`I'm Married, So What?'

Middle-aged Divya was not surprised to find her neighbour's son, twenty something Neeraj, in the night club on Saturday night. After all, this was the place where she and her contemporaries were a little out of place - where teeny boppers and Gen Next couples were usually to be found dancing the night away.

But while her initial greeting for Neeraj was full of neighbourly warmth, she was dismayed to find him getting overly friendly over the next hour as she tried to nurse a drink at the crowded bar. When he tried to get a little too close, urging her to dance, she decided to be the strict old `aunty', and told him, "Nothing doing. Get a partner your own age."

What made the late-night incident worse for her to take was the fact that she had attended his wedding reception just a few weeks earlier. "What was he doing in that place on a Saturday without his wife? When I asked, he said `She's busy," without any further explanation. All through, I found his behaviour so strange. It seemed like he was saying to the world - I'm married...so what? It was stupid and irresponsible," she recalls.

Neeraj is not the only man who has been going around trying to deny the fact he is married. The son of a rich businessman who has been in and out of trouble through school and college, he seems to view his pretty wife as an accessory he has to be seen with now and then. There is no further involvement. Among the gang of friends he moves around with, there are at least two other friends who have been married two years without any change in their regular lifestyle of drinking, playing cards, going to nightclubs, driving at breakneck speed without any concern for their own or others' safety. Many young men seem to find it difficult to accept that they are now married and need to approach life more responsibly. This is particularly true when their families and friends support them in such an attitude.

However, sometimes a family can only watch in horror as events unfold. Divya recalls the case of her niece who got married to the boy-next-door a couple of months before the final exam for her degree. "He had taught her driving and they seemed to be madly in love ever since. The family was also well-known, having been neighbours for years. But after marriage this boy was always running around with his friends and generally kicking up a ruckus, without any concern for the fact that he was married. He tried running a guest house, then a business centre, moved with politicians - and my niece was left to rot with her in-laws till late at night. She may have still been in that rut if she hadn't decided to go out and work, get a life of her own. Now his attitude towards her has changed - he's also quite a good father to their four-year old son."

Time and age can turn the wildest person into a softer and more mature version of themselves. Not all the men who are in denial of their marriage are meant to stay that way forever. But for the woman its not enough just to be patient. `Getting a life' is a very important factor in coping with this wild behaviour.