Love-aaj aur kal !!!

A few days back, at our T-School (a glorified name for an engineering college), we were given a task to plan a wedding .Yes! You read it right; I.T. Engineers were asked to plan a wedding. Well, that was the bad news, the good news was that there were no real couples involved (and hence spared from turning their most cherished and dreamed event into a nightmare.). Well, one thing that emerged from the project session was that engineers (like me) were experts at turning gold into dust, leave alone a wedding into a lifelong nightmare. And the second most profound thing that emerged was the cynical view about the institution of marriage among the present generation.
Among all the jokes that were cracked, the ones emanating the most were more about planning of the divorce more that wedding, because going by the current trends in Urban India, the possibility of a divorce taking place is more than even the marriage taking place. Yeah! We all were joking (and pretty poor ones at that), but a joke is after all a manifestation of seriousness of truth happening around us.
Newspapers, Magazines, Internet chat rooms are abuzz with the break ups and divorces taking place, more so among the ‘youth icons.’ You have one sportsperson proposing to give up her sports after marriage only to break up her engagement the next day. You have n number of movie stars flinging around with one partner and then with another one the very next week. For people like me, who live in the old classical school of love, all such instances are just distasteful and cheap publicity stunts.
The point is that with the increased liberalization and ‘spoilt for choices’ mindset, the whole concept of relationship has gone haywire. And the information explosion hasn’t helped things either. Everyday stories are being carried out of some break up which till yesterday seemed like a relationship made in heaven. We are being continuously bombarded with brittle love stories only to find them shredded to pieces in the next day news. As a result the trust upon the institution of love is under threat. A recent survey conducted by Times of India, showed that arranged marriages in India are more likely to succeed than love marriages. Well, like every other thing in India isn’t it ironical that today, when the youth is much more informed and mature to take choices than his predecessors, he falters at the most important choice of his life—that of a life partner.
Well, I just completed 3 years of my relationship and I draw Wows from my friends upon telling them this. That’s because in today’s scenario to carry on a relationship so long is considered a rare feat. I sometimes wonder, then how wonderful our parents might be feeling who keep on completing one jubilee after another and are still happy with each other. Many of my friends and acquaintances in engineering have had a break up atleast once in life. And then they have gone ahead , like an injured rhino, uprooting and breaking everything that came their way, spreading the infection of disappointment of love, until they found their heart being silenced once more by some tender touch.
Personally speaking, I belong to the old school of love, where a relationship is composed of poems, shy stares, momentary winks, flying kisses. Where the best Valentine Gift is being with your partner, rather than substituting yourself with an expensive gift. Where the highest level of intimacy is holding hands together, and most importantly where relationship is all about permanency and not giving up at the slightest whiff of trouble. Relationships are not made in heaven, they are made very much on the earth. However! To make them feel like heavens, is a strength God has bestowed upon us.