Some jokes don’t make you laugh, they make you think. Like this one. Two spinsters chat sitting in a cafe. One asks the other “What kind of people just sit in a restaurant and don’t even try to talk to each other?” Pat comes the reply, “married people.”

Graffiti on a wall, “marriage-no visibility at point blank range….”

Now, a local joke! “Why are two people better than one in a marriage?”

“Because two heads are better than one!”

“Can marriage walk through these troubles times?”

“Only if it has extensive footnotes!”

Makes you think, huh? Are marriages going out of fashion, is it a dying art? I read that a large percentage of people in France stay single and live together, choosing multiple partners.

Now, this new thing I read in the newspapers is that famous Hollywood stars sign a contract to have children. Perhaps, the contract has a line about nurturing, breastfeeding and so on, that is the norm once the child is born. In Italy, staying single is better than staying married. All kinds of arrangements are worked out that are not legal and binding.

Then, on the other side, I heard back home in Haryana, women get kidnapped for marriage, as there is a smaller percentage of women to men. I believe the ratio of women to men in south Delhi is 8:10. Perhaps, because the male child gets far more benefits, better food, better medical attention, so the survival rate is higher.

In this century, marriage is certainly being redefined. Young people just don’t want to end up becoming their parents. They don’t want to be in dead-end situations.

But look at it this way. It is not possible to be the kind of wife your mother was because the world is different. Opportunities are more, awareness greater, women more emancipated. Our needs have changed. Most young people are far better educated than their parents were, are exposed to a better life, have more choices in life. (Even saying ‘no’ to marriage is a choice!) If marriage is being relooked at, so is individuality.

I don’t think marriages break up because of what we do to each other. They break up because of what we must become to stay in them. When the early glow of romance and party is lost in years of disappointment, neglect, assumptions, taking-for-grantedness, loneliness, lost dreams… we lose the need to stay married.

In the old days, duty stepped in when love was lost. Not everyone finds and holds onto love. Again, what is the guarantee that love and marriage go together? What guarantee that love can’t be found years into a marriage? Often, the jewel we have and hold is never the one we appreciate. So, duty becomes an accepted substitute. One that society accepts and condones.

Believe me, if marriage has withstood the onslaught of the centuries, there must be something in it. It’s tried and tested. There isn’t any single formula for marriage that applies to all couples. It is an individual’s journey. Marriages are as diverse as the people in the world. To quote Tom Peters, (in the Chicago Tribune), when getting married, “underpromise & overdeliver.”

Trust me folks, if you can work at staying fit, if you can work for getting a promotion, if you can work at learning tennis, if you can work at staying positive, you can work at staying married.

The writer is a theatre director and novelist