Marriage :- Love or Arranged

Marriage, itself is a big trauma. In India there is no greater event in a family than a wedding, dramatically evoking every possible social obligation, kinship bond, traditional value, impassioned sentiment, and economic resource. In the arranging and conducting of weddings, the complex permutations of Indian social systems best display themselves. Writing about marriages is always very tough for me. A meeting with my friend for finding a divorce lawyer made me think to write about ‘Love marriage or Arranged marriage’. Before I begin I need to tell you, I am single and am not thinking about marriage until I reach my set destination. This being the situation it will be totally unsuitable and vain if I censure or even say something about both love and arranged marriages. I may be able to say few goods and flaws of both type of marriages based on others experience –mainly my relatives and friends- but instead of that I wish to share the four fundamental principles of married life I understood from them, they are Interconnect, Understand, Adjust and on the top Trust.

The principles are simple and everyone seems well aware of its importance, then why the number of divorces keeps on increasing day by day in our country. I must tell you a family lawyer of High Court, Delhi told me in this city only the no of cases filled on daily basis is near 800.  It’s a matter of great concern and one of the main reasons behind this is pre-marriage expectations about the life partner’s behavior  In earlier days even 20-30% completion of this expectation was enough for a marriage to have a happy or least an okay ending but now it has come up to 60-70%. So the faster our generation finds out that their partner doesn’t match to most of their expectations, the quicker they go for a divorce. Then how did most of our earlier generation couples lead a happy married life using the same four principles. It’s because our generation lacked a key quality, a quality which is essential for the four principles to work in sync, that is Patience, needed not in spare but enough.

Love marriage or arranged marriage which is better, which can provide a long happy married life? To get a proper answer a survey on this matter is required; I have seen and heard of many lives that had flourished and many more that perished because of both kinds of marriages. Marriage is a responsibility, a responsibility to keep each other happy, a responsibility that had to be cherished and if even one of the partners is not ready to take this responsibility or can’t keep the other happy other than himself, then it doesn’t matter what kind of marriage he/she is having. I have seen the separation in both marriages, my uncle’s marriage was love marriage and they are enjoying their married life happily for more than 20 years but my closed friend’s love marriage didn’t work out for 3 years even. They are ready for divorce.

Marriage is the most sacred and purest rituals of all, the eternal bond it is said in our great epics, the bonding of two bodies’ into one mind, I wonder whether our generation believes in all this. One thing is evident though in future prolong married couples will become an endangered species and our next generation’s knowledge about such marriages will limit to twentieth century romantic novels.