Coming from a man who is about to get divorced very soon, advice about marriage is not something to be taken seriously. But nonetheless, we all have our opinions. And at some point of time we all want to be heard. So when I first read about Indiblogger's Love Marriage or Arranged Marriage contest, I too wanted to write about it, I too wanted to express my views. And don't we all know, that it is from our failures that we achieve the key to our success.
Now, to be very honest with you there isn't much difference between a love marriage and an arranged marriage. The custom of arranged marriages have been predominant in this part of the world since centuries, and many of these nuptial bonds have been more than just successful. And I know a lot of men and women who belong to the new generation have left it upon their parents to decide about their life partners, or have started searching for a prospective bride or a groom through ads in newspapers.
And then there are some of us who were lucky enough to find that someone special in their lives. That someone who they couldn't think they could spend their lives without. They fell in love with that someone and then after they get to know eachother a little too well, they decided to take it to the next level, as you might say, and tie a knot. My parents had a love marriage, and they are happy together even after all these years!
But then I have seen marriages fail. They can be either of them, love or arranged. I have seen arranged marriages collapsed within days of the wedding because of simple misunderstanding. And I have also seen couples get separated because one or both of them fell out of love of eachother who had were once convinced that love is the best thing that had ever happened to them.
So what goes wrong?
The answer to that is very simple. Be it love marriage or arranged marriage, more often than not we don't seem to understand the true meaning of the word marriage. When people say that marriage is an institution, we fail to understand its teachings. We fail to understand that marriage is not just signing off a few legal documents or wearing sindoor on your forehead, marriage is not the right to have sex with your partner. Marriage is a bond of love that is to be respected by both people involved in it, that is to be cherished for what it is. It a relationship of a lifetime that is above all other relationships, the truest of them all. Marriage is a oath that a couple needs to fulfill, an oath to stick to eachother through thick and thin and love eachother inspite of all the odd of life. Marriage is a feeling that is not bound by a legal document or a pinch or red powder.
If you want to be married to someone because you love that person, you can do that without signing off a legal document in front of thousands of witnesses, you can do that without wearing that pinch of the red powder. Because if you want to break the bond of marriage, no legal document or no vermillion can save it. But if you want to keep it, no adversity would dare to break such a beautiful bond.
That is marriage!
And once we understand the true essence of marriage, whether its an arranged marriage or a love marriage, we would be able to cherish it like it says in the books, happily ever after.
