Valentine’s Day Special: Mir and Soma Bhattacharjee’s marriage is an ode to love

They say, love is blind and marriage is a union of two hearts and the heart has no religion. But love stories often get engulfed in the burden of taboos bred in our society. And several such stories don't culminate into marriage owing to differences in financial, social or religious backgrounds of the couple. But while cases of love jihad, honour killings, khap panchayats continue to make headlines, there exist couples who have not let society block their path to finding marital bliss.
Ahead of Valentine's Day, we spoke to one such celebrity pair Mir and Soma Bhattacharjee who broke free from the shackles of so-called societal norms and embraced life partners from other religions to live happily ever after. Here's a glimpse into Mir’s love story and the secrets to their happiness.

We met on air! I used to work for a radio channel and Soma was a final-year student at NRS. Alter hearing me on the radio, she wrote a fan letter to me. I read that out on my show. Alter that, I sent her tickets to a children’s film festival at Globe Cinema. And that led to our first meeting. I still remember the date - May 16, 1995.

Despite stiff opposition from both families, we got married exactly two years later on the same date - May 16, 1997. Both of us didn’t have enough money for a lavish ceremony. So, we decided to invite just a few close friends of ours for a small-time celebration. The menu for our marriage dinner comprised of singara, chanachur, sweets from a local shop and cold drinks.

At most interfaith weddings, we see the couples following customs belonging to the groom’s religion. But we decided to go for something different. After our marriage registry, we went for a simple wedding that completed with Hindu rituals. While I wore dhoti-kurta and topor Soma wore a saree. The best part is I went live on air the very next morning because the colleague who was supposed to host the breakfast show quit the job just the day before. So, there I had the unique experience of setting a 5 am alarm on a clock for the morning after my wedding night since I didn’t have a cell phone back then!