Ours is the only living culture where even Gods get married.
The Goddesses have intrinsic qualities that are indispensable for Gods and so the interdependent equation.
So, it's a balance, the essence of being a complimentary couple.
That message serves us in our mortal world, to the married couples, the families & therefore the larger humanity.
Our scriptures have more stories with interpretive messages than what any single person can possibly comprehend.
These stories are the essence of our cultural pluralism. That spouse is for eternal, including in reincarnated lives, is also the powerful message emanating from the stories in our scriptures.
There isn't even a word for 'divorce' in any of our hundreds of native languages!
Marriage to a Bharatiya person is a civilizational duty.
To a Bhartiya, the marriage function is sacrament, where the day and time so agreed upon is auspicious, the process is ritualistic, presided by a pundit, and with the divinity is a witness as symbolized by the fire.
There is no such thing as a poor marriage. It can be as huge or small as one wants. Of significance is that, typically, it is attended by close family members and blessed by elders. On getting married, in spirit, the couples respective families become fused as one.
In the person's cognition, on getting married, he or she instantly inherits the cultural heritage and has the responsibility to pass on the legacy of civilizational ethos by bearing children.
And so, ours is the only ancient civilization that continues to survive and thrive since thousands of years.
Only those who are distanced from their own culture, are easily seduced by the illusion of the so-called modern society's idea of absolute individuality. It is they who are ready to abandoned our time tested ideas of family living, and wellbeing.
They fail to learn to accept the vagaries within a married life, which are nothing more than Karmic offerings & outcomes. Not having invested in matured bonding through sacrifice, and having focused only on the dividends of relationship, that marriage inevitably feels like a bondage when the frictions from life's turning wheel show up.
They then come to a conclusion that there's only one life, and so maturity is in reaching one's potential through efficiency, rather than the more effective way of a more settled living.
They attempt to make their marriage work through a contract like arrangement, and when they discover that human relations are built on adjustments and not linear logic, they try controlling their spouse, or simply abdicate their responsibilities by becoming indifferent to the other's need.
With time, they seperate or divorce.
Perhaps such people rationalize that it's better to be miserably lonely than remain unhappily married.
They have become excessively Western in thought, and underestimate the significance of marriage, without assessing the impact of diluted marriage in the Western society.
So, while the Indian marriages work, the innately Abrahamic cultured nations are seen struggling to retain the family structure.
Having said that, the gold, glitter, glitz & glam in rich urban households during the wedding season get the media attention and gossip traction.
We too are forgetting what marriage in our culture is about.
We have begun to associate the cluster of invented events as marriage.
No; marriage is not a party.
Marriage is also not just a cohabitation. One dosen't share only half the bed; one builds on the dreams together with the significant other.
Let us not mistake marriage with the pre-or-post wedding events tamasha.
Let's keep its sanctity in place.
In India, marriage is not a happy ending for a couple in love. It is the beginning of a love story.
