This is in response to the article 'Not a wife waiting to happen' in the open page of The Hindu dated 27 Nov 2011. The writer was critical about the old customs of girls being married off at a very early age. She is indeed correct in pointing out that old ways do not help a woman utilize her potential and pursue her dreams. She would have to 'glove' into the mould prepared to her by the society and where women does all the adjustment for marriage to work. These observations are absolutely correct, but what i dont agree with is her apprehension on whether this is actually a marriage or bondage. For an answer, i guess the best thing to do is ask any grandmother in her 80s or 90s about how good her married life was. I am sure that a majority of them would fondly recall the life they have (or had) with their better halves. Hardly a few would say marriage was a bitter experience, in spite of all the above mentioned inconveniences!
In early days, girls were married off at a very young age. She would have hardly had any exposure to the outside world and at 15 or 16 she would have not started to develop a personality of her own. So in essence, the woman in a girl would be born only after she gets married. it was very convenient for a male chauvinistic society. The world she sees, the books she reads, the way she thinks, the life she leads all were highly influenced by the man she is married to. Slowly she will develop a personality that is an extension of her husband's. With time, the things on which the couple agree on will grow along with their mutual understanding. Does it mean earlier marriages were 'lived happily ever after fairy-tales'? Of course not. But the differences were settled with a higher bias to the husband's point of view (which in tun was a reflection of male dominance in the society). With all the imperfections it is a fact that most of the earlier marriages worked.
So what is the difference between then and now? Today both men and women are educated and independent. They are aware of the surroundings and by the time get married have a well developed and refined personalities. As always, marriage is an amalgamation of two personalities and no two persons can ever be the same. However hard you try, you will never be able to agree to your partner on all accounts all the time. The more a person is aware of ones ability to think, analyse and decide, the more he/she would be convinced of the rationale of his/her decision. So whenever there is a difference in agreement, one tend to defend his/her stand. It is neither the eagerness to dominate nor unwillingness to co-operate and adjust but simply differences in the milieu in which two personalities were molded. Unlike earlier, when girl developed her individuality after marriage, today, a woman is completely developed as a person by the time she is married. No one can be blamed when two such distinct personalities living under one roof start to have differences, it was bound to happen.
Am i proposing that the days when girls were married off, even before they knew what a family is, was a better bet that the contemporary world? Not at all! This is how i want the world to be, only that i take marriage break ups as part of the price we have to pay. In a world where everyone looks to succeed and no one wants to fail, such a thing is ought to happen. Fortunate are those who have a better half with a 'matching frequency', but they are few and far between and as i said are the fortunate ones. But majority of couples are those who count the 'sacrifices' made for the marriage to work, until they reach the saturation point and then marriage is torn apart. The point is, past and present has its own virtues. But those virtues comes with a price. We better be ready to pay that price!
