A father's letter

My dear Princess,

So, my Sukanya has come to yet another life-changing decision - one that she didn't confide in me, for a change. And that explains the depth of your pain more than anything else - and when I heard it from your mother, I realized the need to talk to you without a heated discussion or an emotional breakdown, hence this decision to write a letter. Old fashioned of me, I'll admit it before you point it out :).

Five years ago, when you told me that you were in love with Raghav, I faced no difficulty in stepping aside and letting you run into his arms, for your decisions were enviably perfect. (I had faced the "letting go" phase years before that when you chose to go to Delhi for your Doctorate - a remarkable feat it was, for me to let you go, considering the violence that the city gained an unnaturally large - um, debit for.) It now surprises me that you seem unclear about this decision which you seem to have taken, but hey, what else are we here or?

Yes, the primary purpose of this letter is to persuade you to reconsider this decision, I will not pretend that it is not so, but rest assured - as ever, I will not stand in the way of your final decision. Now, before you start equipping yourself with points to defend this decision of yours, I want you to read this with an open mind - take in each word, let it sink into your person.

I will try not to bore you with long winding explanations of 'how it was in our time', but I will be using quite a lot of it - and I'm sure you will agree, in extremely relevant contexts.

I told you a year after your wedding, that I couldn't have found you a better groom than Raghav, and, believe me, I am not drunk - I still stand by my word. You will agree with me when I say that the first two years of your marriage constituted some of the best moments of your life - and that your days couldn't have been happier. As an engineer, I'd ask you to sit back as a passive, objective observer, and find out what went wrong - if at all anything did. Note down observations, identify the dependent and independent factors, look at parameters that changed, and things that were affected by these changes. No, I'm not going to give you any further data on that - I'll just give you my 'thoughts', not unlike a PhD guide, as I'm sure you will relate. Without further ado, I'll start right away, hoping that these words will serve as springboards - triggers for your thoughts to propel themselves from.

A marriage, irrespective of why such an institution was created - let's really not get into all that - subjects each spouse to the most intense emotions of the other. While this multiplies your happiness in times of joy, it results in you getting to each other - more often than not. It comes down as a concentrated load, resulting in high stresses, frequently leaving behind scars. Young couples, irrespective of their age and level of maturity, tend to behave in a childish manner with each other, fighting over extremely silly things - ones that seem pretty trivial even to kids. And, perhaps the cumulative effect of such squabbles is something as extreme as a divorce.

Convincing a judge in sanctioning a divorce is far easier than convincing yourself - and, unless I'm much mistaken, neither Raghav, nor you, are sufficiently satisfied with this option. So, before you get all hasty with your formalities, consider these points in a truly objective manner -well, at least as objective as possible.

Divorce was a concept brought in by the West and it wasn't - well, it still isn't entirely convenient in our society. Modernization, today, has become a way of "obscenizing" things and later accepting them - probably the most unnecessary two-fold process on this planet. Coming back, I want you to sit back and introspect as to why strained marriages are so common in our society today. Divorce is a Western concept, Sukanya, and it will continue to be so - for another twenty years at least, and, while I don't blindly condemn it, I feel that it should be resorted to, only when there is absolutely no other choice left. I'm convinced that that isn't the case with you.

Consider these:

Quite a lot of couples stay together in spite of utter incompatibility purely for the sake of their children, and end up, at least occasionally, tolerating each other (while others ruin their kids' life in spite of being together - let's leave that for the moment). It is clear that children, being a directly affected party, become an extremely important factor in a couple's decisions. Yeah, this doesn't apply to your case yet, but I'll bring it up when necessary.

I find scores of discussions on Quora relating to how arranged marriages have ruined lives, with incompatible couples splitting as easily as they got together. Are you able to see why?

