This is a very important and a serious and long posting.
About 18 months back, I got a call from a lady here in US, whom I never met. Her entire family is very devoted to Sri Matam and she introduced herself as one of the readers and started to share her experience with her daughter’s wedding here in US. The call went for more than 2+ hours .
Apparently, they identified a boy from a very decent brahmin family, exchanged lots of communications, did the engagement followed by wedding. The communication between the boy and the girl was nothing short of great and likewise between the two families. Everything was happy. Both the families are well placed here in US – comes with decent and good educational background.
Soon after the wedding was over, the situation changed completely, the couple got into lots of fights – some of them are very typical to any families but the attitude of the boy and the family took a U-turn from the engagement etc. Girl figured out that her husband doesn’t have a job, lied about his profession, pay etc….After 6 months or so, things got worse – they got into the divorce process. Parents of the groom cited very bad reasons for the divorce and later refused to sign the papers etc. When this lady visited Kanchipuram, she even cried to Periyava and He was very pained to hear such a bad experience.
This lady was in tears when she was talking to me. I tried to console her although she is much elder to me…After that I haven’t heard from her – I forgot about her, daughter etc. Up to this point, what happened although a very sad thing – happens everywhere nowadays. You may all wonder, why post about a family’s situation…
Few days back, I got a call from her again – what she told me in the call last week was quite shocking!
Her daughter eventually got her divorce after long and ugly legal battle. She went ahead with her studies/work etc. After several months, this lady apparently got a call from another woman. She somehow found her after extensive search etc online…Apparently, their call went for 8+ hours! It turned out that this boy’s parents – right after the divorce – apparently started looking for a girl for this boy and found this new girl and they started the whole new process with this family….
Conversations, incidents happened between them was exactly like the previous ones. Same lies, same kind of messaging….In this case, he took this girl to many places within US before engagement. Engagement happened and on the night of the engagement the fight started – several of the lies were exposed..Within few days, somehow the whole engagement fell apart. At least in this case, the second girl is slightly luckier as she didn’t move past engagement. Even then, the extent to which one’s feelings are hurt can’t be measured – it takes a lot of time to heal.
If this had happened once, then I wouldn’t have bothered to post here as the fault could be with anyone. However, if this is happening repeatedly then I felt obligated to post so that parents are very careful in their marriage process. What beats me is how this boy’s parents are letting such things happen even if the boy was wrong…..Something very strange with the whole family to maintain same level of deception in both the cases.
On one hand parents all over the world are worrying about their children’s wedding process and they do 1000s of prayers and offerings etc to ensure that their lives are settled smoothly. On the other hand, there are people like this who make this whole process much more complex.
It is such a shame for any educated person to play with other person’s life – be it a boy or a girl. My heart goes out to both these girls and pray Periyava to give them strength to brave the situation and wishing them a very happy future.
My sincere request to all parents – please do extensive research about boy or girl before you start progressing in the path of marriage. Spending more time upfront to eliminate any doubts would save thousands of hours and money down the line. Comparatively, finding out relevant details about someone in US is easier than in India as public records are pretty much available online and/or easily obtainable from govt offices. Second request – if you know about any background about someone and if your inputs are going to save someone, don’t be quiet – step-up and raise your voice. Your voice/alert could potentially save lots of inconveniences to many.
These are instances where HH Balaperiyava is very worried and talks a lot about how our culture is weakening and the need for us to become socially/culturally more united and bonded so that we know about each of us better. With technology, we are only drifting away from each other – what a shame!
On behalf of all of us, I pray to our acharyas to bless these two girls for very best life and future. We will leave it to Mahaperiyava on what to do with people who intentionally do harm.
I remember I posted one similar incident happened to one of our readers couple of years back. This girl recently contacted me to invite me for her wedding – I was quite happy although I couldn’t attend.
Hara Hara Sankara Jaya Jaya Sankara!
