A lifetime of love: Platinum couple at home for the aged celebrate 70th wedding anniversary

Clad in a blue silk saree, with fresh kanakambaram and malle flowers adorning her silver hair, 80-year-old Kamakshi, broke into a giggle when someone shouted, “Now you both should kiss”. Chandraiah, 93, was busy setting his neatly pressed kanduva in place when he heard that comment, and his usually stern expression too melted into a warm smile and he chuckled softly.This made the motely bunch of revellers hoot and cheer all the more louder, and peals of laughter resounded in the hallways of the otherwise serene and quiet Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged in Bhoiguda. But on this balmy March morning, the noise was welcome. After all Kamakshi and Chandraiah, residents of the home since 2008, were celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary! A party, with a grand breakfast, complete with cheat day treats like cupcakes and cake, was in order. And their friends, all residents of the home and the nuns who look after them, couldn’t stop pulling their leg. It was heart-warming to see the two play along, cheerfully.
In fact, they are “by nature very cheerful people...” informs Sister Kathleen, one of the caregivers at the home, adding, “it could be their 15th wedding anniversary, I think they would have been just as happy. But it’s their 70th! So she was all excited, asking us, ‘Amma, will I get a new saree?’ ‘Will I get some jewels?’ So we took her out shopping. Chandraiah was a little bit cool. he said, ‘If I have a nice dhoti, it’s enough’. But they’ve thoroughly enjoyed themselves, be it at the special mass, the breakfast, the garlanding ceremony or the cake-cutting.”
With poems being read out and speeches being made, it seemed like a wedding ceremony alright. Which made us wonder, do Kamakshi and Chandraiah remember what it felt like on their wedding day? “I don’t remember a lot... But one thing that stayed in memory is that 1947 India got freedom and in 1948 was our wedding. That... memorylo untundi...” says Chandraiah, chuckling.
“In our time the mapla (groom) never saw the ponnu (girl). If the boy is good and the girl is good, relatives fixed their marriage. In our case, it was my brother who matched our pair,” recounts Kamakshi, wiping her glasses. Admittedly, the only thing she knew about her groom-to-be was that he was a youth freedom fighter, who was part of a secret group that spread nationalist propaganda. The very mention of that rekindles a fire in Chandraiah’s eyes. “We did not have boundaries those days. Just tree stumps and hedges. So late at night, when the police wasn’t around, we would go and stick posters with messages of nationalism, patriotism and freedom,” recounts Chandraiah, with a sudden burst of enthusiasm, as he narrantes in a mix of broken English, Telugu and Tamil the ordeals they faced as young, reckless protesters. “Some days, the police caught us and beat us up. once, they even stripped me and left those small things on me (ants). I urinated in fear.” (laughs)
Kamakshi isn’t as impressed as we were by that tale. probably because she’s heard of it hundreds of times over the past 70 years. Was she too was part of the freedom struggle ever, we ask. “I wasn’t even allowed to go out,” she says dryly. But getting married in the year 1948 gave them both a good whiff of freedom, she agrees. “When we got married, just seven months post Independence, it felt free,” she says. “No fear of police, or being beaten up. It just felt free...,” Chandraiah says, completing her thought.
In their conversation, as they sift through myriad memories, recollecting this and that, arguing about some minute detail that each remember differently, or fondly narrating a long-forgotten anecdote, one thing remains clear — their commitment to each other. And nothing testifies that fact more than this incident they chose to share with us.
Three years after they got married, tragedy struck the couple. Kamakashi was three months pregnant, when she suddenly fell sick. “I was very sick. I wanted to go to the hospital, but we couldn’t manage to go for some reason,” she recounts matter-of-factly. But she remembers being administered some local medicines, and later, she experienced a sharp pain that almost paralysed her. the next thing she knew, she had lost her child. The couple have since been childless, by choice. “I was sad, but we both decided not to have children anymore. I am not sure why we decided that back then, it just happened... we did not want to go through that anymore,” Kamakshi adds. Chandraiah doesn’t speak much about the incident, but he adds that the incident led him to turn to yoga. “I began meditating and practicing yoga. I wanted to conquer my feelings of wanting an offspring. I did not want to put us through the same pain again,” he says.
being childless meant, having only each other to lean on for the rest of their lives. It was probably because of this the duo decided to enroll themselves at an old age home in Mysore, when he turned 70. And as if time was testing their commitment again, the two had to endure a brief spell of separation, when in 2008 Chandraiah left the home in Mysore without a word to his wife. She remembers that quite well. “he simply walked out of our Mysore home! I was so depressed... I did not even eat food for days. Then one day the sisters there informed me that he landed up at the home in Hyderabad and that he was asking them to send me over,” says Kamakshi.
Apparently, Chandraiah had walked out of the home wanting to spend his final years closer home, near Guntur. When not allowed by the sisters, he walked out without informing anyone, even Kamakshi. But soon he found his way to Hyderabad centre and requested them to get his wife from Mysore.
Was Kamakshi angry though? “No, I wasn’t angry,” she says, calmly, before adding, animatedly, “At least he was alive.”
Not everyone in this day and age of failed ‘starter marriages’ and ‘swipe right or left’ style of relationships can fathom how someone can stay with the same person for seven long decades. Any secrets, we wonder aloud. Kamakshi smiles in response, but finds herself at a loss for words. They both take a while to mull over it. the question is new to them, for not many may have looked up to their marriage as something special until this point.
after a brief thought, Chandraiah who prefers to let Kamakshi do the talking, adds, “Adjustment and tolerance. These could be the secret. Marriages can work just with that.” Those who live at the home think they have another secret — the space they give each other and the individuality they’ve retained even after all these years of being together. They wake up early and spend some time meditating. And then Kamakshi proceeds to do the daily chores to keep herself busy — folding the linen or helping in the kitchen. Chandraiah prefers to be by himself, in meditation, or take a walk with his friends. By noon, they meet again to share a meal, and retreat for their siesta together. They seem like they’re together all the time, and yet, they give each other the space required.
Sr Kathleen puts it all down to commitment. “In today’s world we may not talk about it much, but commitment is so important. Commitment to one’s family, to one’s spouse, to one’s profession... and i think this old couple, although they are childless and come from a poor background, have understood what commitment is. otherwise how would they live together for 70 years?” Touché!