an older uncommunicative sadist, is fitted with a copper-T ,hated to the point of desperation by the most monstruous mom in law I have ever heard of,and later isolated by her in laws for producing a defective offspring. I mean, if we women are ultimately going to be forced to marry by force, why can't the husband at least understand and respect us a little?
Some wise soul once said that women are always subdued by men-first their fathers, then their husbands and then their sons.(was it Raja Ram Mohan Roy? , I forget who!)
It's certainly a sad revelation.. :(
It's not a very practical thing to take everything a book claims and live in the unreal world of romance fiction.True. Both the novels show you the cons of marrying and living with a man you scarcely know.Of course, I'm not biased against similar experiences men undergo, but being a woman ,myself, I can identify with the angst of the protagonists' search for..fulfillment, through freedom , as in Devi's story or through love, as in Misra's novel.
I used to think ,and still do ,that when parents take our lives into their hands and decide who we spend the rest of our lives with ,they're doing it with open eyes.But things could either be all rosy or all ugly after that first step. The question is," How compatible a man and woman are?" and can the short period of engagement to him tell you exactly what kind of a person he is? What if all of that is just an act? They say it's all about fate,karma.But how many times has an innocent woman been victimised just to keep her family's honor, respect intact?
It's all unfair, I say.
It's a gamble...some of these marriages work and others just don't.
Imagine living with a stranger, day in and day out,sleeping with him, and even having to have sex with him some..all this and much ore with a man who you haven't come to love yet.My parents would laugh if i told them I want to marry a man I love,especially if I asked them to wait for some more years after my 25th birthday.To them it's a matter of responsibility,and taking that one thing off their to-do lists,and some years later, expecting a grandchild or two(of course,who in the ancient days married for love.All they wanted was to find a suitable man to have kids with).So once the marriage happens..they can breathe free.
But what about what I want for me? Sure, some day I want to get married and have kids,what woman doesn't want a family? But wait a minute,what woman wants to live and procreate with a stranger?The mere idea of letting a man I hardly know make love to me shoots fear up my spine!
Again, why am I calling it Love making? There's hardly any real love between the couple early on in the marriage. Lust, then? Might be.Of course there abound numerous books (some even literary) and movies waxing eloquently about the "Marriage first,Love second"thing. One can choose then..to believe ..or not to believe!
Some people are happy with that kind of an arrangement.YOU cook.Clean.some times work AND Take care of my parents etc. I work.Enjoy life with my buddies.Flirt with every other woman.And bring home expensive gifts to bribe you and blind you with.
(I probably sound more cynical than I actually am about arranged marriages.But it can't be helped.Tonight, I am on a rampage.)
Coming back to the relationship, I know my parents after about 23 years of living together can't imagine living without each other, and all those sweet things.But, like many other couples of the previous generation, do they really LOVE other? (may be they do)Or is it just some kind of an affectionate attachment that comes from getting used to living with the same person all the time? Considering the notion of divorce is sacrilegious around here?
Where i come from,families don't kiss, hug or tell each other stuff like "I love you" a thousand times a day.Expressing your emotions can yield disastrous results. Then what on earth was I thinking when I thought arranged marriages were cool!
But of course,I am being entirely negative when I say all this.Because I know that despite the fact that falling in love once is enough to make you scorn arranged marriages, women have always and will always make adjustments, and live , if they have to , in a loveless,passionless marriage just to make someone else happy-their parents, in-laws,friends,and even their children.This is not to say that men won't do the same. Just that I know more women than men who've compromised on happiness to preserve all outward appearances of stability.
Arranged marriages are often about compromises than love. I,certainly,don't want to be in the shoes of Devi ,forced and emotionally blackmailed by her mother into an ARRANGED marriage with a RICH man,living lifelessly with the coldest man one can ever encounter,add to it a very Manu-like misandrist Father-in-law(whose wife has the good sense to leave him and go away!) or for that matter be a Janaki who loves this real nice guy,but if forced to give him up and marry an older uncommunicative sadist, is fitted with a copper-T ,hated to the point of desperation by the most monstruous mom in law I have ever heard of,and later isolated by her in laws for producing a defective offspring. I mean, if we women are ultimately going to be forced to marry by force, why can't the husband at least understand and respect us a little?
Some wise soul once said that women are always subdued by men-first their fathers, then their husbands and then their sons.(was it Raja Ram Mohan Roy? , I forget who!)
It's certainly a sad revelation.. :(
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Kristain