But lest one believes life, never mind February, to always go according to script, we must highlight an episode that made the news early this month. It may, on first inspection, seem like a cautionary tale. But it’s more celebratory, really. A young couple in Surat plans to get married this February since last year, with both families happily on board. Then, the groom’s father and the bride’s mother elope a month before their children’s big day.
Of course it’s sad that the planned wedding has been postponed. But the fact that the parents, in their late 40s, have done what more kids in love should be doing is touching. The runaways were childhood sweethearts, who later went their own ways. Now, since mid-January, the older couple has gone thataway. Middle-age romance, or even of an older bloom projected by Amitabh Bachchan in some films from time to time, is of an even more many-splendoured thing than young love. We wish the latter-day Laila-Majnu a happy life together. As for the two youngsters, they can wait. They are young.