WHAT IS LOVE AND WHAT IS MARRIAGE ?

Love is eternal and pure. It can be a source of immense joy. It beautifies life. It adds colour to life. It doesn’t get polluted by sex even, whether it is before commitment or after commitment.

Marriage on the other hand is well thought off. The girl should be right, the boy should be right. Is the girl a post-graduate ? How much does the boy earn ? These details matter the most. And auntyjis and dadimaas look into all the miniscule details as if its their own wedding.

The main question is, does love or marriage have a formula ? Like the famous theory goes –the biggest shortcut to become rich is to marry a rich girl. Likeways another theory goes, the shortcut to get settled abroad is to marry a NRI girl. But if I have to truly say, rich and NRI girls are not fools.

Can a marriage well-thought off by the brain, get rejected by the heart ? It can be. You start looking for love or sex outside marriage-it is termed as ‘cheating’. The ‘other woman’ or ‘other man’ can of course break the marriage. So is the third person solely responsible for the mess ? Is it right to call the third person ‘a homebreaker’ ? I don’t agree, because may be you looked at matters of the brain- ie financial status, external beauty etc and came to the utter ‘wrong’ decision.

 Can a marriage decided solely by the heart, fail ? No, that marriage may never break. Because in this case pure love acts as the fevicol holding both the people together. We do know that gay and lesbian marriages do exist. It is pure love there. Even though it looks odd for the ajjis and auntyjis, they have to take it since basically ‘love is blind’.

But the ways of the world are-‘You FALL in love, but marriage is a DECISION.’ It is also said that true love happens only during teenage. The ‘pehla nasha’ kind of feeling, the fluttering heart, its she only forever, then. But as age passes and the truth of the society pulls out the innocence out of your body, you begin thinking from your brain. 

  

My conclusion is that whether its love or marriage, you should do what suits you. I even know of a man who committed suicide because he had a fight with his girlfriend. He, an employee of my past company wrote on his suicide note, “By the time you come back and say sorry to me, I would have gone too far away”. Different people have different mental built up. So accordingly you have to choose a ‘marriage based on love’ or a ‘well thought off financial status friendly marriage’. A ‘well thought off love cum status friendly marriage’ is also possible. But it is rare and only for the few lucky ones.

GAUTAMA BUDDHA FOR MENTAL PEACE

Well, born in today’s times, we are lucky to follow whatever and whoever we want to. There may be some who follow Saibaba, some follow Lord Ganesha-to each his own. I follow Gautama Buddha for mental peace.

It all began when I was eighteen. I was diagnosed with a certain mental illness. My mom, like all Indian mothers panicked. As is with this illness I couldn’t concentrate in studies. I flunked my FYBCom exams. My future looked meek. On the advise of my doctor I changed place. I shifted to Manipal, Karnataka, took admission in a college over there and began life afresh.

I took medical treatment in Mangalore. The treatment was very good, slowly my life which was out of my hands started coming around. I finished my graduation and returned home in Mumbai in 2004.

Life after graduation, meant taking more challenges. I was not successful in my endeavours which brought stress, marriage and the call centre job added upon the already existing stress. And after little bit of soul-searching and pursuit of mental peace, I stumbled upon Gautama Buddha. My search ended then and there. I bought a palm-sized statue of Him from a gift gallery in Vashi and it changed my life completely. Even though I still take medicines, my life changed and changed for the better. The mere presence of the statue brought positive energy in the house. I started to feel that life is beautiful. Initially I used to brood that my friends are doing better than me and that I’m a loser. But the statue made me see the better side of life. It gave me unimaginable strengths. I did my MA in Journalism and mass communications and have taken up writing as a part time occupation. I still work in the call centre but am at peace with myself and my career. I now don’t hate myself because so and so is an engineer, so and so is a MBA and their careers are rocking while mine is down in the dumps.

And all this is only because of the Gautama Buddha statue in my house in Sanpada. Although in Ulwe, my marital home, Mr Poojari worships Shri Shubananda Swamiji, and it is not allowed to worship anyone else, I’ve downloaded a beautiful picture of my Lord in my mobile phone. So whenever I feel stressed or whenever I have an issue, I can glance at him. And yes, He does drive the negatives out of my system and I’m all positive and charged for the next venture. No I don’t say any chants, I just glance the pic for nearly a minute and the blues go choomantar.

Even though Buddhism is a religion in itself, I’ve not converted. I’m still a Hindu and do make a point to show around all the sarvajanik Lord Ganesha idols during Ganeshotsav to my daughter, but for mental peace I resort to Buddha, the enlightened one.           

THE LOCKDOWN EXPERIENCE

 Hi, this is my first serious blog. I mean I plan to continue writing a blog daily and throw insights into my and our contemporary life as parts of the society.

Life under lockdown is comparatively relaxing than my normal busy office-going days when I had to leave home at 8 AM. We do have our ‘work-from-home’ routines, four hours per day ie two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening.  

I did go out during the curfew-relaxation duration to buy essentials today. There was relatively short queue this time outside the departmental store. I was not bored. But I was definitely SHOCKED, on seeing the price of the washing powder: its price was Rs 1080. I think it weighed a good 10 kgs. There was no half-kg or 1 kg washing powder available. And the alternate kirana store was also shut. This has been the state since the past one month. I mean, WHY would anybody buy such a huge packet. I mean, I am a strongly built woman, but I CANNOT lift more than five kgs. So that purchase is still pending. I just pray to Almighty that the other kirana store gets the washing powder of believable quantity and the stock lasts till I buy it and then me braving the hard-sun would be worth it.

I’m not able to get the medicines either. The doctor, a specialist has got his clinic in Vashi. The required medicines are available in the ground floor of the same building. But I currently stay in Ulwe. Here even in the reputed medical stores there is no stock. Even in the medicines-online website, there is no stock available in our particular location ‘Navi Mumbai’. I just pray to God that everything ends well.

However difficult life has been in this lockdown period, I am of the opinion that the Modi government has done its best. This suffering and strange sort of unimagined relaxation period will be remembered. Well, it has been the first in my thirty-seven year life that I’ve faced any sort of curfew. All over the world the situation is bad. But guys, it’ll end soon, we need to follow the guidelines and life will be normal.

My new e-books Apr 2020

Hi !
I'm Priya Gopal, a part-time writer.
I always choose subjects which are interesting and make for a good read.
      So here I'm, with two new e-books,
'horror stories' and 'smiles of the concrete city- part 4 and 5'.
     So in this boring covid19 lockdown  period, you can always read and load your senses with freshness. These e-books are available in amazon.in
      Bye for now...