Happily Ever After

Happily ever after
by Punam Khaira Sidhu

Newspapers report a galloping increase in Indian divorce rates. Are Indian marriages headed for euthanasia? An actor is reported as saying that he beheld his sleeping wife and realised what the pattern of his life would be: “..waking up next to the same woman each morning”. Expectedly, he walked out on her shortly thereafter.

My father, and mother who recently marked 46 years together, would perhaps have reacted differently. To my father, his sleeping wife’s form may have evoked initial concern for her well-being, followed by irritation for her tardiness. And conversely, I am certain that when my father lies supine and snoring, my mother does not ever stop to ponder if that is the blueprint for her life. She arrived in her husband’s home in a Doli and will leave there only on an “Arthi” (bier). I often see melancholy but never despondency in her eyes. She still believes that she can and will reform my Father. But aren’t they the Generation-Past?

Gen-Now raised on Chat and action @ speed of thought possess short attention spans and faster rates of ennui. My older teenager started his innings in the girlfriend stakes two years ago, assuring me solemnly that he was a one-woman man. A year later, he had worked his way through several successive girlfriends. The girls aren’t crying their hearts out for him, either. They are moving on, with different boyfriends. Maybe just teenagers growing up or maybe the shape of things to come ?

Men, with some honorable exceptions, are chauvinistic. Marriages in India survived because women lacked choice and were raised with a strong socialisation in being the good daughter, wife and mother. Augmenting this was the stigma attached to divorce. Gen-Now women have lower flashpoints and the time-honored traditions of sacrificial dogsbody are fading. Girls today are reared with far more equitable choices than the social-stereotyping of yore. Education has empowered them with financial independence and endowed them with choice. It’s when the realisation dawns on a woman that she doesn’t need a man to bring to fruition her aspirations, or tolerate shabby treatment, that perhaps the countdown to the end of a marriage begins. Divorced and single women are also increasingly finding surrogate families in friends and colleagues, ie the new “Urban Tribes”.

Modern-day stories are thus not reading, “…and they lived happily ever after”. The message for marriages to survive is perhaps for men to evolve, because women are evolving and exercising their choices. But if, like my mother, 46 years on, the presence of a silver-haired man fighting a losing battle with his waistline, still fills you with a warm sense of well-being, then do start coordinating the buntings, crockery and napkins for your golden or diamond anniversaries. After all love, tolerance and marriage deserve to be saluted and what better tribute than an anniversary celebration.