Painful thoughts
In my childhood days marriages
were arranged by and with the blessings of the parents and elders and they were
held at home. It was a festival for all the family members, kith and kin and
neighbors took active part in the in the dressing, cooking of vegetables and
food items. It was a time of reunion, discussion, renewing of friendship and
love. It was joyful occasion for everyone in the family. But those days of love
and peace are gone forever. Most of the couples during those days were hardly
SSLC or below, but they loved and respected each other and they had the feeling
of empathy, and their married life lasted even after their deaths, because at
that time marriage was solemnized in heaven which was their hearts full of love
for each other and not in the posh hotels or auditoriums!
But today everything is upside
down with the emergence of new generation styles, new technology and prosperity
enhanced material wealth and splendor but spiritual side vacuum! Today the
guests are invited on line or mobile phones to a decorated auditorium where a
hired anchor supervises everything. All are strangers eating at an unknown
hotel. Children of lower middle class got education thanks to the hard work and
dedication of their poor parents who dreamed of their children to become
doctors, engineers and IT professionals, and the generous bank loans in the
educational field helped their dreams fulfilled. But their joy was short
lived. In our local auditorium, out of
sixty marriage ceremonies held, around forty five couples were divorced, which
is a reliable information given to me by a busy catering contractor.
These youngsters began to draw more than five
figure salary with all the perks available to the professionals in different
fields, thought of themselves superior to all and looked upon their parents as
mere faggots and conducted all the arrangements from advertising to marriage by
themselves in hi-tech manner dealt by the professional event management
companies. Parents and siblings became ‘onlookers’. Even many months before the
marriage ceremony, the couple had opportunities to be familiar with each other
in various counseling centers, religious and social occasions. They went on tours to “know” each other in the
lap of Nature. When marriage is over,
the freshness and vitality are also over and boredom creeps into their lives.
Hardly had two years passed by when they came to the Family Court, accusing each
other of various crimes such as ‘domestic violence’, cheating and perjury.’
They now consider each other nothing but a crushed lime pod. They want
something new! They need divorce. The actual beneficiaries of such new
generation marriages are lawyers, tourist centers, hotels and of course mobile
and event management companies.
Their
parents, by this time have crossed the rank of ‘Senior citizens’ are left in
the lurch. They are a neglected lot and they go back to their work - old
auto-rickshaws, or selling fish door to door in order to buy medicine and food.
As these professionals always live in the material world of modern technology,
they cannot follow human values of love, obligations and morals. If they cannot
love their own parents, how it is possible for them to love an unknown man and
woman who comes to their lives a few days ago in the disguise of bride and
bridegroom. Love is spiritual, spontaneous and divine. It blooms just like red
rose or lotus in the water. It needs patience, tolerance, understanding and
above all a feel of empathy towards his/her partner. It is not so easy, because
it must come from the mind as ‘manna showered from heaven’ to Israelites long
ago. Kjt/29-03-2016
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