Made in heaven

“Marriages are made in heaven but then so are thunder and lightning,” says Leroy of the comic strip Lockhorns and he is probably right. The initial days of euphoria of moonlight and roses, shopping binges, fine dining experiences pass and the marriage seems to move into a more mundane territory do we realise what it is all about. Forgotten grocery lists, hidden in the deep recesses of pockets, mistaken birthdates, food forgotten on the burning stove and milk boiling several times over behind newspapers, waking up three times a night to change nappies! Extravagant promises, impossible reassurances, sweet nothings turn into weary arguments, (“I am listening, do I have a choice?) and the elaborate courtesy with which the car door is opened gives way to peremptory instructions

But then time marches on relentlessly and marriages go on sedately each adjusting to the idiosyncrasies and eccentricities of the other, with the public face of togetherness that eclipses private differences, the fierce loyalty that cements that oneness. Then one day as you feel the marriage has clicked, you see the strands of grey and the surreptitiously receding hairline, the odd wrinkle that threatens to overrun the forehead and sense the onset of growing years. Each cannot do without the other, the cup of coffee and the camaraderie, the easy banter, the spacious afternoons, the exchange of news from the information highway, the uneasy fear of the future and its impending plans, waiting for the long-distance ring from loved ones, cement and strengthen bonds.

Never has the sky seemed so beautiful or the horizon so red or the branch with a string of golden champa flowers more golden nor the warbling of birds sweeter as on those meditative mornings when happiness lay in quiet conversations interspersed with comfortable almost sacred silences, when everything seemed in harmony, sanctified, and nothing left to be desired. Walt Whitman says in his poem 'Humble love, "There we two content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word”

You hear each other's thoughts, you complete each other's sentences, the thundershowers and squalls of yesteryears are behind you and you are on the same page once more! The concern in your heart for what could be or might be, the hope of sunrise turning into the fear of sundown and a silent prayer you breathe that tomorrow should not be different from today!