Skip to main content

Love Marriage

The latest victims of bigotry


“If we had a daughter and she came home with a boyfriend, how would you react?” Maggie asked me a few years ago. The context was a love marriage that had taken place rather too privately. We knew the girl whose parents were staff of the residential school where Maggie and I worked. The parents were opposed to their daughter’s affair and rightly so. That girl was found dead in her husband’s house a couple of months back.

“I would be amused,” I answered Maggie’s question. I explained that love was the most natural feeling between a young boy and a young girl. It should not, however, divert their attention from their career aspirations and life’s goals. On the contrary, love should invigorate their goals and aspirations.

Maggie sighed. The sigh probably meant how naively idealistic I was. But she persisted with her questioning. “Suppose the boy belongs to a different cultural, linguistic and religious background?” She asked.

“None of those things matter,” I said. “The only thing that matters is that the boy should deserve our daughter.” I assumed that Maggie and I would be ideal parents, so ideal that our daughter would know how to make the right choices.  

I remember telling Maggie that day that the success of marital relationships owed to only one language, the language of love; only one culture, the culture of love; and only one religion, the religion of love. “How have we lived together as a happy couple for so many years?” I asked her. She goes to church and I even drop her at the church, but I don’t enter the church. I don’t believe. I have never questioned her faith and she has never questioned my faithlessness. We are friends. We continue to be friends. We are not husband and wife who try to dominate each other; we are friends who try to understand each other incessantly. That is the secret of happiness in married life. That requires no religion, no culture, no language.

Every honour killing in cases related to love marriages is a failure of love and success of absurd things such as religion, culture and other forms of bigotry.

“What if our daughter’s choice is bad?” Maggie questioned me that time.

“I’ll try to make her understand first. Then I’ll try to make the boy understand that. Of course, I would have made him a friend by then.”

“What if that doesn’t work?” Maggie persisted.

“I believe in destiny.” That was my answer. Yes, I would leave that to destiny. But I would do whatever I could to make sure that my daughter, my daughter who refused to take my counsel in spite of my love and understanding, would live happily with her choice. I would do whatever I could to make her life happy. That is love. How can love wish anything else?

When I read reports about killings in the name of honour – which is always associated with religion, culture and such absurd things – I know without doubt that there is no love involved in the murders. Love cannot murder. Love cannot harm anyone. Love can only do good to others. Religion kills. Culture kills. Bigotry kills.

My religion is love. My language is love. My culture is love.

Can you say that? If you can, you are creating a better world. All the best to you. If you are not sure, check yourself.



Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. You won my heart with your thought Tomichan Matheikal. For I too believe that love knows no boundaries and need only understanding, compassion and love. The girl and boy falling in love should be able to help each other rise in life.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's very saddening to see people inflicting so much pain on others, their own sons and daughters, in the name of love. I'm glad you agree with me on this issue.

      Delete
  2. "Love cannot murder. Love cannot harm anyone. Love can only do good to others."- So true. Yet these fools kill in the name of loving their loved ones!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...

Empuraan and Ramayana

Maggie and I will be watching the Malayalam movie Empuraan tomorrow. The tickets are booked. The movie has created a lot of controversy in Kerala and the director has decided to impose no less than 17 censors on it himself. I want to watch it before the jingoistic scissors find its way to the movie. It is surprising that the people of Kerala took such exception to this movie when the same people had no problem with the utterly malicious and mendacious movie The Kerala Story (2023). [My post on that movie, which I didn’t watch, is here .] Empuraan is based partly on the Gujarat riots of 2002. The riots were real and the BJP’s role in it (Mr Modi’s, in fact) is well-known. So, Empuraan isn’t giving the audience any falsehood as The Kerala Story did. Moreover, The Kerala Story maligned the people of Kerala while Empuraan is about something that happened in the faraway Gujarat quite long ago. Why are the people of Kerala then upset with Empuraan ? Because it tells the truth, M...

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...