Dear Reader,

Don’t think I have forgotten you. I haven’t. I have just been busy for the last two weeks travelling to a very dear friend’s wedding. I am so happy that she is happy that I travelled the breadth of India—Lucknow to Mysore—to be a part of her marriage celebrations. Right now, you probably think Pallavi is a romantic; she loves the idea of matrimony. Alas, you couldn’t be farther from the truth.

I am what they call a marriage-denier. That means, just like there are people who eschew vaccines because they believe they don’t need vaccines to protect them, I feel a person doesn’t need marriage to make them happy or complete. I also believe a couple doesn’t need to be married to be committed to each other and live happily together. Even though I’ve been married twice, I still say this. I didn’t want to do it the first time but had to because there was no other way to live with the person I loved. The second time around, I agreed only because it made Nikhil very happy and it was no skin off my nose. But if I’m being entirely frank, I have held this view about marriage for a good 20 years now. I am not a cynic; my parents set a good example of a strong and happy (at least, I think it was happy) marriage. I just feel that staying married to someone is no cakewalk; that’s why while entering marriage, it’s important to think seriously about the “logistics”. Let me explain what I mean by that.

My husband and I are both lawyers, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we forewent the religious ceremonies and opted for a civil, secular marriage. What you may find amusing though, is that before we got married, Nikhil and I spent many months drafting what I call the “Constitution of our Marriage”. Yeah, yeah, it’s quite a mouthful! Simply, it is a written document of our understanding of how we want our married life to be, our expectations of each other, and how we intend to tackle the events we are likely to face in the future. You can say it’s like a contract, even though neither of us has signed it nor is it enforceable in any court of law. But this document lays out the barebones of our marriage.

If you are newly in love, just married or still in your honeymoon period, you might find this process cold and calculating. If you think life is all about spontaneity and going with the flow, you might be tsk-tsking as you read. But take a minute to think before you do that. If love, passion and spontaneity were enough to sustain a marriage, we wouldn’t be seeing so many of them crumbling around us. You obviously need to add something more to the mix. So that’s what Nikhil and I did.

We wrote it all down – from how we would share household responsibilities to how many holidays we would take in a year; from how we would celebrate festivals to the number of times we would visit each other’s parents. I felt strongly that I wanted our wedding to be a secular, no-ceremony, no-frills, small affair, so I wrote it down. We wrote about sharing finances, not having children, and taking care of each other as we grew older. In a nutshell, we wrote about everything important to our married lives. I know that being in our early thirties, we could not have envisaged every situation that would arise in the future. I mean, within 3 months of getting married, COVID forced us into a lockdown that we could have never even dreamed of while drafting our document. But this was a start, a declaration of our intentions. Even if our contract had no legal validity, it allowed us to put it all out on the table. We knew what we were getting into when we took the big step, and that made an enormous difference.

I know I am bragging here, but I think what Nikhil and I did was smart. I even thought more couples might be doing something like this. But to my horror—as I talk to some couples undergoing relationship troubles—I realise, leave alone writing it all down, people don’t even vocalise their expectations and desires before they get married. Doesn’t that sound extremely foolish (sorry, I am forced to use such a strong word here)? Would you ever take up a job without first finding out about the terms of service, the employer’s expectations from you and the possible grounds for termination? Then why would you enter the most important relationship of your life without figuring out all this crucial stuff first? And, please don’t confuse what I am saying with the signing of a prenuptial agreement because that is a financial agreement to deal with the termination of a marriage. What I am talking about has very little to do with termination and everything to do with the continuation and success of a relationship.

People keep saying “marriages need a lot of work”. Yes, they do. But it makes sense to do some of that work with your spouse-to-be while you are planning your Great Indian Wedding. While you’re looking for that perfect lehenga, or searching for the best bartender for your cocktail party, and perfecting your dance steps for the sangeet, future “husband and wife” take out time to figure out the barebones of your marriage. It’ll make the proverbial walk into the sunset much smoother!

Love,
Pallavi