August 23,1988

We exchanged exactly one hundred letters each, by post, beginning the first of April 1988.We would not rest in comfort if a day passed by without the postman calling.  Telephone calls were an expensive alternative those days, nevertheless was also unremittingly used. And on July 31.1988 we mutually decided to restrain from writing or phoning any further. We were married on August 23, 1988 in Cochin. The letters are safely kept in (“brown paper packages....tied up with strings, and these are the few of our favourite things”)! I have not read any since, but she did a few times and when she read out, I felt shy of what was written. It was and was not sweet nothingness we exchanged, I can only tell that much.

We happened to spent one night in the same apartment in different rooms almost six years before we actually met .It was 1982 and I was   in Chennai. Those days were soon after I was employed. I was quite drunk after an official dinner and had to spend the night with her brother in her apartment. But knowing that women folk were there I slid out early in the morning as I was a trifle ashamed of the drunken ruckus I and her brother created the night before outside the apartment with a auto rickshaw driver. We later met, first while I was living in Cochin and she came over for a brief vacation to her brothers. The brief acquaintance evoked  mutual fondness, a “may be”, a “can be” feeling. She ensured that she came down to Cochin a few months later for the marriage of one of mine and her brothers’ close friend. She later confided that the trip was not ostensibly for participating in the wedding!

 And strangely indeed I always felt that she would not turn down if I proposed to her and she says she knew I would propose. Stupid cupid I was, that I even announced at home that I intend to marry her, the little sister of two fellows to whom fatefully I was near to. That was even before I proposed to her or gathered the courage to place my intent before her brothers’. But at home among my folks the seemingly ordinary choice was outrageous because she was catholic. An unimaginable ignominy for a clan that has not had to live with such audacity in living memory! It was a pleasant surprise to my friends and many others and took a while to settle.

But soon enough the end was pleasant as the Mills &Boon closing, “they married and walked happily hand in hand into the sun set”. Story ends. Good luck! 

Scene –II

And now musing over back into the years that went by with sighs,agony,ecstasy,torments,helplessness,courage,standoffs,   short lived minor emotional estrangements,contentment, besides tolerance and patience of Christy, we have now reached today the twenty third wedding day! And I guess this is our first anniversary that we are living apart by physical distance(!)

Was there dreams that were shattered? Yes. Hopes ploughed under? Yes. Moments and days of bliss and happiness? Many. It is quite true that the difficulty marriage burdens are because when in love one loves the personality, the facade, but in married life it is the character that looms large. Courtship dances and show-off are meant for avian and not man. I remember taking care in not displaying a contrived colourful personality of chivalrous, impeccable nobility. And as for Christy, she luckily for me has been a genre apart from her kin!

The adage “two bodies and one soul” is rubbish and misleading in every sense. It was two distinct individuals who lived together, two entities with sometimes disparate likings and dislikes. I’m not sure that she loved my tantrums and prankish behaviour or she put up with to begin loving it.

We had absolutely no difficulty in coping with surroundings of different family environs. Towards  her, my immediate kin was as affectionate as our conditioning and lineage was not meant to be different. And as for me, every one amongst Christy’s family understood, is amenable but may not appreciate insolence.

Did the intrusion of religion come in to play any part? Certainly not, even an iota! Christy is of different hue; she was equally at ease in matters of social and religious etiquette. Both of us are comfortable with any religious activity that is not frenzied. Though more than her, I'm a disbeliever who is convinced about the frivolity of believing..She is not a church goer in the conventional sense. She is convinced that God can be accessed not only within the confines of a church/temple or through organized hypocrisy and one can be in communion with  he or she even in one's home and perceive  in the good things around. I might sometimes have to virtually  push her on to the road to St Peters!  She has done more temple visits than one can count. Hilarious of which was her journey to the Guruvayoor temple where she went with a family friend and exclaimed loudly at something that amazed her, “Goodness Christ”. Knowing the bigotry practised there, fortunately no one over heard to create unpleasantness.

However there is one aspect in us both that is unhelpful  for gregarious living. We are not naturally disposed to creating social circles. The result is we both have a limited band of friends. In fact more than any of hers, it is my friends who are her as well.

Today, sitting alone, I can only more than anything be perplexed and  dismayed of  her character that bears no ill towards even the ones who hurt her, have been unkind and deceitful. Something I will never understand even if as the nonagenarian astrologer told my mother that  we are destined to be Man and wife for another six lives.