Distance

The world has achieved its brilliant technological advancement to an amazing extent that two people living in the farthest corners of the world are not distant based on measurement of distances between them, rather are few moments away from seeing each other over video calls and stay connected all the time.

But can we ever erase or even reduce the distances of hearts and emotional connect caused by our egos or stubbornness to not let go of futile age old cultural beliefs?

Sameer is a well cultured and disciplined man. He holds an image of a gentleman among people who know him. He has been raised to become an independent and brave man who successfully made all his career decisions himself. His family is one of the reputed families having all the members fairly educated to adapt to the modern ways of living. They supported Sameer in his higher studies and applauded when he acquired a great job in a foreign country. His family is well fed in terms that have a profitable business running and all the members go on international vacations. They are far from being classified as an orthodox Indian family.

Yet his choice to marry a girl from different community brought havoc in his life. His mother behaved as if her entire world fell apart and to show her disagreement she stopped talking with Sameer. She turned blind eyes and deaf ears to his all pleas and explanations.

I, on the other hand, have a complete different family background and culture & language and caste and innumerable other stuff is all different from that of Sameer’s family. But I thought, apart from geological distance there would be no difference. I was wrong, we belonged to different castes. Both our families matched on the points stated above for Sameer’s family; and claim to be modern and still refuse to accept our proposal for marriage stating traditional values as against love marriage.

How in this era of advancement are two educated, independent adults expected to agree on the family terms to part ways only because love marriages are a taboo and because we belong to different castes? Why are we capable to earn independently but cannot choose our life partners?

So we fought; fought to be together. We didn’t stop convincing our families till they agreed to meet each other and then take a decision. The convincing process was tedious in itself; it took us months and several painful sessions of emotional breakdowns. But finally we managed to make them meet.

Sameer and I were happy that our efforts were slowly bringing a change. The families met and realised that apart from being different castes they have no other reason to deny us. They also realised that in the versions of their self claiming modern thinking, they cannot refuse their kids entirely because they support caste system. So they finally agreed; agreed to get us married.

But that is not the happy ending. This is the beginning of another portion of emotional breakouts. Our families agreed to marry us but they were not willing to communicate or accept each other as relatives. Both the families made us feel guilty about it every day by showing that they are sad to accept the marriage proposal.

The irony with Sameer and me is that being emotional beings, we can ignore the suffering of ourselves or can stay strong in self struggles, but how do we fight or stay strong when constantly we are exposed to the sufferings of our own family with blame on our heads? This is not some natural problem in life or some incurable struggle; rather it is just illogical non acceptance to change. How much so ever we try to persuade by explaining that it’s our life and that we do not care what relatives or society think, our families are stubborn to even listen.

We stood strong, fought hard when the matter was in our hands. Now, there is absolutely no problem; all have verbally said yes for the relation. The helplessness lies in making the families understand a simple thing; just accept each other and be open to change; and we all are going to live happily together. We can only explain and nag the same lines every time, but are failing to change our family’s mentality and make them happy.

All the elders have spent their entire lives wanting their kids to stay happy and fulfilled all the demands. Now why do they choose to see the approval of society and other people more important than our happiness, of their own kids?

The guilt is taking over Sameer and me. We have started to doubt our decision to be together. We do not understand how to get a solution when there is no problem. We are happy with each other but are unable to maintain the happy days between us because of family issues. The arguments these days between me & Sameer are not our personal problems but revolve around the issues our families rise from time to time. We are afraid that we are growing distant from each other and sad reality is that not because we want to but because we are being forced to.

Here, the issues do not exist because we have a physical distance but because our families are creating a willing distance in hearts.

So above all the tantrums that life is throwing in our way of love, Sameer and I pray that we do not break and face everything together and succeed in making everyone happy with the power our love carries. We wish to eliminate all distances and bridge the bonds by love.