The author Usha Ramakrishnan has worked in a foreign bank for fifteen years. Then she did M. Phil., and since, has been involved in social service for eight years now. She is a freelance writer too; she has written books on self-improvement and has been writing articles on various subjects. She is conducting life-skill classes for students and women. The series is part of her efforts to emphasize that it would always be better to have workable marriages than going in for counseling after getting into problems.
They used to address the elder sister of my great grandmother as ‘ammami’. When she got married she was just a 5-year old lass and her husband a 13-year old lad! “I felt sleepy during the ‘muhurtham’ due to the ‘mangala isai’. My husband pricked me to alert me but I started crying complaining in a loud voice about my husband and his act of pricking me. The entire group on the dais laughed at my words,” she would recall with an impish smile on her lips! A few generations back, married life was started with a partner chosen by the parents at an age when both the boy and the girl were just children, playing around. Today, the institution of marriage has undergone an ocean of changes for the better. Even if the parents give permission to the boy and the girl to meet and interact before the marriage is finalized, they both say that one cannot understand the other just through a few meetings. But if we are to marry only after fully understanding our prospective partner, then, it is next to impossible as even our entire span of life wouldn’t be enough for this endeavor! But at the same time, there’s another side too that is posing a big question in the minds of those getting married – “Will the marriage last long?” This situation has arisen because of the alarming fact that today the incidence of divorce is ever-increasing. This state of affairs only implies that the institution is fast losing its credibility.
But, I would like to say that problems are part of life for people of all times. Similarly good things are also happening alongside. There are good symptoms like maturity, treating the life partner as equal and as a friend and mutual encouragement that go to prove that the man-woman relationship is moving towards a healthier trend. But elders keep complaining that good qualities like patience, flexibility and unconditional love are fast disappearing. If we conduct a debate on this issue, the speakers would get an opportunity to display their oratorical skills and we can have an interesting time! Beyond this, there won’t be any practical result. The aim of any analysis should be solution. We should take into consideration the good things in the lives of our forefathers along with the good changes that have been brought about in course of time.
In days of yore, the opportunity to learn both good and bad was much fewer. So, people were able to lead a simple and contented life. Men were meant to earn and women to look after the household. The children would play. This was the rule of a family and the pattern continued without any deviation from this rule. If a man travelled from a hamlet in South Arcot district to Chennai, in those days it would be a cumbersome affair. We cannot compare the lifestyle of the present lap-top day with that of the bullock-cart days!
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