A Doctor’s Prescription for Marriage
A Doctor’s Prescription for Marriage
It was just a few months before my retirement.
I had gone to Thrissur to meet my close cousin, Dr. Pradeep, a well-known psychiatrist near West Fort. We had not sat together peacefully in years. Life, work, and responsibilities keep you moving like the Guruvayur Fast Passenger.
That evening, his clinic closed a little late. Patients left one by one. The attendant locked the gate. The streetlights outside flickered on.
“Come,” he said, loosening his tie. “Let us sit upstairs.”
Upstairs was his small private room, with one wooden table, two old chairs, a framed certificate from NIMHANS, and a steel cupboard full of case files. On the side table sat a bottle.
He poured two small pegs.
“Just small-small,” he said. “Doctor’s prescription.”
After the second round, his voice softened.
“You know,” he said, “some of my most serious cases are not depression, not anxiety… but marriage confusion.”
I leaned forward.
“Tell me one,” I said.
He smiled in a way that meant: this will be good.
He asked, “You know that I am handling a column titled ‘Ask the Psychologist’ in a Malayalam journal?”
I said, “Yes, I know. Even I once thought of writing a question there,” I added jokingly.
Then he stood up, opened his shelf, took out one letter and a copy of the Malayalam journal, and handed them over to me.
“Please read,” he said.
I opened the letter written in careful blue ink.
The envelope smelled faintly of jasmine oil.
The sender had written only:
“Private. Please help me.”
That caught my attention.
I took one more sip from the glass and sat by the window.
The letter began:
“Sir,
I am writing from Poonkunnam. I do not want to mention my name. Please call me Hari.”
Hari.
A simple name.
He continued.
A girl had been visiting his house almost every evening.
Not secretly.
Openly.
“She is my uncle’s daughter, Rekha Mohan, a degree student at Vimala College.”
She would come in her father’s white Swift car. Sometimes she would bring homemade banana chips. Sometimes halwa from Kozhikode. Once, she even brought a silk shirt for him from Chennai.
“She is very kind,” he wrote.
“She insists on taking me for drives on the Thrissur–Guruvayur road. When she talks, she talks as if we are already engaged.”
I smiled.
But then the letter became serious.
“I do not want to hurt her. But my heart is not fully hers. I respect her. But I do not feel that fire. What should I do?”
I leaned back.
Sometimes the greatest confusion in life is not when we hate someone, but when we cannot love them enough.
Hari had even tried to protect himself in funny ways.
“Whenever she comes home,” he wrote,
“I make sure Appa is sitting in the hall. I speak only in front of him. If she invites me to the temple festival or a music program, I insist that Appa also comes.”
I laughed aloud.
Poor boy.
Then came the real problem.
“She sent me a gold chain last week. For Appa, she sent a large box of Alphonso mangoes and one mundu (a dhoti). Appa says some gifts we can keep. Some we must return. He has made two piles on the dining table. He says mangoes are Class B. We can keep them as they are perishable, but gold and expensive items we should not accept; we should return them.”
I could almost see the scene.
The father is adjusting his spectacles.
Examining the mundu.
Classifying mangoes like exam papers.
Hari had enclosed fifty rupees in the letter.
“Sir,” he wrote,
“I do not want to waste your time. Please accept this.”
I folded the note carefully.
I did not laugh at him.
Because I knew something.
A young heart that seeks guidance is more precious than money.
I stopped reading the letter and looked at Dr Pradeep questioningly.
The doctor said, “That night I wrote back.” Then he opened the journal and showed me the reply he had written.
“Dear Hari,
First, I am proud of you.
Yes, proud.
Because you went to your father. Many boys hide such matters. But you chose honesty.”
I imagined him reading the letter in his small room.
Dr. Pradeep’s reply continued:
“Tonight, after dinner, sit with Appa. Put your arm around him. Tell him everything again. Cry if you want. There is no shame in crying before a father.”
A father’s shoulder is the safest pillow for a confused son.
Then he came to the girl.
“You must not accept expensive gifts if your heart is unsure. It is not about money. It is about truth and honesty.”
I could almost hear Hari asking:
“But sir, she is good! She is educated! She even knows computer coding!”
So he wrote:
“Being good is not enough for marriage. Your heart must feel peace when you think of spending fifty-plus years with that person.”
Then he added something practical.
“Ask yourself three things.”
- “When she speaks, do you feel calm?”
- “Can you tell her your fears without acting strong?”
- “If all her gifts stop tomorrow, will you still want her company?”
Marriage is not about gifts, gold, or grand weddings. It is about whether the silence between two people feels safe.
He did not stop there.
“Before marriage, do not only look at beauty or degree certificates.
Find out how she treats her parents.
Watch how she speaks to waiters in restaurants.
See how she reacts when plans fail.
Ask her gently, ‘What do you expect from life?’”
Because many boys get married, thinking love will fix everything.
But love is not a carpenter. It cannot repair cracks that honesty refuses to see.
He even added humour.
“If she wants to marry you, ask her one day if she knows how to iron your shirts without burning them.
If she laughs and says she will learn, good.
If she says she will never iron in her life and you must hire help, then at least you know what to expect.”
Hari wrote back two months later.
This time, there was no money inside.
Only a simple line.
“Sir, I returned the gold chain. I thanked her sincerely. I told her I respect her, but cannot promise marriage. She cried. I cried. But I feel light now.”
He added:
“Appa said you saved me from making a decision out of fear.”
Dr. Pradeep told me,
“When I finished reading his second letter, I closed my eyes.
And I thought, it is better to disappoint someone with the truth today than to imprison two lives in regret tomorrow.”
Hari eventually moved to Bangalore for work.
Then one day, Dr. Pradeep received a wedding invitation.
“From Hari?” I asked.
“Yes,” my cousin said, smiling mysteriously.
“Good,” I said. “So he found someone who gave him peace.”
He nodded slowly.
That night, after our third small peg, he handed me the invitation card.
“See,” he said.
I adjusted my glasses.
Bride’s name.
I blinked.
Read again.
I looked up at him.
“Rekha Mohan? The same girl?” I whispered.
He laughed so loudly that the attendant downstairs probably heard it.
“Yes! The very same girl!”
Apparently, after two years, they met again at a family wedding.
Yes, she had the same fire in her. The ember in Hari was also alive.
No gifts.
No pressure.
No mango classification committee.
Just two grown-up people.
They spoke honestly.
This time, Hari felt calm.
The girl had changed, too.
More gentle.
Less dramatic.
More listening.
Less deciding.
And one evening, Hari told his father:
“Appa… this time there is no pressure,”
Father asked only one question.
“Mangoes?”
Hari smiled.
“Even if she brings mangoes, Appa… I will keep them.”
We finished our drinks quietly.
Outside, Thrissur town had gone silent.
As I prepared to leave, I asked my cousin,
“So what is the moral, Doctor?”
He leaned back in his chair.
“Simple,” he said.
Sometimes we are not wrong about a person. We are just early.
Life is strange.
Sometimes the girl you return with a gold chain
is the very same girl who returns to you with maturity.
And somewhere in Thrissur, I am quite sure,
The Gift Classification Committee was reassembled,
not to divide mangoes into Class A or B,
But to calculate how many kilos would be needed
for the wedding feast.
And this time, I suspect,
Appa did not return a single one.