Mountain of light

Marriage. Why do people get married? What do they seek to achieve in a marriage that they can’t achieve outside of it or what do they seek to avoid by getting married? I have grown up with these questions in my head and have never got one answer. People have given me different versions, have confused me, fascinated me and even scared me. Even when I sought to analyse married relationships on my own I have come up with all kind of answers. All this while I was putting other people through the scanner and never quite asking myself the question on why would I want to get married, or even a more basic question if I want to get married. But somehow in all my inquisitiveness about relationships I have imbibed some opinions, advices and experiences of people. Why have I imbibed some and not all? Maybe its because those opinions were close to what I already believed in so it was very convenient for me to imbibe them. I don’t know if that is the correct explanation but that is the only thing that I can think of.

So it is I under the scanner now. I am getting married and I am asking myself those very questions that I would have asked of my married and soon to be married friends. I have never been known for an honest introspection but then that hasn’t been for the lack of trying! I have asked myself all the above questions and have got answers to some of them and for some questions the answer is I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have all the answers after I get married, maybe I won’t. But then suddenly when it is all being applied to me I don’t think these questions are relevant. Or atleast only some of them are relevant. Why am I asking all these questions of myself anyway? Especially since I have never sat myself down before any decision and asked questions of myself on why am I doing whatever it is that I am doing. I have just gone and done what I wanted to do. So then, why all this questioning on the decision to get married?

Maybe it is because marriages are under an intense scrutiny these days by everyone from psychologists to jewellery brands. Everyone is out to understand the married relationship and see how best they can focus their products and services on the couple. The psychologists talk about people being in otherwise dead relationships for convenience sake, for the sake of companionship, for kids and what have you. They look to market their services in counseling couples together and separately in reviving their marriages or helping them call quits if there is no way out. The consumer brands talk about reviving dead relationships by gifting diamonds, platinum, holidays, chocolates and flowers to get that smile back into the relationship. There is ofcourse this whole lifestyle industry centered on marriage where they talk about doing certain things in a certain way to make a marriage successful. Examples are given of “successful” relationships where usually the woman is portrayed as a super woman who manages a high profile job, kids, house and writes cookbooks in her sleep. In all this she always manages to look impeccable every time she is photographed. The man usually is in the highest income-earning bracket who takes his family to Europe when it gets too hot and to the beaches when it gets too cold and all this while he is not buying the latest “family” car or playing golf on weekends. There is ofcourse no mention about any friction that may have or does exist in their relationship. Maybe I am over reacting, but to me all this is very visible and it seems obvious to me why we give more attention to marriage than we should and this also has a huge bearing by the benchmarks by which we gauge marriages. I probably would not be so bothered if I was not affected by it at some level. Its hard not to get affected no matter how much you guard against it.

Meanwhile, it is the business of organizing a marriage. Also a pledge, that the next time someone tells me to think “out of the box” when planning for my marriage I promise to box him/her out!!