“Oh, we didn’t even start talking until all the marriage rituals were over.” This is what Nandini Das had to say when asked how she met her husband. When in today’s world, lasting love is a lost notion, and with marriages ending up in divorces with numbers increasing every day, how did a marriage where two individuals did not even get a chance to interact work out for almost 46 years? This is the story of Nandini Das and Ashish Das, who met in 1978 when her father saw a matrimonial ad related to Ashish Das.

“It was my mother-in-law and brother-in-law who came to see me first, followed by my husband during the second meeting,” says Nandini Das, trying to recollect what exactly happened on that day. Upon asking how her impression was upon seeing her husband, “Oh!” said Nandini Das, laughing, “I got a sense he was caring. I did not get the chance to interact with him, really. The marriage dates were decided, and upon those days, you did not really ask the girl whether she wanted to get married or not; it was the elders doing the most of it.” Ashish Das added, “When I first saw her, I just knew she was ideal for me as a life partner; no buts and no ifs.”

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Getting married on 1 March 1978, and being new to the whole notion of living in a joint family, for Nandini Das, it wasn’t easy getting used to one. “It was a bit difficult, and while my husband was extremely supportive, he also knew that I could hold my ground. But I did not get that much time to stay and get well-attuned with each and every member of the family. I got married in March, and by the end of June, I was on a ship with my husband. He was a chief engineer in the merchant navy, and that meant spending months on the sea.” Elucidating how difficult it was to adjust to sea life at first, her only solace was her books, and her biggest supporter and friend was her husband.

Even after giving birth to her daughters while living for several years in Andaman with her husband out there on the sea, one thing she cherished was her birthday. “If he was in town during that time, a bouquet of flowers from him was a constant, but if he was away, he used to make sure that when he returned, we went out for dinners, or he would just randomly come home with a bouquet of flowers.”

According to her, marriage is a relationship that evolves slowly; one cannot master it in a few days, but rather, one gets used to it, and it becomes free-flowing. “In a marriage, it is extremely important that you feel at peace with the person, as one would say compatibility. After marriage, it is not just ‘I’ anymore; it becomes ‘Us’. Never give up on your individuality or who you are, but make sure you adjust to accommodate the other person in your life.” For her, trust is another thing that you cannot compromise on when it comes to marriage, to which Ashish Das adds, “True, without trust and respect for each other, no marriage can survive.”

Ending the conversation with the question, “Do you still fight?” to which Nandini Das said stealthily, “Believe us, every day. But now, it is a hard-bound rule that whoever starts the fight first says sorry first.”