Quorans coolly dismiss ideas of arranged marriage that are a major component of our tradition since time immemorial, blindly supporting love marriages (this old man's recent paranoia is Quora, do bear with me). Now, I'm certainly not against love marriage - it does, certainly ensure a beautiful beginning to a life together, but aren't love marriages failing statistically as badly as, if not worse than arranged ones? Does all this only mean that difficulties in marriage are surfacing now, unlike the olden times?Well, to an extent, I must agree, but come on, we all can't be that naive. Something went wrong somewhere, everyone can't've been unhappy. There was child marriage back then - evil, yes, but people had no opportunity to fall in love, for, before they knew what gender they belonged to (ignore the slight exaggeration and concentrate on the content), they were married. Most of them did, eventually at least, end up falling in love with each other. So, most of them were happy. And then comes some modernization, followed by a drastic ump in the number of failed marriages.

Love marriage is certainly not a solution - or things would've been much better now - nor is it the problem, so no worries for you there. Love isn't something that the West taught us. It has had vivid, marked allusions in our scriptures, our epics - and our stories have had marvellous examples of love stories with very happy endings. yeah, those were uncorrupt, pure forms, but leave that aside now. So what went wrong?

Back in the old times there were arranged marriages, some love marriages, and... well, nice kids with parents... and.... joint families!!! Hey, where are those now? Isn't it even remotely possible that that could be a factor? Of course, people today say that arranged marriages don't work and blame our custom for it - they're only taking a part of the system and then complaining about it..

A young couple (meaning a couple who have been together for less than about a decade, so no shame there) needs to be taken care of, just as two kids need to be. Well, while every moment of theirs need not be monitored, they should, at the very least, be answerable to someone. To someone who cares. All this talk of "mah lyf, mah rulezz" will put a man in a ditch - and keep him there till he admits he had got it all wrong, perhaps longer. Every right has a responsibility attached to it, and whether one cares to admit it or not, the truth will be forced down one's throat. And a responsibility is better attended to when one is monitored. So, yes, a young couple needs to be taken care of - a marriage, be it arranged or love, has the potential to turn into a disaster when away from the (rest of the) family.. Hang on, isn't love, um, compatible with nuclear families? Well, is it? Look at the West, why, look at us.. Divorce seems to be an everyday affair back there, and is far tending towards such a situation here as well..

So, coming back to the concentrated load-high stress theory, a joint family proves to be a silent magnetic/gravitational field - quite like the moon is held in its orbit by the sun as well, in addition to the earth's gravity -  guiding the decisions of couples, at least inadvertently - precompression to reduce the tensile stress of married life.. a distribution of stress (responsibility), resulting in less intense emotions of anger, irritation and frustration - and, I'm sure it will do some good for the population as well.

If not for their own sake, a couple needs to be taken care of, for the sake of their children - factors that again contribute to the togetherness of the couple, but affected parties as well (a self referential function? A vicious circle? Ok, chuck..). Couples are not born parents, they are made into good ones. Parenting is something that needs to be learnt, understood, mastered. Elders are needed, to teach you how to bring up your kids, and to deal with your family. It is a shame to find people googling to learn how to talk to their children and the like.. Maybe I should write about what not to search on Google - limits do exist, even with Google... ok, that's a talk for another time..

A couple needs an external force to keep it going - forces, in fact, from a parent figure on one side and their kids on the other, they just can't handle it on their own.. this force is needed till you are mature enough - and, believe me, that's going to take ages..

So, my suggestion to you is this: you two should stay with Raghav's parents for a few - at least till you think you are clear enough. A decision taken in an agitated state will always result in regret - you still have time, Princess, and you are a fully grown up woman. I'm sure tensions will slide down, and things will turn out for the best. I trust you completely, and rest assured, your mother and I will stand by your decision and will fully support you, whatever it may be - but just don't let Raghav go, he's a good man. Call me if you need anything - or come over, anytime. I love you, Sukanya, take care.

Love,

Appa

[P.S (for the writeup, not part of the letter): I wanted to call the daughter Murph, but got over it with great effort :D]