Honemoon, Selfie and Everafter

 

She stood on her tiptoes, turning her profile just so, lips pursed close to her new husband’s cheek. Her hair flowed freely in the soft zephyr over the calm ocean. A short, bright-yellow chiffon frock swirled around her well-proportioned figure. Her husband with ubiquitous knee-length shorts, tight T-shirt chosen clearly to show off his rippling muscles, stood a little stiffly until she prodded him to relax. Unobtrusively, she pulled his hand around her waist and lifted one leg in the universal pose of romance.

Are you wondering whether I have changed my genre from crime and ghosts to romance?

We were married thirty-six years ago, when public displays of affection were present but not common. I don’t think we had an official honeymoon either (though living alone in Mysore is a honeymoon in itself). We began taking “second honeymoons” only after our twenty-fifth anniversary and have continued for the last eleven years, as if to compensate for all those busy, non-celebratory anniversaries before.

As the years pass, I find myself shedding inhibitions like a strip-tease dancer. We make it a point to travel, and lately we’ve been indulging in cruises. My wardrobe has grown less stilted and far more energetic. (The knees may protest on long walks, but I insist on walking shoes that match my dress.)

The opening scene, however, was not us. It was a young couple we met on our most recent trip to Phuket via a cruise. We took a boat from the mainland to an island in the Straits of Malacca. It was a warm December day, and the boat held an eclectic mix: two honeymooning couples, two families of four, an elderly mother with a sulky youngish daughter, two athletic young men and us, the second (or rather, the twelfth!) honeymooners.

The journey took an hour and a half, filled with snacking, drinking, and indulging in every possible photo opportunity.

As is the wont of older people, I observed everyone and provided a running commentary to my long-suffering “lord and master” (who pretends to hate gossip). Being in a romantic frame of mind (it was our anniversary trip) I focused on the honeymooners and decided to write a mental thesis on them.

The first couple were openly, exuberantly in love. They tripped over each other trying to get the perfect pictures and enlisted every passenger at some point to help. We complied indulgently and happily. They were the very essence of newlyweds: gazing into each other’s eyes, holding hands, hugging whenever possible. The groom fetched cold drinks and snacks; the bride smiled, pouted, teased. Their affection was open and refreshing.

The second couple was different.

They too posed for photographs, but here it was the groom who took charge, perhaps too much so. He behaved like an excited boy, leaping at every beautiful sight, clicking away enthusiastically, though not at his wife. Instead, his lens focused on distant mountains, forests, and waterfalls.

The bride, like me, noticed the other couple. Unlike me, she was clearly put out. She tried repeatedly to divert her husband’s attention from the scenery toward herself. She succeeded briefly: he allowed a few posed photographs. But once the duty was done, he returned to the helm, DSLR in hand, absorbed in photographing the non-animate world.

I noticed this. So did she.

In her inexperience, she sulked and snapped at her bewildered new husband. She looked disgruntled, cast occasional glances at the other couple, and appeared ready to snap off her groom’s head as he obligingly photographed them.

We eventually reached the island, swam in the calm, unruffled sea, and frolicked like children let out of school.

The first couple splashed, cavorted, and romped in the shallow water against the golden beach, clearly having the time of their lives. The second bride sat at the water’s edge, letting gentle waves tickle her toes, while her untamed partner gambolled in the sea, camera held high above his head, still clicking away.

A couple of days later, we saw the second couple again, this time getting out of a cab. She wrestled with a large suitcase, yelling, “Come fast or we’ll miss the flight!” He paid no attention, peering instead through his DSLR at a hedge in bloom, clicking away happily.

I sometimes wonder which of these marriages will survive.

In these days of Instagram marriages and TikTok divorces, I’ve become cynical. The overtly romantic couple lived as though life were a movie—but would that film endure the long run? The impatient bride and her shutter-happy husband already seemed to have lost the first sheen of romance. Would he grow into her expectations? Would she learn to share his gaze?

Then again, why get married at all, if not for photo ops, petty tiffs, sulks—and the inevitable making up?