The Guardian is easily one of the world’s best English papers: elegant, courageous and trustworthy, not the kind of paper that discusses personal lives of public figures unless they live off taxpayers’ money and what they do in private has a direct bearing on the life of the public. So, the other evening, I was a little surprised when I received an alert from the Guardian app — alerts are usually sounded for major newsbreaks — which said, “Angelina Jolie reportedly files for divorce from Brad Pitt.”
My first reaction: Is this even breaking news, considering that film stars are known to marry and divorce and marry again? But since The Guardian had put out the alert, it must be — and why not, considering that Brangelina was the world’s most celebrated couple. My second reaction: Why do people marry and get divorced — and sometimes remarry only to get divorced again?
Brad Pitt had a wife and Angelina Jolie had two ex-husbands when they got together in 2004 during the making of Mr. & Mrs. Smith but got married only as recently as in August 2014, in the presence of their six children, three of them adopted. So, they were fine together for 10 long years as long as they weren’t married, but the relationship did not survive even two years of marriage. Why?
We have a better example in Nelson Mandela, who remained married to Winnie Mandela for 38 years — 27 of which he spent in prison — but barely two years after his release in 1990 they separated and in 1996 got divorced. The marriage survived 27 years of separation, but the reunion could not last even two years? Why?
I leave that question to be answered by experts, and can only repeat what a friend remarked after the reading news about Brangelina splitting: “Marriage is the root cause of divorce.”
Right now, my heart goes out to those countless young Indian couples who are roughing it out at the various family courts dotting the country. They are neither rich enough to get away to an island to recuperate from a divorce, nor are they famous enough to vent their feelings to tabloid journalists. And they are prone to (often lifelong) taunts from their relatives and neighbours. I won’t be surprised if 50 per cent of them, if not more, happen to be couples who ‘love-married’ — and these are the people I really feel sorry for.
Until a year or three ago, they were so much in love that they couldn’t live without each other — and now they didn’t want to live with each other. Why? The answer, once again, is marriage, which serves as the wall between courtship and ownership. When you are courting someone, you look only at things you love about that person, but once you are married, you begin to focus on things you hate about him or her.
A woman falls in love with a poet, especially after he has written a couple of poems describing her charm. But once they get married and have a child, she begins to complain: “Why don’t you help with homework instead of writing poems all day?”
Likewise, a man falls in love with a woman wearing a short skirt at an event — he actually falls in love with her only because she is bold enough to wear a short skirt. They exchange numbers, get talking and finally get married. One fine day he clears his throat and tells her, “The thing is, my parents don’t like their daughter-in-law wearing a short skirt. Why not wear something decent?”
My heart, therefore, also goes out to the parents who spend either millions or their entire life’s savings conducting a wedding, in the belief that their child has finally found a match. Reality strikes once the wedding is over, when dreams end and the demands begin, when exceptions are forgotten and expectations take over.
