Marriage & ‘Trust’
Two vegan rescuers, Kinjal from Pune and Gaurav from Hyderabad, found each other on some common animal rescue forums on Facebook, became friends, fell in love, decided to get married, and all within a matter of a few months. Families agreed!
They both had dreamt of a low key wedding all their lives, and when the moment arrived, unlike many, they actually walked the talk and went for a courthouse marriage. They could have spent a fortune on a ‘Big Fat Indian Wedding’, in Gaurav’s words, but they donated all that money to a Charitable Trust that they had built together and intended to contribute to over the years. They requested their acquaintances, friends and relatives to donate to the same Trust the amount they’d have otherwise spent on gifts. But they did throw a lavish wedding feast for thousands of shelter animals instead. Families happily agreed!
And it doesn’t end there. They aspire to raise funds within their community and locality and take the Trust to much higher levels so that it can be used for animal welfare on a large scale with big impacts. They are very particular to be personally involved to oversee the activities and make sure that there is no bandwidth for any squandering. They say they want to collaborate with needy NGOs who are doing genuine work, and focus on honest ventures where funding is less, the top two priorities being- sterilization of neighborhood and community dogs in Hyderabad, and setting up better avian diagnostics and care in India. They believe the Trust is their baby project which bonds them.
Now if that is not perfect, I don’t know what is.
We had the pleasure of hosting these newly weds for a couple of days in their week long honeymoon trip (Apparently Peepal Farm was on their ‘travel wish list’ for quite some time). And I got a chance to have a really long chat with them. Birdman and Catwoman, as they teasingly call each other (Gaurav is a bird rescuer and Kinjal is a cat rescuer, how cool is that?!) have had a really inspiring journey so far. It could be the upbringing or their individual personalities, but they both have had their lives independently and intimately woven with compassion and principles since childhood. So it is not really surprising that these two fell for each other and did not waste much time before tying the knot. They have joined hands not just for life but also for their common goals and ideologies in life, a big part of which is reducing the suffering of the non-human animals.
We need more such humans and more such weddings on this planet, don’t you think?
