Love and Marriage – An Indian Perspective
I have a friend. His sister was doing her post graduation while she fell in love with a class-mate. They claimed their love is eternal, spiritual (and they use some newly-coined heavy words to describe their love) and finally they decided to marry.
One day the boy backed out reasoning that his parents are not willing for the marriage. The girl’s life turned to be a hell – she became very traumatized and highly depressed. Her brother, my friend, came to me for help.
He knew that boy’s parents had some past obligation towards me. So he thought, I would be able to persuade the boy’s parents into marriage. I talked to the boy’s parents. “Sir, we didn’t know about his love affair with that girl. We would have been really happy if he gets that girl. We know hers’ is a very reputed family…” said his parents.
This was a shock to me. Then, why did the boy put the blame on his parents? I called him to my place and had a brief talk with him. He appeared very sober and normal.
His reaction: “Yeah I loved her. I trulyloved her. She came to the hotel room and we had nice time together. But this clearly shows her attitude. She has hot pants or such tendency – so how can I marry her? We can have fun with such girls – but marriage? NO. It is a serious thing in life…”
“But, what about her life?” I asked him, “She also has a life, right? Why did she come to the hotel room? Because she she loved you and trusted you. Are you not ashamed to cheat her this way? You don’t have a sister, that’s why you don’t realize the pain…” I said angrily.
The boy was very cool and sober. He asked me: “Sir, you are telling absolute truth. Didn’t she cheat her parents and her social morality? And you mean to say, I am the only person who enjoyed those times? And she didn’t? We have equal responsibility for what has happened. And now, I cannot trust her. I wish her good luck.” Then he warned me: “If you people use your power to forcefully make me marry to her, both of our life would be like hell. Do you want to destroy my life too?”
– He was very adamant. He doesn’t want to marry her anymore. So he used his parents as an excuse to break the relationship. There is no point in talking to his parents. Since he is a male child, his parents will also (quite normal for Indian parents) dance to his tunes.
Had she resisted going bed with him this boy would have definitely married her. Though she had gone bed with others in the past, but resisted to him, he would have thought that she is a pure girl and would marry to her. Strange state of mind, isn’t it?
– I was in a dilemma. How can I inform my friend that his sister has gone to bed with that boy? For him, pre-marital sex is a totally immoral thing. It is sin. He doesn’t belong to the new cult of a generation and their life-style based on the extra-hormones that come from junk food.
I talked to this girl. She didn’t believe me. She said that boy is so innocent that he wouldn’t even think like that. But I found that she was not so naïve. The trust and love she projects can be a manipulative mechanism of mind. I found that there was no true love in her. It could have been an infactuation mistaken for love or blind attraction, possibly on a body level. She has been seeing quite lot of TV serials and thought a life without a boy-friend was not fashionable.
I couldn’t do anything here, so I left it at that. But I told her – throw this incident away from your mind. Root it out this from your sub-conscious and wash yourself with Dettol or any other anti-septic. Otherwise this is going to bleed more.
“You will develop guilty consciousness that is more dangerous that the mistake that you committed. Regretting about past is also dangerous at mind-lvel. Whatever things you suppress will come out in different forms in different dimensions. So the best thing you can do is go to deeper meditation, and erase this incident from the memory…”
And after a long time-period of trauma and depression, her parents got her married to another man. I am sure, the moment the man comes to know about her past affair, her life will be finished; even though the husband’s past might have been similar to that of the boy I talked to.
Is it a man’s world out there? That a man can go to anything. The number of of girls in his life will become feathers in his cap. But a female should not even think about another man before marriage. It’s lopsided, but true.
– If you think modern men are broad-minded, you have got it all wrong.
Girls, listen, if you don’t know… If the man comes to know about your love affair in the previous births too, he would feel discomfort. He will be revengeful too. And you can’t blame him. The social inputs that fed his brain are so strong. (I know there are lot of girls who are real freaks and “enjoy” life like boys – I am talking about naive, innocent girls)
This psyche is deep rooted in our society. During my college days, one of my friends used to tell me: “Hmm, my dad was a real casanova before his marriage. He had lot of affairs and I won’t be amused if I see somebody who looks similar to me in other places too”
But talk about their mom, “She was a Sathi-Savithri” (Purest form of females)
It sure is an unfair world. Why do we need hypocicy when it comes to love and marriage?
Today’s generation accept live-in relationships, physical relationship and pre-marital sex. But when it comes to marriage, boys will change the tune.
