BETA

This week I have been doing a lot of soul searching and wondered what I could possibly write that hasn’t been written about before and that will hopefully make an interesting read.

And so I turned to real life for inspiration, last week was my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, which is equivalent to a quarter of a decade in matrimony. First I would like to pass them and whoever else has achieved this wonderful feat my sincere congratulations and wishes. What our parents have is something that us ‘youngsters’ may not be able to achieve. For we have grown up in a society that is worlds apart from how our parents were raised; and with values and morals that are both eastern and western.

It is common nowadays for people to fall in and out of love and go from one relationship to the other without thinking twice about what lies ahead or of their future plans. With each relationship the individual in question becomes both wiser and bitter– something that our parents never experienced. Whether they married through love or introduction from their families, the certainty is that they were probably both each other’s first partners. There is something alluring about the innocence of this sort of relationship and that is probably the reason that their marriages remain strong and they committed to one another.

This would be a rare thing to find amongst newly weds of the future, whereby both partners were each others first. Although to our parents this sounds unfamiliar and more often that not undesirable, it is something that they will have to get used to. However serious or meaningless a relationship what happened within that cannot be undone. This is a fact.

And while it goes contrary to traditional values, it is a biological fact that humans are constantly searching for ‘the one’. The search is not only governed by physical attraction or mental connection but depends on a vast array of biological factors and subconscious desires. Recent research shows that contrary to our belief that we are driven by the heart alone we actually react to things from olfactory  cues (senses that guide scent…look it up!) to major histocompatibility  complex (MHC), these things sound complicated but are all true determinants of how and with whom we fall in love with. After achieving these scientific biological attractions we are then driven by the heart, mind and body, and because we are Tamil we then have a multiplicity of (what I think are more difficult things) to accomplish! Even in this day and age people still look at family background, career, character etc before consenting to a person’s choice of partner. What is yet more distressing is that in our society many a true love and relationship has been separated by parents, families or even friends – all because they deem it an unsuitable pairing. We all still hear stories of the one who ran away or got caught by an uncle (dare I say it?) holding hands with a boy/girl in a shopping centre. What ever happened to the people in these stories?

Society is quick to vindicate those who challenge the moral or values that contradict ones own, but it does little to think of the repercussions to that person. True that getting into a relationship at a young age is a distraction from other more important things such as education but it does not mean that it is the end of the world (as we are told). Every teen seems to hide or be afraid of having a relationship – and society acts like it is the worst possible thing to be caught doing and we also adhere to this view. It is just the way we have been conditioned by ‘society’ and ‘tradition’. I know this article is somewhat cynical of the Tamil perspective on relationships, but I am simply writing what everyone knows but will not say – or the alternate opinion to what ‘society’ has.

And so another valentines day comes around and its another excuse for those ‘in love’ to spend copious amounts of money on cards, teddies and other non-sensical items – all to prove their undying love for one another. But is this the same for Tamils? Who if parents were to be believed don’t have relationships? Or is it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? What ever your situation on Valentine’s Day take comfort in the fact that we are all ‘predestined’ to find someone…