JOIN USIndo-Ukrainian couples hold on tight, as war tests love
When Anna Horodetska landed in New Delhi on March 17, escaping the war in her homeland Ukraine, the last thing she expected was to be greeted with a marriage proposal right at the airport.
"That's not the kind of person he is," the makeup artist explains about her Indian boyfriend, Anubhav Bhasin. "He's a lawyer and has a very practical way of thinking."
But in seeming defiance of his disposition, Bhasin went down on one knee—and in grand desi style too, complete with dhols and balloons—to formally pop the question to Horodetska.
She first met Bhasin briefly in August 2019 during a leisure trip to India. They exchanged numbers, and months of chatting paved the ground for a romance to brew. She flew to India in 2020 again when COVID-19 struck and was locked down with Bhasin and his family. They came to know each other better. A few more meetings cemented their relationship in place for marriage to crop up on the cards. But then, another tragedy struck.
"I was physically tired, without sleep, and emotionally exhausted. The worst part of it was not knowing what will happen tomorrow, what next they'll blast," said Horodetska.
Horodetska was in the capital city of Kyiv when Russia began annexing its neighbouring country on February 24. She took a train to Iviv, from where she managed to reach Krakow, thereafter flying to India.
"The Indian embassy was kind enough to issue a year-long visa, so I could get married."
Triggering a refugee crisis affecting over four million (per UNHCR), the invasion of Ukraine has thrown the world's economic and diplomatic equilibrium into chaos. India and Ukraine have historically maintained friendly bilateral relations since 1992. But the former's seemingly distant stance on the war in Eastern Europe has been brought into question by the West on the global stage.
While the question of India's stand—particularly its abstinence from the UN Security Council's vote on Russian actions—drove a wedge between strangers and friends on social media, Indo-Ukrainian couples braced it.
"My husband fully supports my position," Vladyslva Savytska, who came to India in 2020 as a student and tied the knot with an Indian in February this year, told DH. The war did not have any effect on her marriage. "At the end of the day, it's just the two people involved, and you don't have to carry the baggage of your cultural background with you," she said.
Savytska and her mother were in India when Ukraine was being invaded. And the horrors they are hearing of back home may compel them to remain in India if Russia claims victory.
"We would rather spend the rest of our lives in a foreign land rather than live in Russian Ukraine," said Savytska.
India is home to thousands of Ukrainians, many of whom have called on the government to push for supportive action towards their motherland and issue a strong condemnation of Russian aggression. The appeal of one such Ukrainian woman, Oliza, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi hit national headlines last month. She has been married to a Kashmiri for a decade and lives in the conflict-ridden valley with their two children.
In Ukraine, from where approximately 20,000 Indians were evacuated under Operation Ganga, reports surfaced in March of an Indian citizen refusing to leave without his eight-month pregnant Ukrainian wife. She couldn't be granted evacuee status under India's programme without citizenship. And so, the man stayed behind with her, with plans of moving themselves to safety in Poland.
"All's fair in love and war"—this old lie ribbon-tied as a romanticised saying has long been used to justify many unfair deeds. With its guaranteed inevitability of devastation and grief, should war, if not love, claim moral indifference with such brazen impunity? And can there ever be a greater injustice to love than war?
If at all, there exists one and only one possible correlation between these two dichotomous passions. War compels us to love harder.
Fuelled by either fear or despair over impending doom, Indo-Ukrainian couples are holding on to each other tighter than ever—in pockets of fresh air amid the hot and heavy atmosphere of hate. Horodetska and Bhasin, for one, tied the knot this month.
"I think the war greatly impacted our relationship because we realised that we're scared to lose each other and don't want to live like that anymore. That journey tested us and made us stronger as a couple," said Horodetska. "The only barrier is language. But I'll pick up on that eventually, too!"
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