Ch. 7 - Mrityu Shadashtak Yog

After getting back together to the time we had the Roka-Tilak Ceremony, a lot of things happened in between. Whether it is a love marriage or an arranged marriage, most of the Indian families tend to take an opinion from the Astrologer. Since we had faced a big turbulence in our relationship earlier, we wanted to make sure to avoid any further turbulence. Both of us and our families are neither too orthodox nor too progressive, we come somewhere in the middle. We knew at some point in time our kundali would be seen by our families. We weren’t against it, we just wanted to be in the loop. So before our families looked for the kundalis, we went to an astrologer who has been a family friend and seeked opinions about the same.

After studying our kundalis, the first thing the Astrologer asked us is, “Are you sure you guys want to get married? Because your stars don't match at all and you both have a Mrityu Shadashtak Yog.” We went numb for a while and it felt like getting out on the first ball of the match. These terms in astrology are so heavy and at times it scares people. Since he was a family friend, it wasn’t too awkward for me to ask questions. We listened to him completely at first and understood his thoughts.

The word itself creates a wrong perception. People think that if a couple is having a Mrityu Shadashtak Yog, one of the partners would die. In reality it means that, astrologically their Moon Signs are having the exact opposite characteristics and the couple would have to put a lot of effort to blend along. We tried to understand it in detail and got answers to a lot of our questions. If you look at the practical side of it, yes we are opposites in a lot of things but the difference in our nature never brought differences in between us. As they say, opposites attract! Perhaps, in every relationship people have to put efforts to grow together.

Every problem has a solution and ironically I found a disclaimer in the same book of Astrology. Usually no one has so much time to dig deep into it but out of curiosity, I ended up studying a bit about it. When I discussed it with the astrologer, even he was a bit surprised. He went through the whole thing again and we got our solution.

Our generation usually says straight NO to look into the astrological stuff as we don’t believe in it. But if you try to understand our parents' generation, they came from a background where they were not allowed to ask questions or deny the elders, hence a part of them also can’t take it when we ask questions. In fact they didn’t have easy resources to find answers themselves. But we are a lot fortunate. Hence it's our responsibility to explain them in the way they would understand.

The one and only reason to do all this exercise by ourselves was to get aware of it and not be fooled by orthodox practices without any logic. We wanted to find all the answers ourselves, so that when our families look into it and if they find any ”flaws”, we would be ready with the solutions. In fact, we were of the opinion that if doing some pre wedding rituals would make our families feel better and content then there is no harm in doing it, even if we believe in it or not. Of course we made sure that we aren't doing anything blindly.

Later as the discussion went ahead, the point from the kundalis we expected did come into picture. But thanks to our homework, it didn’t create any scene. During the preparation of the wedding, taking care of the emotions quotient of families is the toughest part and we were glad that we took care of it very comfortably.

Wedding Dates got finalised and the big question was where would the wedding take place. While both of us stay in the same city, most of Minals Relatives are from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh and my relatives are scattered in various parts of Maharashtra and Karnataka. In India till the last minute, Weddings are all about People Management. So we were looking forward to making the logistics as easy as possible. After looking at all the probabilities it was finalised that Wedding will take place in Dombivli, the city we both stay in.