Different Yet The Same?!

Published by eGal | Filed under Love

A couple of months back, while attending a course, I got the privilege to get to know 2 Indian friends. Interestingly, as the usual inquisitive me, I found out something very contrasting yet so similar in the conversations that we had. Here’s how it goes…

Friend A: “I just got married. My husband is great but I am still shy around him. When I have some women’s problem, I feel embarrassed to tell him or to talk to him.”

Me: “Why not? He’s already your husband?!”

Friend B: “Yah. Why not? I tell my boyfriend everything. The relationship with him is something that I have never experienced with anybody else. We just had such a great relationship.”

Friend A: “Mmm, I don’t know. He has been asking me to talk to him and he is getting very concerned about me not sharing everything with him.”

Me: “How long have you been married?”

Friend A: “About 3 months now. We just came to Singapore.”

Me: “So how did you get to know each other?”

Friend A: “It’s an arranged marriage.”

Me: “What?! An arranged marriage?! You mean you still practise this in India?”

Friend B: “Yah. Until now. We leave the marriage in the hands of our parents to find someone of the equal social status.”

Me: “Really?! Mmm…So, Friend B, was yours arranged too?”

Friend B: “Nah…I met my boyfriend while in school here. We are really great. I have told my parents that he is the one for me.”

Me: “So, Friend A, you love your husband?”

Friend A: “Ok. He’s great to me and he loves me alot.”

——— Conversation ended as the class started —————-

This conversation left me with something that is so powerful that until today, it’s still very vivid how exactly I felt at that moment. I met Friend A today and is glad to be introduced to her husband while Friend B’s boyfriend is now 15 hours away in USA on attachment. The thing is…there is a lot of love around us. Some may have an arranged marriage where they may or will probably try to find love after that while others may have the liberty to choose who they want to be with. In any case, be it arranged or not, love is embedded somewhere. It’s a lot of fate for 2 person to meet. More so when it’s an arranged marriage when you were never the one in the source of it. You never state to your parent who you want. They pick the guy for you and after that you will have to live or to deal with it. Or when 2 India Indians meet in Singapore and not in India.

I was amazed that 2 friends were talking about great love when both are in such different context - an arranged marriage and a freely chosen relationship. And there I was right in the centre of it all, with no attachment to anyone special at that moment…