– This is a warning for our girls – if you date with a man before marriage and then go bed with him, he is NEVER going to marry you, come what may.
But this is not the point that I would want to discuss with you.
I always wonder – why do love marriages or love-relationships fail? After a long investigation and experience I found the one single answer for this – there was no love at all.
Psychologists may say this is very complex and my answer is not correct. I agree with their view point based on their knowledge of psychology. But we cannot explain most of the things in life in a scientific way.
The moment I think about my love, I feel eternal happiness. I feel at peace, at once. Love is life long – even in my death-bed, I would be happy thinking of my love. I always know love is very romantic.
(Please do not mix the term “romance” with “romantic” – both are different in meaning. Check dictionary.)
Please tell me, how many of you feel such things? You might feel it now or at a point of time in the past or future. But do you feel the same warmth and eternal peace when you think about the love you had? Is it ever –lasting for you? Ask yourself.
I have heard girls saying these things:
“I am crazy about him”
Crazy means nuts. May have attracted like a magnet. But where is love?
“I fell in love instantaneously”
Shouldn’t fall. It’s an accident. Especially when it happens instantaneously. You should elevate in love, right?
“Our love is eternal…it is not like others, I cannot explain…”
In that case, why do you break up?
“We are madly in love and got married”
A good reason in the divorce court. You can still claim the madness.
The rate of divorce cases is alarmingly high now. Social scientists say – this is because, now-a-days females are financially independent and earning, so they don’t want to surrender to males – hence divorce happens. This explanation appears very logical.
But the moot question is that, was there the love? If it was love, then why did it break?
I have talked to lot of divorced couple. I have done an unofficial study – I divided them into two categories – love marriages and arranged marriages. I have not found any major differences in both categories in terms of divorce.
But I have not seen a single couple who are perfectly happy or ever loving each other. That was really shocking. “Happily ever after” is a myth.
When I talked to young gals and boys, though most of them (especially gals) say love is something like “soul searching”, “spiritual” or “divine” (as I said, I don’t know some of those very heavy words they use)
If you go deeper into this, they have nothing, but physical attraction and feelings created by sexual hormones inside the body. Those feelings may have come in disguise, as the person who experience may not feel it as is. Thoughts can always deceive you, right? This is the greatest manipulation of mind. It won’t allow you to experience the real love. (This is part of my research and I shall explain later sometime. Nobody can experience love if his/her mind is active)
And they have termed a beautiful phrase for the sexual act that they do before or after marriage: It is known as “love making”.
I am not an oldie-song buff. I really don’t spend more time on old movies or old songs. But I have seen movies of Raj Kapoor (Hindi) or Raj Kumar (Kannada) and Prem Nazir (Malayalm) in TV channels.
The love scenes acted by them, though monotonously slow, are worth watching – as it depicts a cultural thought-wave during their period. Next time, please try to watch old duet songs – it is really funny – they touch each other as if they touch a flower, not to hurt. The lyrics are flowery with literature. Watching those scenes would be funny, but it will not create a nasty and aggressive mood in you.
When I watch the “lyric-less noise making” songs that comes in today’s movies – I could see the difference. The couple acts like a involving in a fore-play before having a physical exercise (oh, sorry…”love making”). They lick, bite and jump. They do belly-dance, arousal movements and g-string stripping. In one such seen I have seen the hero licking some part of the heroine. They call all these “love”
There would be lot of extra girls jumping and doing acrobatics around the couples (the number of girls depends upon the investment in the movie). Those females will have bare minimum clothes wrapped around them. In short, you can see lot of sexual abuse and violence in the name of love.
Critics say this is western culture. But it is not. West has a decent culture. Don’t blame it on to the Westerners. Without understanding the truth, we imitate an ugly part of western life-style – imitating west won’t make us westerners. And it just makes us half-baked duplicates.
– Here is the relevance of the incident I mentioned earlier.. In the west, they don’t marry before dating. In India, it is the other way around. I have not yet seen any Indian man who married a girl who gone bed with him before marriage. And even if you argue with some rare instances, I am sure that it won’t last for long.
So what do you mean by love?
– Is it purely physical action or exercise to satisfy either ego or hormones’ call? Just using heavy words like “eternal” “soul” “different” or “intense” makes it right? I don’t know. Our psyche is not yet ready for this, though we blindly imitate a part of western culture.
Because, in our deep sub-conscious, we know that this is not love, though we are in a denial state.
