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Love RULES
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When Cupid strikes, customs, languages, rituals and religion hold no meaning as RAKHEE MOHAN finds out. Love Rules.
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LOVE KNOWS no boundaries and this inexplicable thing called LOVE has been tinsel world's box office formula down the ages.
So, one has Ek Duje Ke Liye, Hum Hain Rahi pyar ke, Dil Se where Priety Zinta as a Malayali woos Shahrukh Khan or even the recent Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, where the magnetism between the North and South Indians is simply irresistible. The television too is trying to dish out similar fare with Sridevi back in action as the effervescent Malini Iyer married into a Punjabi family.
Reel life replicates real life, so here we are.
Love is blind but is it deaf too? "Yes," says Amira, management student, "otherwise how would my parents have fallen in love?" Her father's a Malayali and her mother, a Sikkimese, and they met each other when her father was posted as an engineer in Sikkim. "Till date I keep asking my parents how they must have indulged in their love talk, and the only reply I get from both is a shy smile in unison."
Age cannot wither love nor custom stale its infinite variety. Ask Mr. and Ms. D'Souza who reside at Fort Kochi. He, an Anglo Indian was the quintessential bachelor in his late 50's and so it came as a real shock to some when he married Fenny who had been in London since her early childhood. "My cousin had come to meet us from Australia and asked me whether I remembered the young man who had taught me how to ride a bicycle in Kochi, during my vacations," says Ms. D'Souza. From here onwards fate just made incidents tumble along till she had to land up at Kochi on her way to meet her mother at Erode near Salem. "I rang up Mr. D'Souza and asked him if he would receive me at the airport and you won't believe it, he still tells me that, he instantly knew I was the one he had all along been waiting for," reminisces Fenny. They followed up this meeting with correspondences and after a year were married. But for Ms. D'Souza it was a conscientious decision to make. She had to give up a lucrative job in the airlines, at London. Moreover, she had to face the culture shock that was awaiting her at Kochi. "I am still an alien after all these years even though I mastered the language." The dress code is what had distressed her at first. " I used to be attired in the western style and it was a rarity then, but now when I switched over to the salwar everyone's going western with suits and trousers dominating their wardrobes." Personally, she feels that her language had to be tempered down and her candid approach in speaking her mind has not gone down well . "But I have got the best of both worlds, thanks to my husband. We are polar opposites; he reticent and I chatty, but our emotional bond is strong. We now wonder how we did without each other for so long." Raise a toast to this evergreen couple.
For Arvind, a businessman from Ooty, who got married to his mallu sweetheart of eight years, is very much like a bunch of blooming roses that he gifted to his much-surprised wife on her birthday. "I am basically a very subdued character and such an unexpected show of love raised many eye brows." Does he find any space for culture clashes? "Absolutely no. We haven't got any problem on that front because my wife knows Tamil as she had been living in Ooty well before our marriage. But some niggling things are there which isn't any cause for worry."
Nisha, a Malayali and Pratay a Bengali were doing their PhD in Hyderabad. They fell in love, got their parents' acceptance and got married combining both traditions . "Whereas we take only three rounds of the fire in our marriage ceremony, the Bengalis take seven ," says Nisha. As fish is considered to be the fruit of river Ganges, there is an offering of that made to the bride.
Lata, studying at Bangalore, is to marry her North Indian sweetheart and says she was surprised when she began receiving parcels of clothes and jewellery. "It turned out to be the shagun (auspicious custom) that each member of the family give presents to the girl. Now all my friends want to get married to guys from the North so that they can be flooded with goodies," says Lata happily.
But for Meenakshi, an HR professional in this city, life took a confused twist when she got married to her Gujarati sweetheart. "I never thought traditions and rituals would be our undoing." And in a joint family it gets even more rigid. "You have to take a bath before entering the kitchen, no late night jobs, no guy friends and so on." And one has to be forever trying to keep up with expectations notwithstanding the usual comparisons that are likely to be drawn. As her parents were against her inter-community marriage, they resorted to an Arya Samaj wedding. "Language-wise, I had no problem because I spent my initial years up in the North and Gujarati is a very sweet language which I picked up in no time. It was only the customs that I couldn't cope with." She speaks of an instance where she had to enact Bollywood's favourite mushy custom, the karva chauth. "I was so hungry that I finally complained to my aunt. She told me to go inside the room and eat else I wouldn't have been able to go through with the whole ritual. The worst part of it is to cook all those mouth-watering food, the whole day long and not having to sink your teeth into it." The way to a man's heart, they say, is through his stomach, but TV artiste, Ambika didn't take this seriously and had to bite the dust. "Food was our bone of contention. Coconut in its various forms was abhorred. And I being a Malayali couldn't do without it". She married a Kannadiga. Recently she even got to don a role of a Kannada woman in the TV serial Swapnam. "Because I was so well versed with their mannerisms I could essay that role with comparative ease and perfection." But even though hers didn't work out so well she is all for inter-state marriages as it fosters "national integration" and also "one can learn a lot from others." Moreover with her parents' inter-state marriage ticking well for 40 plus years she isn't disillusioned by her own failure.
Well, life's not a bed of roses always and people do opt for roads less travelled. And that makes all the difference in this variety show called, Love.
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