When we talk of our wedding celebrations, it’s all about either an honour or humiliation, most of the times needless exaggeration
Ours is the society merged in the pool of customs and traditions. And, if you abandon even a small chunk of the prodigious praxis, you are in a trouble. From relative to neighbour, friend to foe, all in the same tone shall show consistency in dragging their long muzzle in your matter. Good or bad, expensive or affordable, every custom must be followed in an order. Especially when we talk of our wedding celebrations, it’s all about either an honour or humiliation, most of the times needless exaggeration. I believe most of the married couples in Kashmir have gone through series of events with the minimum interludes.
Marriage is the pious institution of trust and conviction. Two different people with entirely dissimilar established set of attitudes are tied together in the nuptial knot. After the wedding party is over and bride is red-carpeted by the groom’s family, the valuable couple of months are about to commence. It’s the time when the couple should know each other completely, make one another feel comfortable at home, and learn each other’s disparities.
In Kashmir I have come across one ritual that for first ten days or so the bride is allowed to spend most of the time with her husband. But, the problems actually develop when our relatives and neighbours visit for the greetings and are reluctant to spend time with the bride. And, if somehow they don’t, mother-in-law demands her to sit in front of them. More than spending some quality private time with her husband during the day time, she ends up being with the visitors.
I’m not blaming the visitors or anybody else for that matter, the situation develops as such where you can’t help it. And, this whole process of meetings and post-wedding rituals continue almost for three long months. It means whole of their schedule is in shambles, they being defenseless and vulnerable to such unforeseen events.
The newlywed couples deserve complete privacy, at least for a week or fortnight. And, I don’t think it’s possible to guarantee them much required solitude at home. Most of the times surrounded by family and relatives, one holiday together is justifiable.
But, in our society one interpretation is very common among most of our elders. It implicits if a newlywed couple soon after their wedding proceeds for a holiday, their fidelity toward the family and courtesy for a fraternity would be suspected. Moreover the environment around the couple is an attack of collywobbles.
A travel together is an optimistic expectation for a newlywed couple to move away from the hustle and bustle of life, the stress they literally confronted while planning their wedding and the customs during it, and relaxing peacefully in the lap of some picturesque locus.
It’s not necessary to spend colossal amount of money for these holidays, just choose the place according to your budget, but should be cut off from the hubbub or cacophony of our everyday activities. And, more than the sightseeing, it should be spending your time with each other. It’s an occasion of knowing, or in a more sophisticated way letting off the ground for a while, not the actuality anyways.
Pragmatically, it’s the moment to create a healthy atmosphere, the solid beginning for the life together. And, it’s only possible if we happily allow, rather arrange some lonely vacation for them.
Actually, what is this privacy? I must say it’s a fundamental human right, the right to be left alone. As says Billy Graham,” Once you’ve lost your privacy, you realize you’ve lost an extremely valuable thing”. Most important thing is there need to be the balance in it.
Rule is one has to strike the balance. What I mean to say is if there’s a hundred percent privacy, the relationship with the rest of the family will start growing intolerable. And, if there’s no privacy at all, it’s a double edged sword where the bond between the parents and the couple as well as inter-couple pledge and fusion weakens. So, it’s knowing your boundaries well, where the privacy should begin and end.
The privacy isn’t confined to secluded vacations only. Our elders must realize that the couple should be given the proper space at home as well. Poking your nose into every domain of their life not only would push them away from you, but it may infect their married life as well. Offering an advice is a different thing, but forcing your ideology over the couple would be stridulous in a very bad way.
By no means I’m advocating rebellion against our parents or elders, nor am I in support of being indifferent. The mutual respect is an art of living a happy life among your own, or one must say a well coalesced family. But, the family would be integrated if we know how to draw the lines. Especially when we have welcomed someone, our daughter-in-law, from a different family, there may be initially many contradictory affairs coming into play. But, as we start knowing one another in the family, things start falling at the right place and deference fails to descend. It’s an ascending process now on where the members of family virtually have deep affection for one another.
Say, tomorrow if my son and his wife want to spend some days together at some holiday destination, or they want to launch some new business venture, or may be change the ambience of their bedroom, neither me nor my wife should have any problem with it. They are no more caterpillars; we should treat them as beautifully grown up and sagacious butterflies.
We can’t tie them by the ropes of our own customs and traditions, but if they make an error or require our help we should be beside them throughout. Seclusion and quietness, giving them ample time and space to recognize and appreciate each other, and not to jab or prod our own policies into their budding relationship.
If we follow these simple rules in our life, I’m sure there shall grow the mutual approbation and the generation gap will shrink. At the end of the day, a happy family is not a myth at all, provided we follow certain principles peacefully.
(Author is a Doctor)
qhchangal@gmail.com