You may ask what authority do I have write about love. What the bloody view point that you try to talk on us, we free-thinkers?
But, I can make a claim – because I have experienced the real cosmic love in my life. That was the boon given to me by the cosmic energy that is known as GOD. The true love is eternal = that makes you live in peace and happiness. It is a harmony between you and the cosmic.
– We also have to learn about what our ancestors have taught us about the love.. This ia a land of eternal love –
The real symbol of love that’s eternal and in tune with cosmic was that of Radha and Krishna. Have you ever read that?
– Have you ever heard of Usha-Anirudh, Kacha-Devayani, Sati-Shiv, Satyavan-Savitri and ofcourse, Meera-Krishna…if you don’t know please try to read the stories from our own ancestors. Then, of course, you can think about Romeo and Juliet or Titanic love stories and Valentine day.
By
Udaylal Pai
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Simply just want to tell you Now i’m happy that i came
in your site!
There is no Indian perspective its is an ARYAN concept and sanskar, which Islam and Xians follow, but do not know why, all explanations are only in our sastras. I give one example, EROS described by Hindus sastras……”he invoked the god of love to disturb Shiva’s meditation. The name of this particular god was Madana. Madana had a bow and some arrows that were made of flowers. He used to shoot these arrows at his victims and then they would be filled with feelings of emotional love”.
I fell (or I would say Elevated) in Love with a girl after being friends with her for sometime….got to know from others that she is in love with someone else…not sure that was true….so asked the girl if it is true…she said no…expressed my love and she rejected citing caste reasons….felt bad but never hurt as I wasn’t really expecting anything from her….she became attached to me in the course of time….proposed to her again after understanding that we well connected emotionally…she cited caste and parents again….i said we can convince her parents if we r true to ourselves…then she said that she was commited to someone else long back….this someone was the same guy I asked when she said no but now I understood that she lied to at that time and was only manipulating me…….understood that she was a bloody BITCH….thanked god that he din’t let this relation happen because she was a WHORE…..tried many things and still unable to come out of this trauma….not only boys even girls are very manipulative….unfortunately girls are out numbering boys in this manipulation games these days…
Pranava Sri Kaluri
Jun 21, 2012 at 02:55 pm
Its vry practical analysis you found n I appreciate..:-)
vry useful for today’s young generation!
Mahavir Nautiyal
Aug 29, 2012 at 12:33 pm
Dear Dr Uday,
Your views on the subject sound orthodox ( surprising for a radical thinker ) but they are generally convincing. Your advice to girls not to get too intimate physically before marriage is largely correct as the chances are that the boy may ditch her later suspecting her of loose morals. It is as if, moral consideration are one sided and applicable for fair sex only. I also came to know of a true incident where a girl engaged to a boy agreed to have intimate physical relations with him , on the persuasions of the boy. The boy later broke off the promised marriage. Ours is a hypocritical society. The onus of maintaining moral values has been cast on the fair sex. A husband may cast covetuous eyes out side the marriage but it will not be tolerated in the case of his wife.
As for love, it is a much abused word. It is a euphemism for physical attachment, which does not last long. True love means mutual trust, understanding , sacrifice and a bit of divine spark kindling in the heart. It takes years to blossom, even a life time , to have such a love. As you said, cosmic love is pure , sublime and soul elevating. You are blessed to have experienced it. I am wandering in the wilderness to find pure earthly or divine love. No luck, brother.
Sadhak Gaurav
Jun 23, 2012 at 10:38 am
I am happy that my daughter does not live in India and hopefully, will not encounter such hypocrites mentioned in this article ….
Nishant Patil
Jun 20, 2012 at 01:15 pm
Yes, this is crap attitude of social morality in Indian males. The boy in first instance will never know whether the girl he is about to get married (arrange or love) never slept with anyone….
Avadhoot Velankar
Jun 20, 2012 at 01:29 pm
Boy questioned girls morality, because she betrayed trust of her parents. What about him was he doing all that with consensus of his parents to test her loyalty.
I also like the very balanced writing of yours, although you speak against patriarchy you never dwell to extreme opposite of it like mahila jagruti mandals. Thanx for a beautiful article.
Vishnu Prasad
Jun 23, 2012 at 11:36 am
Is Taj Mahal a symbol of Indian love ???
I am an Indian and love the Taj Mahal’s beauty. But Taj Mahal is definitely not a symbol of the concept of Indian love.
