The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Family as an institution

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 06, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Family as an institution

R. Sujatha

"When one partner tries to control other, marriage is stressed"

FAMILY VALUES: Rotary district governor R. Shyamsundar (left) welcomes Vijay Amritraj at a seminar on family values on Wednesday night. Actor Crazy Mohan (right) looks on. — Photo: K. Pichumani

CHENNAI: It was a meeting to assess the value of the family in today's context and how to keep the family together.

But then, family was the reason key speakers came late or early for the programme. Family was the reason they were interrupted by their mobiles when they were on the dais. And family was the reason quite a few left the meeting around 9.30 p.m. even before every one on the dais had expressed their views.

"Touch starved"

Psychiatrist Vijay Nagaswami said marriage rested on the four pillars of love, trust, respect and intimacy while the unstated expectation in marriage is unconditional love. When one partner tries to control the other actively or passively, marriage is stressed. Trusting a partner as much as one's parent is imperative, he said. In India "children sit squarely" in the marriage denying partners emotional intimacy. Often partners are "touch starved."

Tennis player Vijay Amritraj said he once returned home to spend Christmas with his parents even though it meant giving up a shot at an international title he could have won, he recalled. Spending time with the children and understanding the law that the love of a parent for a child is unconditional was important, he said.

Playwright `Crazy' Mohan, who continues to live in a joint family, said he owed his professional success to the support he received from his grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts. Agreeing that television degraded women to some extent he said: "If we can endure politicians and bad roads why not a wife?" When his wife needed a kidney transplant every one in the family offered to donate the organ.

"She could choose whose kidney she wanted to have," he said.

Bharatanatyam exponent Parvathy Balasubramanian drove home the message that even children are aware of the changing family values.

Her students presented a skit on how a woman from a staunch Brahmin family and a fortune-teller from Karaikudi looked at the changes technology had wrought on families.

Good citizens

The dancer said family values such as duty and responsibility were ingrained in us, which made us good citizens.

She said technology was only a tool and it should not rule our lives.

Trust between family members was now eroded because family members did not have enough time to spend with one another, she said.

The programme, held on Wednesday, was organised by Rotary International District 3230.

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