Falling in love versus love that grows
Falling in love versus love that grows
“You ask how much I need you
Must I explain,
I need you, Oh my darling!
Like roses need rain--
You ask how long I’ll love you--
I’m telling you true,
Until the 12th of never
I’ll still be loving you...”
Excerpt from a song by Cliff Richard
Both Cliff Richard and Johnny Mathis had number one hits singing “The 12th of Never” on both sides of the Atlantic. The outlying English-speaking world in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand also took the wildly romantic promises embodied in the song to heart. In India it featured on the radio programme “A date with you” right up there with another Cliff Richard blockbuster called “Constantly”.
Romantic love is extravagant on promise and exalted in tragedy as the sagas ranging from Romeo and Juliet to Frankie and Johnnie will attest. The love that grows, on the other hand, is the province of the landed gentry in all cultures, because property is not something to be trifled with, and the domain of ancient civilisations, not enamoured of flighty romance, like India and China.
In these nations with thousands of years of recorded history, a distinction is made between romantic love, which is treated as an indulgence not to be allowed to interfere with preordained matters, and the taking of a suitable wife or husband at the appropriate time. Any desires left unadressed by the pressure of this requirement can be dealt with discreetly via mistresses, “kept” women, visits to refined and crude houses of ill repute for the men, and secretly celebrated but euphemistic liaisons on the part of the women.
Oddly enough, though the arranged marriage is under some pressure in a unipolar world, it turns up, on statistical average, a stunningly durable marriage. Romantic love, with its concomitants of sampled sexual compatibility and obvious pulse quickening glamour, fares poorly in this respect. A blight seems to descend on the expectations versus reality nexus in as little as a month or two, sometimes stretching hopefully to a few years.
So is the system of family support the key cementing factor in an arranged marriage? Does the blindfold on expectations imposed by a lack of familiarity before the event have anything to do with its durability? The seemingly risky business of marrying a stranger works out quite frequently into a viable relationship. Are the formulae of selection employed by the arranged marriage process more objective and enduring? Are the participants more willing to accept their lot in life and make the most of it? Or is the docility no more than passive acceptance of one’s fate and Karma? Are the manners and mores of romantic love being incorporated into arranged marriages to breathe life into the sensible but boring arrangements? The questions indeed are many and the answers vary.
In India, a growing phenomenon is a hybrid alliance which is partially arranged and allowed to blossom thereafter on its own, nudged along if it falters, by approving well-wishers and relatives. There are an increasing number of inter-region and inter-caste connections alongside the nettlesome inter-faith marriages. The good thing is that they don’t generally result in blood feuds and reactionary carnage anymore. Integration as a national concept is flowing into the mating game and just as the opposite methodologies seem to be meeting at the culvert, the cross roads themselves represent no more than different routes towards the same goal.
What seems to be the consensus is that there develops a convergence of views in time. That is, falling in love bears a striking resemblance to love that grows and vice versa. If there is anything at all to the chemistry of love which implies much more than physical attraction, all roads do lead to the same Rome. Those who lose their way on the straight as a die Apian highways must confront the mirage that held them in thrall and try again. Because when the fog clears, they will be only too ready to admit that whatever it is that they went through, they were never in love, in the first place.
(701 words)
By Gautam Mukerji
December 18, 1996
First published in The Pioneer, India, 1996
Romantic love is extravagant on promise and exalted in tragedy as the sagas ranging from Romeo and Juliet to Frankie and Johnnie will attest. The love that grows, on the other hand, is the province of the landed gentry in all cultures, because property is not something to be trifled with, and the domain of ancient civilisations, not enamoured of flighty romance, like India and China.
In these nations with thousands of years of recorded history, a distinction is made between romantic love, which is treated as an indulgence not to be allowed to interfere with preordained matters, and the taking of a suitable wife or husband at the appropriate time. Any desires left unadressed by the pressure of this requirement can be dealt with discreetly via mistresses, “kept” women, visits to refined and crude houses of ill repute for the men, and secretly celebrated but euphemistic liaisons on the part of the women.
Oddly enough, though the arranged marriage is under some pressure in a unipolar world, it turns up, on statistical average, a stunningly durable marriage. Romantic love, with its concomitants of sampled sexual compatibility and obvious pulse quickening glamour, fares poorly in this respect. A blight seems to descend on the expectations versus reality nexus in as little as a month or two, sometimes stretching hopefully to a few years.
So is the system of family support the key cementing factor in an arranged marriage? Does the blindfold on expectations imposed by a lack of familiarity before the event have anything to do with its durability? The seemingly risky business of marrying a stranger works out quite frequently into a viable relationship. Are the formulae of selection employed by the arranged marriage process more objective and enduring? Are the participants more willing to accept their lot in life and make the most of it? Or is the docility no more than passive acceptance of one’s fate and Karma? Are the manners and mores of romantic love being incorporated into arranged marriages to breathe life into the sensible but boring arrangements? The questions indeed are many and the answers vary.
In India, a growing phenomenon is a hybrid alliance which is partially arranged and allowed to blossom thereafter on its own, nudged along if it falters, by approving well-wishers and relatives. There are an increasing number of inter-region and inter-caste connections alongside the nettlesome inter-faith marriages. The good thing is that they don’t generally result in blood feuds and reactionary carnage anymore. Integration as a national concept is flowing into the mating game and just as the opposite methodologies seem to be meeting at the culvert, the cross roads themselves represent no more than different routes towards the same goal.
What seems to be the consensus is that there develops a convergence of views in time. That is, falling in love bears a striking resemblance to love that grows and vice versa. If there is anything at all to the chemistry of love which implies much more than physical attraction, all roads do lead to the same Rome. Those who lose their way on the straight as a die Apian highways must confront the mirage that held them in thrall and try again. Because when the fog clears, they will be only too ready to admit that whatever it is that they went through, they were never in love, in the first place.
(701 words)
By Gautam Mukerji
December 18, 1996
First published in The Pioneer, India, 1996
posted by GHATOTKACHSERIES at 10:00 AM
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