Mumtaz was one Shah Jahan’s many wives. He killed Mumtaz’s husband to marry her. He married Mumtaz’s sister after she died. (Mumtaj died after her 14th delivery). The architect had his hands chopped off so that he could never design anything similar. It is a symbol of exploitation of the labourers who built it. There was no love.
Another story states that Taj Mahal was actually a Hindu temple of Shiva named ‘Tejo Mahalya’ which was seized by Shah Jahan and renamed as Taj Mahal.
Kanchan Priya
Jun 28, 2012 at 04:26 pm
I know love is changing face now a days….What I find is that ” a boy usually falls for a girl and then uses his full minds faculty on how to fool her enough to make her think he is in love with her.”
So Girls should beware of boys and walk on the safer path.
God bless :)))
Rupa Anand
Jun 30, 2012 at 01:46 pm
Love is seeing the Oneness in and through everything and everyone. The rest is a play of the gunas and prakriti. As for relationships – every culture / nation has its own ethos and socially acceptable norms. Each boy and girl have to develop their own understanding and behaviour. Unfortunately in the East a lot of double standards exist. Men look at women as objects of possession and not as equal partners physically, mentally, emotionally and intellectually. Society and women (the doting mothers of boys !!) add fuel to this! Until an equitable society and mental attitudes come into being – where there is gender equality – women will always be at the wrong end of the stick!!
Babitha Balija
Jul 04, 2012 at 05:40 pm
Though the article is very long it is very precise and to the point.
It is true that men want to just spemd time with their girlfriends in “love-making” but later when it comes to marriage they want the purest girls or virgins. Shouldn’t men also be morally responsible?
wasn’t the guy in the article also cheating his parents?
The current society is indeed very unfair when it comes to marriage and love.
Santosh Kumar
Jul 05, 2012 at 12:00 am
Thanks for sharing your thoughts… This is the bitter truth of our society…
Innocent girls get cheated… & then there life become hell… They live in emotional trauma… Even they are not able to share there pain with anyone… This pain become like bomb in their heart & manifest latter as psychological disorder like BPD, High depression & schizophrenia….
To all my dear sisters.. Beware of this hipocratic world!!
Please try to understand the meaning of real love… Before selecting our life partner please use your logical mind first… Analyze everything & then finally take decision…
In Divine Love you will never expect… The Mother Gopi never expect from Sri Krishna… They love Sri Krishna unconditionally…
aslisya va pada-ratam pinastu mam
adarsanan marma-hatam karotu va
yatha tata va vidadhatu lampato
mat-prana-nathas tu sa eva naparah
-Sri Sikhsaastakam
I know no one but Krsna as my Lord, and He shall remain so even if He handles me roughly by His embrace or makes me brokenhearted by not being present before me. He is completely free to do anything and everything, for He is always my worshipful Lord, unconditionally.
Please try to understand what is LOVE before you give your heart to someone… Because in material world we only found the reflection of LOVE i.e LUST [Full of selfish expectation & selfish desire]… LOVE in this material world is rarest to found…
HariBol!!
Tincy Mathew
Jul 07, 2012 at 12:48 pm
Good points Dr.Udaylal Pai. You always amuse me by your writing style that compells me to read further…all your articles are well-written. I spent lot of time on Speakingtree and found that 90% of articles are just trash, generalised opinions and show-offs. Others are just copy from wikipedia.
I have joined speakingtree just because of your articles and wanted to comment on it. I understand ancient Indians had a beautiful concept of love as expressed in many puranic stories as you said. I request you to write and explain those concepts of love in your own style so that it will make today’s generation (especially NRIs) to read it and understand. Though others can write, they write to show their knowledge and not for the readers to understand. So it is your duty to write and explain Indian concepts of love
Himanshu Verma
Jul 11, 2012 at 10:32 am
Good explanation sir, all girls should read and try to save them selves from being used.
Aditya Choudhary
Jul 20, 2012 at 05:49 pm
Good blog ! will be useful for those who maybe entering those phases of life. a lot of what is said is truth !
reasons are more complicated than just ‘blaming’ someone. once on author paulo coelho’s blog there was a discussion on how male is polygamistic by nature, throughout history and even mythology there have been social practice of having many wives……… rather than getting bogged down by it, as u suggested one should move on and try to build from there, , well what else ?
