I had a friend who was a professor of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kanpur, during the mid-eighties. During that period, I was also posted at Kanpur. Since he happened to be a relative of my wife and was a nice person by nature, we grew close and often visited each other. He had three daughters and one son who was the youngest in the family. All the children were bright in their studies and grew well. The son passed his engineering from BHU and did his masters as well as PhD from the USA. Thereafter, he started working in the USA but we remained in contact. This boy, apart from being good in studies was also a good tabla player, photographer and artist. All these made his personality very pleasing.
This boy got married in the year 2000 in India, but I couldn’t attend his wedding though I wanted to. In the USA, he was working in Denver and is continuing to do so. In 2002, I got an opportunity to visit Denver in connection with a ‘book fair’ where one of my books was to be released. This was to be in the month of June. In the month of March, I met him in Delhi and when I told him about this forthcoming event, he insisted that I must come and stay with him. His presence there thus became an additional attraction and I decided to participate. I was also keen to meet his wife as I had not met her earlier.
At Denver, he received me at the airport alone though I was expecting his wife also. I had also brought along a gift for her. But soon after we left the airport, my nephew told me that he had not shared a development with me. Then he told me that his marriage had failed and he was living alone in a studio flat. This was a kind of shock to me but I took it coolly. I was in Denver for four days and during this period he shared a lot with me, which not only gave him a lot of consolation but strength also to face the reality gracefully. However, one thing was sure that the event had changed the boy and he had become scared even of the word ‘marriage’.
Throughout my stay at Denver and till today I often contemplate over this issue. While the USA has developed all the possible technologies of the world and countless objects of comfort for mankind, surely no one will deny that it has failed to produce happiness out of all these. Take the example of marriage itself. A successful marriage contributes a great deal to happiness in life. While most of the marriages in less developed countries are successful and last for an entire lifetime, this is not true in the case of developed countries. In a country like India, the institution of marriage is still very strong and is sustaining relationships well. Surely when it comes to the technology of marriage, India beats most of the developed countries.
