A phone conversation.
“Hello, Mummy.”
“Hello, beta. Sab theek to hai, na?”
“Ji, Mummy, sab bilkul theek. Aap kaisi hai?”
“Main theek hoon, beta.”
A pause...
“Beta, ab tum shaadi kar lo.”
“Bye, Mummy.”
Such conversations are taking place more and more often, all across India, though in different languages, of course.
This is because grown-up children are migrating away from their parental homes to wherever they can find jobs, and parents are anxious to get them 'settled'.
Remember the dictum laid down by the renowned English writer Jane Austen in the opening paragraph of her novel Pride and Prejudice?
This is how it goes:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Make the sentence gender-neutral, and substitute ‘fortune’ with ‘job’, and you will find the amended version which many parents cling to, even in the 21st century.
Alas, their children don’t share this view. More and more young people in their 20s and 30s are shirking marriage.
Their parents are unable to comprehend this. They are disappointed and unhappy. Their generation grew up in a society where arranged marriages were the norm, 'love' marriages brought forth comments and criticism, and cross-border—even cross-caste marriages—were shunned.
The current generation of parents has, by and large, found contentment, if not love, in arranged marriages. Many of them have found life partners on their own, generally with parental consent, however reluctantly given.
But marriage was considered to be a must, whatever form it took.
Why has the current generation of youth begun to abandon marriage in any form?
I find a number of reasons:
- Money. Young people today carry a huge amount of debt—EMIs for a flat, a car, a phone, even a holiday. Besides, employment is no longer guaranteed these days; hence, savings are required, usually in the form of a SIP. Taking on the permanent expense of a family, with the (almost) inevitable children to come, is a scary proposition.
- Yes, two incomes can solve the money issues, but this brings other problems. Both partners would have studied hard and worked hard to build their respective careers, and the stress of maintaining an ascendant career path is so high that little time is left for anything else, or for each other. Young people see this happening all around them, and their thinking is impacted.
- Adjustment. Having a spouse means having to give up on many things—privacy, freedom, lifestyle and more. Many young people are not prepared to make these sacrifices for the uncertain pleasures of married life.
What about all the benefits of marriage, such as physical pleasure, companionship and all that stuff?
Come on! You don’t need to get married to have all that, not nowadays. Boy/ girlfriends and live-in relationships are quite common, and only the more conservative landlords will object to them. There is also an increasing trend towards ‘friends with benefits’. (If you don’t know what that means, it is about time you found out – just google it.)
Is all of this bad for society?
Who are we to pass judgements? Nevertheless, let us content ourselves with a practical observation—better not to marry at all than to get married and then divorced.
Then, there is the philosophical angle.
Recently, I heard the story of a teacher who had asked her students to write down what they wanted to be in life, and why. Almost all the students replied as expected – doctor, engineer, actor, even lawyer (!!!!!).
But one student just wrote “happy”.
The teacher held him back and said, “You haven’t understood the question.”
The boy replied, “Madam, you haven’t understood life.”
Precocious though he may sound, the boy was right.
Remember the American ‘declaration of independence’ proclamation? It states three unalienable rights—'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.
Today’s young men and women have the unalienable right to seek happiness in the manner they consider best. If parents believe that they have done a good job in bringing up their children, they need to believe in them. If they don’t believe in marriage, so be it.
Going back to the phone conversation...
It is true. A relative of mine narrated it to me with a great deal of sadness.
I did share her sadness, but couldn’t help thinking that she was paving the path for an even greater sadness—disconnection from her child.
If you push your child to get married, or for that matter, do anything that (s)he doesn’t want to do, you risk pushing your child away from you.
That, my friends, is too high a price to pay.
I rest my case.
The rest is yours.
(Deserting engineering after a year in a factory, Amitabha Banerjee did an MBA in the US and returned to India. Choosing work-to-live over live-to-work, he joined banking and worked for various banks in India and the Middle East. Post-retirement, he returned to his hometown Kolkata and is now spending his golden years travelling the world, playing bridge, befriending Netflix & Prime Video and writing in his wife’s travel blog.)
