If a woman happens to be outspoken or loud or abrasive or assertive, provocative even, and the man is docile, unargumentative, unresponsive, silent, why is it quick to assume that the relationship ended in divorce because of the woman? I am working with very few facts here, so the matter is far being simple or two-dimensional, but judging from the fragments of conversation held by a group of so called elders – folks from our parents generation – it seems to me that it has already been decided by public opinion that the woman, being fussy and unaccommodating, with a tendency to shut herself in her room and not produce herself for hours, is naturally the reason behind a marriage falling apart. Weirdly enough, their argument gains strength from the fact that she was an only daughter, which evidently means she did not handle well the life (and obviously compromises) that a married woman is expected to make. Funny how the guy whose living situation and surroundings and roommates don’t change post marriage is not expected to offer any sort of helping hand to his wife for all the lifestyle adjustments she has to make.
Here’s the thing, they’re probably right, but it was an arranged marriage, and since we do not live in the 1950s anymore, the decision to choose X or Y as their lifelong partner would solely rest with the person who has to actually get married in the first place. Forgive me for pointing out things that nobody seems to factor in to the conversation, but is it not up to them to figure out what sort of person they would be living with for the remainder of their life? Again, we are not of our parents’ generation, where sometimes the identity of the person they were marrying was revealed to them on the day of the ceremony itself. This is stupid, they got married last year, in 2017. 2017! You can take some time to get to know the person. These elders even make a big deal about how forward it is of them to do this, to allow the couple time to, you know, get to know (for a few months that is, it’s not exactly The Five Year Engagement) a complete stranger before saying yes because that is part of keeping with the times, you see. Very progressive.
It’s possible to make errors in judgment about people, we do it all the time. But in matters such as this, to trust tradition without really including your own inputs – I don’t get it. Unfortunately in plenty of these arranged scenarios, people turn an altogether different shade post marriage, and those gory stories either end in courts or in the newspaper with headlines screaming murder. So maybe the guy couldn’t have known at all that she would be someone he may not be able to live with. Or the woman wasn’t able to gather his timidness in turn. My point is, it was their job to see what they would be up for and unless they were both hiding their true selves while being introduced to each other, someone’s good sense should have prevailed. But is it entirely the woman’s fault?
While the case in question is not as extreme as murder, divorce remains more scandalous to the middle class well-meaning society of South Delhi dwelling Kerala migrants than actual murder, so it is a big deal and news spreads far and wide. The news had reached us, who didn’t even know these poor people. I wonder how it feels knowing that people are out there speculating about your private life. It isn’t pleasant. If they knew the conclusions being reached in these conversations, man! It’s unfair, the way society works. People claim to be sympathetic and then fill in the gaps themselves in the safety of their small minds and large bedrooms.
But my writing this has nothing to do with the couple. I do not know them, it is not my business and what they are going through is unimaginable. To be convinced at one point that you had found your one person and to have it all unravel in so short a time and make all parties involved miserable is slow torture. But my mother’s recounting of the news made me seriously question the way our parents handle these things, and puts up a mirror on how our behaviour is still subject to so much regulation, and how girls are supposed to be the ones keeping their mannerism in check. Not that they would defend any arsefoolery on the part of men, but I just wish they would try the alternative perspective of the young people being themselves responsible for the kind of person they choose to marry, even in an arranged set-up. You cannot expect the solidifying of a relationship to automatically follow a wedding ceremony, it takes cautious effort and a lot of patience. She repeated that the guy was docile and would not argue, perhaps he is a non-confrontational man which is perfectly fine as many of us are. But that quality in him seems rather more forgivable than the tendency of the woman to be loud and brash – what if, just maybe, the woman is loud because she is trying to be heard? What if, a silent and unresponsive person also makes a relationship difficult and exasperating? (I speak from personal experience, I could write a book on the subject) I could be dead wrong about this, of course, but the insinuation that a woman who, straight out of the womb, is not perfectly adaptable to a whole new life after marriage is the absolute cause for its disintegration is absurd to me. Maybe it bothered me personally when my mother made that comment about the woman shutting herself in her room and not coming out for hours. I have spent a majority of my adult life behind a shut door; sometimes the shutting of the door was the only comeback I had against all the things I had to hear and be accused of. On occasion it was also concluded that this habit of mine to shut myself would deem me unworthy of a man, who, tiring of my arrogance would throw me out of his house and send me packing back to my parents, which in their definition of life is the utmost level of failure to which a daughter’s life could succumb. Maybe it’s not so complicated and I’m easily bothered by the way my mother says things. I don’t know. She has a way of making everything about such things feel second rate. I don’t know why that relationship fell apart, and it makes me sad that it did. It also makes me sad that not everyone can be a good judge of people, and that anyone can make mistakes. I do wish society was not so taboo and mental about these things. Both parties deserve less tense futures once this is behind them, but there is a tendency to naturally ostracise the person at fault and wish them ill-well. Divorce is only as big a deal in these cases as you make it. I just wish everyone listened more and speculated less.
paper and keyboard 