Wedding knot

Marriages are made in heaven, true. But married lives are lived on Earth, with our feet planted firmly on terra firma. How do I know that? Let us just say I have experience, close to three decades of it, in this particular field. 

So does that make me an expert on everything matrimonial? No, of course not. There is nothing static about a marital state, other than the wedding band. In this ever evolving and dynamic relationship, no set theories work, which is what I tell the hopeful unmarried youngsters who come to me for suggestions. On how to find the right partner and stay happily married, that is. 

Over the years, some things have definitely changed. When my grandmother was asked what was the one quality she desired in a husband, she said she wanted to marry a man who wore long pants. I remember as a child, I would get ticked every time she related this tidbit to me. I could not believe her naiveté and between giggles would keep quizzing her. All the young men in her native village donned pyjamas or other kinds of traditional clothing. But she was adamant about marrying someone who was suited-booted. And she did. My grandfather wore everything from tuxedoes to jodhpurs but I never spotted him in any Indian dress. Ever!

Was their marriage happy? I can’t say, because I rarely saw them together. She was mostly indoors, cooking in the kitchen or knitting on the covered balcony. And he was always outdoors, zipping around in his fancy car or struggling with the plants in his lawn. She would pull a thin veil over her head when she heard his footsteps approaching us. It left her face exposed but other than handing him tea, coffee or whatever the appropriate food item was, according to the time of the day, I never heard them even speak to one another. 

My parents, on the other hand, could not stop talking to each other. It was their constant chatter that woke me up in the mornings, and also lulled me to sleep at night. My father met my mum’s brother when they were journeying together on a train. They struck up a friendship and my uncle invited my father to his house for dinner. My dad was travelling further up, but he impulsively decided to accept the invite. That evening he met my mom, and the rest was history. 

The sequence of events describing what happened that fateful night would change, depending on whom you asked. Each of us children knew it by heart but we liked listening to it anyway. Were they happily wedded? Yes, of course. 

I encountered my husband quite by chance too. Random terrorist activity had invited army intervention in the city where I studied, and my university was closed for an indefinite time period. We were requested to go home. My spouse was doing a summer internship in the same town where my folks were posted. 

Two days after I met him, he asked me what I was doing for the next seventy to eighty years. I said I was not sure, he said, “will you marry me?” 

“What would you have done if I said no?” I inquired recently. 

“Asked you again, with an offer you could never refuse,” he announced. 

“Like what?” I was curious.

“To become my laughing partner for one hundred years,” he declared.

“Haha,” I laughed

“Haha,” he laughed back.