Second innings

HYDERABAD: Samuel Johnson once described second marriage as "the triumph of hope over experience". Whether Hyderabadis believe in this dictum is not known, but the city is seeing a torrent of second marriages these days. What is more, that conventional diffidence associated with a second marriage is being cast aside.
"I cannot give precise estimates, but we are flooded with cases of people opting for second marriages.Many of them are widows," says Chandrasekhar of matrimonial site, Telugu.com. In fact, so dramatic has been the rise in second marriages that many bureaus have been set up just to deal only with such cases. Matrimonial columns of newspapers also have a separate section for second marriages.
Ask Geeta Chowdhury, whose marriage bureau, My Choice, deals exclusively with second or late marriages. "So much is the demand for second marriages and old age companions that we decided to tap this clientele exclusively," says she. Chowdhury now sees prospective marriage candidates walking into her office with children to get registered!
"Earlier, women never advertised for their marriages themselves. Now, divorcees and widowers come along with their kids and register willingly. And this trend is cutting across caste barriers," says another marriage counsellor.
Agrees K S Ranganathan of Parivarthan.com, a matrimonial site for the South Indian Brahmins only. "Even the conservative Brahmin community is treading the modern path. Widow remarriage and second marriages are being encouraged and that's what is getting us more business," he says.
As an acknowledgement of the changing social realities Ranganathan provides free registration for widows. "When my father started a marriage bureau, he did not allow women to register by themselves. And a woman with a broken marriage was a strict no-no," he chuckles.
So is society in the throes of change, breaking down the age-old barriers? Yes, say sociologists. "Times-are-a-changing. The stigma attached to second marriages is disappearing.
There is acceptance of the reality that life must go on - so there are more such marriages," says an analyst. Widowers and divorced men have always gone in for second marriages. Analysts point out that the change is more in the case of women who have been often pushed to the corner after breakdown of their marriage or demise of spouse.
Sociology professor from Osmania University P Kamala Rao has a little different take on the issue: "There is still stigma attached to single women. So as a measure of social security, widows and divorcee women are getting into wedlock. Economic imperatives also play a part in persuading women in the same direction."
But every coin has a flip side. If there are more second marriages, it also means that more and more first marriages are breaking up. Not a happy augury that!