“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher” – Socrates …

… an incontestably enigmatic man, widely credited with having been the founder of western philosophy, and quite in spite of the fact that in the matter of marriage his sympathies lay singularly with men, she couldn’t help but find both humor and solace in his unequivocal indifference to an institution which even as far back as ‘before the common era’, aka B.C.E, was seen as being something of an idiosyncratic one, all the more aberrant by the early 19th century when the sentiment of love began to trespass on what had been a perfectly dispassionate alliance of either mutual economic or political benefit between two parties and their respective families; if anything, the dynamics of live-in-relationships, never mind the cumbersome red tape of marriage, have always been wholly counter-productive to the health and longevity of romantic love, just as the values and practices of the latter are incongruous with the former …

… The ancient Greeks had even declared the initial stages of love, those that are typically characterized by sexual desire, an altogether dangerous condition in which the vagaries of sentiment triumph over any and all attempt at reason; later on, this theory was vigorously revived by the early feminists, in particular Mary Wollstonecraft who went so far as to indict men for encouraging women to indulge in excessive emotion, thereby calling into question one of the most charming traits, never mind rare privileges of the female species.

Most unfortunately, while the strides made in gender equality may well have alleviated many of the pressures of marriage on men – especially economic ones since women somewhat inadvertently fought for the right to ‘bring home the booty’ and are thus quite justifiably expected to contribute to the bills – they appear to have done a fair amount of damage to one of the most precious forms of intimacy between the two sexes, that which flourishes under the auspices of a dominant and submissive, the hierarchical distinction essential to the safeguarding of both a woman’s femininity and a man’s ‘amour propre’; after all , it isn’t for its literary quality that Fifty Shades of Grey has become a veritable household name!

In an ideal world romantic love would be permitted alongside marriage by mutual consent, the preservation of the institution crucial at a time when people are becoming increasingly dehumanized by the advance of technology and divided by excessive individualism; marriage is not only intrinsically self-sacrificing, but also far more resilient when divorced from the idea of love. Moreover, it is the most effective of all antidotes to loneliness when one crosses that precarious threshold of mid-life, the very one she was approaching in chosen solitude, yet periodically beset by self-doubt.

However It was only of live-in relationships that she had some amount of experience, and by consequence fitting cynicism, having managed on each and every occasion to flee from the altar in the nick of time, her tireless appetite for the poetic impossible to satiate amidst the onslaught of everyday life; needless to say discussions pertaining to house-hold expenses and plumbing problems had proved to be rather hazardous to romance, any and all endeavors to protect, never mind give priority to the nourishment of passion deemed hedonistic, if not downright impure …

… but alas, like many others belonging to her ilk, she had misunderstood the most important principle of marriage i.e. a partnership that remains unsusceptible to both the machinations and mercurial nature of romantic love.

There has always been something exceptionally pragmatic about the Indian approach to this rather complex institution, one that remains untarnished by the melodramatic exchange of (unfailingly broken) vows synonymous with Western wedding ceremonies, the most familiar being the traditional protestant ones that ring of voluntary life imprisonment : “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death” …

… whereas a Hindu couple will impassively recite the following together – rather than make fanciful promises to each other – by way of embarking on a virtual joint venture : “Let us take the first step to provide for our household a nourishing and pure diet, avoiding those foods injurious to healthy living. Let us take the second step to develop physical, mental, and spiritual powers. Let us take the third step to increase our wealth by righteous means and proper use. Let us take the fourth step to acquire knowledge, happiness, and harmony by mutual love and trust. Let us take the fifth step so that we are blessed with strong, virtuous, and heroic children. Let us take the sixth step for self-restraint and longevity. Finally, let us take the seventh step and be true companions and remain lifelong partners by this wedlock.”

But alas, in the end there is no right way, for as the father of existentialism Soren Kierkegaard once wrote:

“If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or if you do not marry, you will regret both; whether you marry or you do not marry, you will regret both’ …

… except in this particular case, her advice to those in the prologue of their adult lives would be to regret something done rather than not done, for the idiom ‘what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you’, will not hold true.