"A marriage should be more beautiful than the wedding."

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"May this marriage be blessed.

May this marriage be as sweet as milk and honey.

May this marriage be as intoxicating as old wine.

May this marriage be as fruitful like a date tree.

May this marriage be full of laughter and an everyday paradise.

May this marriage be a seal of compassion for here and hereafter.

May this marriage be as welcome as the full moon in the night sky.

Listen lovers, now you go on, as I become silent and kiss this blessed night." 

~Rumi~

Sanskaar could not help but laugh at the implied irony of the above lines, which were a part of the write up that Swara and Ragini had drafted for Uttara's wedding album. 'It is very incongruent,' he thought, 'to a pair of sisters who seemed to walk out of their marriages and marital homes with absolute impunity and unfailing regularity. Their selection of those lines by Rumi appears to be a blatant mockery of the relationship.'

"I want to tell you something. We need to talk."

  When he heard Swara's voice, Sanskaar looked up at her and simply raised his eyebrows. Swara had not been initially inclined to talk to Sanskaar regarding what she had overhead, but when she passed by the study and saw him going through the drafts for the album, she decided to take a chance.

She glared at him, the sardonic expression that masked his face seemed to ask, 'is there anything worth talking between us?' He was holding the write up in his hand and could not keep the sarcasm from showing on his face.

Swara knew him quite well, she could understand what exactly he was thinking about, but was never one to flinch from stating what she thought was correct. Tightening her jaw, she started off, "I just overhead and saw Maa and Papa paying Gayatri Devi and her husband, Uttara's dowry. It is so wrong, on so many levels. I want to know what you are planning to do. You just cannot allow this marriage to take place for..."

Sanskaar cut in, "I am half inclined to disagree with you, Swara; you are trying to say that Uttara can never be happy staying with a family which demands money to keep their daughter in law happy, that a marriage should never be determined on monetary grounds. But can I ask you what is needed in a marriage?"

Swara sighed angrily, she should have known the stance Sanskaar would take and was about to speak, when Sanskaar answered his own question.

"Love is not enough; I would know that, very well. And faith is not necessary; you are testimony to that fact. Maybe, money will buy my sister her happiness. Considering that the two of us are no longer together and hence are in no position to sermonise on what exactly makes a marriage work, it is preferable we keep silent and let the elders of this house take the decisions."

Swara refused to be cowed down and retorted, "If you, as a son of this house, do not want to take a stand for what is right, then I will. I am the wedding planner for Uttara's marriage and I would be well within my limits to object to what is absolutely wrong for any marriage, legally, ethically and morally."

She glared at Sanskaar who somehow seemed amused at her words. As her expression turned quizzical, he answered, "So you will still give in to your propensity to always prove yourself right. And your belief that being a wedding planner gives you the right to speak on what is needed for a marriage, that is precisely where you are so wrong, Swara, because you have not yet learnt the difference between a wedding and a marriage. A marriage is a long term relationship between two individuals. A wedding, on the other hand, is simply the ceremony of getting married."

He softly continued, "We had three wedding ceremonies, each grander than the previous one, and yet our marriage never lasted as long as the planning it took for the weddings. So please, do not speak like you know about what is needed to make a marriage work, your experience is only limited to managing weddings. I repeat, keep silent, it would be better if you did not interfere in Uttara's wedding."

Swara lost her cool at what she took to be Sanskaar's unnecessary taunts at her, and choosing to disregard the truth hidden in his words, she scoffed, "I do not care what you plan to do, but I am not going to keep quiet while this happens. I am going out, right now..."

She never completed her sentence as Sanskaar grabbed her arm and pulled her flush against him. Ignoring the waves of wrath that emanated from him and fighting the impulse to sink into his arms, Swara spoke through clenched teeth, "It is wrong and it is worse that you decide to stay quiet about everything that is happening. Hate me, if you want, about how can you be like this with Uttara? She is your sister!"

She evenly held his gaze, and after what appeared to be a very long time, a very weary Sanskaar replied, "Because I am tired, tired of battling what is right and what is wrong, tired of being blamed for everything and anything that goes wrong in our lives."

He abruptly released her and softening his voice, asked, "You love Rumi so much, right, he is supposed to have said something like 'beyond the ideas of right and wrong, there is a place. I will meet you there'. I..."

Swara did not stay there anymore; she could not bear hearing him out. As she stormed out of the study, tears almost blinding her and anger coursing through her veins, her mind registered what Sanskaar had muttered under his breath, "I will wait there, will wait for you, Swara, wait till you come. Just do not make me wait forever."

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Note:

The title quote is modified from a line I have read, "I want my marriage to be more beautiful than my wedding." No mention is available as to who the exact author of this line is, but I loved it, one line and conveys so much hope and meaning. All of us want a dream wedding forgetting that the marriage is far more important, or actually, the only thing that is important and must matter.

The quote in the banner, as most would know or guessed by now, is by Rumi.