Namita Sunder
Jul 23, 2012 at 08:17 am
Divine,soulful,eternal …..I feel these states of love requires another,say some higher level of conciousness. In normal ordinary cases love is standing by each other in all kind of ups and downs,accepting each other with all the qualities and shortcomings,caring,enjoying the little moments of simple pleasure together,sharing and paying attention to each others interest………..does it sound like camaraderie…even if so I understand that state of love only.
As far as the double standards towards sexual behaviors of girls and boys is concerned……you are right ,that was always there in our society.but now even more dangerous trends are cropping up.emotions and commitments in the relationship is taking back seat.material,financial aspects ,power of positions,the benefits are becoming the consideration for tying the knots.What to talk of love even the feeling of relationship is non-existent.No,I am not saying that this is true for all the cases but the trend is fast catching up.The adhesive factors are missing.
Loved that part of old songs and movies.I totally agree .They have a calming and soothing effect on nerves while the modern counterpart makes one jittery.
A good read.enjoyed it.
Nita Agarwal
Jul 23, 2012 at 05:47 pm
Love at first sight begins with physical attraction but becomes true love when the two people in love care for the mental and emotional well being of the person they profess to love. Care for the partner is very important for either love or arrange marriage to become successful.
Spirituality Seeker
Jul 27, 2012 at 09:54 pm
I don’t want to embarrass people reading this but majority people in today’s world don’t know what love really is. I read on a forum that for today’s people love is nothing more than animalistic love whose sole purpose is animalistic desire of procreation. Love has different stages from animalistic love to spiritual love. Ask any biologist and he’ll tell you that when a boy and girl fall in love it is because nature wanted them to fall in love and some kind of hormones are secreted and they are attracted to each other. This results in their mating for child birth. This kind of love last for six months to 18 months. Any kind of love after that is for emotional attachment. Means a person in love wants companionship, emotional support, financial support etc and their love may surpass this six to 18 months time frame. Though this is still not a very developed form of love but still better than the first one. And if love continues to be there even after that it is definitely spiritual love and both partners want only good of the other and they are spiritually in love with each other. That kind of love is unheard of in today’s world because for most people love means sex i.e. their love is only at the initial stage of animalistic love. Lovers in such love can’t think of anything else but sex and fulfilling sexual desires. Now how to know whether your love is animalistic or spiritual? Think of a scenario that if your beloved one is on bed and can’t move for long time will you still love them as much as you loved before. If both of you get separated for some reason will you still want all good things for your beloved one? If your beloved person looked very different (physically) from the person who you fell in love with in the beginning will your love still be the same? I mean to say if for some reason physical appearance of your beloved changed from very good looking to not so good looking will you still love that person? If your beloved person catches a disease like suppose leprosy will you still take care of him/her?
Ask these questions to yourself and if answer to all these questions is yes then your love has transcended the initial stage of animalistic love and is on course toward spiritual love passing through the second stage of love.
Ramesh Shenoy
Aug 11, 2012 at 06:26 pm
A must reading stuff for today’s teen-agers. Before attempting into something funny in life, please try to read this – there is a warning of cultural changes in our life. Thank you so much for bringing this issue up.
A serious issue, but when you write this, as usual, you make it very simple and digestive for ordinary folks – I admire your writing skills sir
Swati Arora
Aug 19, 2012 at 08:48 pm
Sir, after reading your blog my situation was like , “Jaise Mere paron se zameen khisak gayi ho”…
I was just thinking about that girl (your friend’s sister)…
Few questions were hovering my mind
1.what might be her situation after knowing the truth….?
2.Will she be able to trust any other guy in her life?
3.How she will be able to trust or love her husband?
Hate such kind of guys….and just feel like giving them a good kick…..
I still wonder whether true love exist in this world or it is just an illusion…..As per me true love can only be with God it cannot be with any human being.
Lotus Crown
Aug 17, 2012 at 08:41 pm
Marriage is a legal social contract, whereas the love between two opposite genders is not a legal social contract. Law did not recognize the Love between two lovers before their marriage and/or after marriage. There is no ground recognized by law to ask for divorce for the absence of LOVE between wife n husband.
To control the divorce rate, the latest amendment is -if husband asks Divorce, he shall give 50% of his property; and she shall be allowed to stay at Husband’s home till the settlement process has been completed.
Bharti Sharma
Aug 23, 2012 at 04:47 pm
Thanx sir, for a beautiful article. love cant be explained or spoken of but only experienced…
Meenakshi Prajapati
Aug 27, 2012 at 04:31 pm
Yeah.. i m agree true love is real love and never supports the love now days in youngsters they are just abusing the word love.
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