Relationships Are All About Respecting Each Other

Relationships are all about respecting each other, even our differences.

- Arun Kumar Natha

Ours is an arranged marriage wherein there was a formal meeting for the alliance, and it was on the concurrence of both the families that our marriage was arranged. For some reason, I had no expectations from the girl. The only thing I wanted was for my parents to choose the girl as I believed they would do what is good for me.

Of course, there was huge excitement from the premarriage days itself. I have only seen in movies and read in stories that there will be butterflies within and around you when you are in love with someone. I experientially felt it when I started meeting my fiancé. After almost two months of our interactions, my marriage with Prathima took place. As the entire marriage process unfolded, it was just not about me and her. It was an amalgamation of two families and their relatives. There were so many people coming and going and relating with each other.

In a nutshell, there was such a happy commotion of people around us during the entire marriage process, which lasted for over two months. Starting from choosing the invitation card design, shopping for wedding clothes, the buying of gifts… the list seemed endless. In fact, it had taken over few weeks after marriage for us to be alone in the presence of each other.

Slowly, I had started getting back to normalcy in terms of my day-to-day life and of course, with the addition of my wife. To say the least, she brought in so much of joy and happiness to our family. There was excitement and eagerness in each of us to relate with her and explore what lay ahead of us. There was constant enthusiasm in me to know the smallest details about her - her likes, dislikes, preferences, and so on.