Quick fix? Rapid-fire divorces are becoming the order of the day

Rajiv and Samita were a young married couple in Calcutta. But after not more than a week of married life, Rajiv, 32, told his 24-year-old wife that she was not the woman he had been looking for. His grouses? She refused to sport a kumkum and touch the feet of her older in-laws. Within a month, Rajiv was at a lawyer’s office discussing divorce. A year later, through mutual consent, they were divorced.

Marry at leisure and repent in haste. That axiom could well apply to hordes of 20 to 30-somethings whose marriages are collapsing at the speed of light. Across India’s metropolitan cities, marriages as short as Rajiv and Samita’s are becoming increasingly common, especially among those under 30. Jaya Nair, a lawyer in Mumbai, says about 65 per cent of her clients seeking divorce are well below 30. Indeed, lawyers say that couples no longer wait for the seven-year itch to split. “I have three clients who were married between October and November last year and filed for divorce at the beginning of this year,” says Samuel Joshua, a lawyer in Bangalore. In Mumbai, as in the other metropolitan cities, the story’s much the same. Mrinalini Deshmukh, a lawyer in Mumbai sees marriages as tender as six to eight months wilt.

Interestingly, however, parting among the young is less of a mess nowadays. Swapna Mukherjee, a lawyer who practises at a Calcutta district court, says she sees no fewer than 10 cases of divorce a day being granted on the basis of mutual consent. This may be because of the young’s dispassionate approach to divorce or marriage itself. “Divorce is seen as a way to cut losses and move on,” says Manali Singhal, a lawyer in the capital.

A divorcee by 27, lawyer Nair herself is a case in point. Her story is not too different from those of her clients. Her marriage into a North Indian family with political affiliations and stark cultural differences, she says, did not survive more than four years. Her reasons? “When the parents of a girl have invested so much in their daughter’s education, why should she be suppressed and dominated by her husband’s family?”

As Mumbai lawyer Tara Reddy points out, the notion of equality in a girl’s parental home does not always prepare her for her relationship with her husband and role at her new home. What’s more, her husband might not always be willing to pitch in with household chores ? and “women are often not taught the basics of managing the home,” notes Reddy.

Another area where parents could fail their married daughters, says Reddy, is by their desire to control their lives. Parents do end up fanning the flames of dissent among couples, agrees Mukherjee. That is only too evident at the family court in Mumbai, where hordes of young marriages going bust are on display. Many of these break-ups are indicative of the level of parental support that these young people get in their decision to part. Most of the older people there are accompanying their children to their divorce proceedings.

In Mumbai, Dr. Anjali Chabbria, a psychotherapist, says the roots of the problem go back for over a decade. The reason for these rapid-fire divorces, she says, boils down to incompatibility, especially sexual. Moreover, the men no longer control the purse strings ? women often work and enjoy economic freedom. And with couples talking on the mobile phone ? not necessarily to each other ? and socialising on their own, fewer couples do things together. Adds Chabbria, “They ask, if my spouse cannot enhance my personality, why do I need him or her?”

In recent years, women have been filing for divorce just as much, if not more, than men. That’s because they’re standing up to men who insist on calling the shots and breaking out of the moulds that held back their mothers, unlike whom they’re most often not saddled with the responsibility of raising children. What’s equally interesting, as Joshua points out, is that many of their marriages are not even consummated.

One common thread runs through all these stories of young couples who part quickly ? a lack of patience to make the marriage work. They would rather seek out a lawyer than a marriage counsellor. “They are in a hurry to have that perfect relationship and refuse to wait for things to settle down,” says Chabbria. As a result, as in Rajiv and Samita’s case, minor issues tend to get blown out of proportion.

This is exactly what happened to Deepika who was married at 20 and separated three years later. “If only my husband had discussed with me the things that he did not like about me,” she laments. Her husband, a successful businessman in the Persian Gulf, she says, communicated hardly a couple of hours at night ? between 11 pm and 1 am, she says.

Deepika, who is currently going through the torment of divorce proceedings, is only symbolic of the ignorance of those her age about marriage per se. In hindsight, she wishes that she had handled her marriage better. But while she’s happy about being free from violence and neglect at the hands of her husband, she has to resort to taking anti-depressants to get through the day.

There are no quick fixes, after all.