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Honeymoon
everyday? That’s what some new-age couples are indulging
in, finds TWF correspondent Ritusmita Biswas.
Is ‘till death do us part’ an
obsolete concept with the new generation of professionals?
Rising career aspirations and compulsive work conditions seem
to be playing spoilsport with the age-old concept that married
couples spend their life together under the same roof. The
new age marriage seems to be adapting to new social and economical
realities that compel a couple to stay apart despite being
married.
Meet Snehal and Madhurima Sharma, both from
Mumbai. They stay with their respective parents on work days
and stay together as spouses on the weekends in their "love
nests.” Madhurima, who works in a call centre, began
‘weekend-living’ with her husband three years
ago. Every weekend she "dates" her husband. She
turns up well-dressed and as elegantly made up as she was
when the couple first fell in love.
"Living apart is a must for us. We
can’t help it. I need to reach my office by 6.30 in
the morning and it is impossible to travel from my husband’s
place at that wee hour and reach in time. Neither can he stay
in this locality as he too needs to do night shifts and cannot
travel this far in the nights,” she says. “Besides,
separation allows us to be independent to manage our own affairs
and to take care of our elderly parents while the weekend
dating makes us feel like we are on honeymoon," she adds.
Agree Radha Balakrishnan and Sumangal Balakrishnan,
both senior government officers posted in separate districts
of Maharashtra. “It cannot be helped. Owing to our job
profiles, we have to stay away from each other. Every time
when he is transferred it is not possible for me to leave
everything and go. And we both must work to ensure a decent
life for our family,” Radha says.
Swati Jain who stays alone in New Delhi,
however, has a different reason. Her husband Nilanjan is posted
in the US for a project with HCL Technologies. Says Swati:
“In the initial years of my marriage whenever he was
posted abroad I used to follow him. But not any more. My sons
and daughters are in school and we cannot take chances with
their education. I have to stay alone and manage the show.”
“However, this is not a recent phenomenon.
Since ages men have been staying apart from their family for
professional reasons. People in the Navy and Army stay away
for years from their families. So what is the hullabaloo about
it?” Swati asks.
True, but the new phenomenon seems to be
the fact that earlier while staying away from family was limited
to certain professions, nowadays it encompasses a wide range
of job profiles. Besides, not only professional aspirations
of the male but the rising career aspirations and demands
of the female partner too is equally responsible for couples
staying apart to serve their career aspirations. Studies show
that people who adopt this way of living after marriage mostly
have a background in higher education and are seeking a better
quality of life. But does this have an adverse effect on the
institution of marriage?
No, assets Swarna Majumdar who is a school
teacher in Kolkata and stays away from her husband Moloy who
is posted in Mumbai: “The most interesting togetherness
is when you know separateness. People fall out of marriages
not because one day they wake up out of love, but often because
they are crushed under the weight of domestic trivia. They
become emotionally claustrophobic. This shall never happen
in my case,” she smiles .
This sort of arrangement is not without
its pitfalls. “There are times when I feel very lonely.
Maybe a bad day at office or a terrible migraine attack and
I want to quit my job and be with him,” says Madhurima.
The doubts naturally come with distance and the only way to
keep these power marriages alive seem to be proper communication.
Meet Nilanjan and Manjira Sarkar. They live
in different cities during the week, she in Kolkata, and he
in Singapore. "Every day we spend some time talking to
each other. In one way its kind of ironic because we know
some couples who live in the same city who don't do that,”
says Manjira a top executive in a multi-national company.
"Living in different places was a tough decision,"
Nilanjan says. "If we hadn't each pursued careers we
wouldn't be happy. It's tough staying apart but our marriage
works perfectly this way. And yes, we are very much in love
and whenever we find time we take our honeymoon break and
look forward to it.”
Will the honeymoon ever be over?
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