Till Death Or A Better Prospect Do Us Part

Separation has taken a more refined route.

- Suruchi Rastogi

I think the inevitable slide down the slippery road to uh; middle age has caused a crazy phenomenon. I find myself increasingly moaning and groaning about ‘these young kids today’.

Recently, there was an article in the paper where statistics show that an alarming number of newlyweds come back from the honeymoon and land up at the divorce lawyers’ offices. Some, under parental pressure, may go to marriage counsellors to explain why they no longer love each other and cannot spend another second together. What they saw in each other is now a mystery shrouded in a never to be pierced cloud.

We sometimes came across this quaint expression that the ‘honeymoon period’ was over. Well; these days it’s taken on literal overtones. As soon as the actual honeymoon period is over, it’s over!

Marriage vows seem to have become words spoken in the throes of passion. Actually to be fair, in our Indian weddings the Sanskrit intonation of the vows at double speed and mostly unintelligible sentences is like Greek and doesn’t touch our hearts or minds. Are we then to be blamed for treating them lightly?

To give a rather inappropriate example the Film Gangs of Wasseypur with its rather colourful language (in a bid for authenticity or so the whole world tells me) didn’t have the same impact on me that it did on the critics. For me the cuss words were just words whilst I saw some people tittering and laughing in embarrassment as they had grown up in places where these very words had a definite meaning.