For forty years they held out against the social institution of marriage, holding strong to their views that their love did not need the sanctity of a thaali (mangalsutra). They were barely out of their teens when they first met each other. In a year, they had made the decision to live together and over the next four decades that's precisely what they did. Live, work, have a child and nurture their family - the thought of legalising their union never occurred to Kunjukunju and Leelamani. But on 7 November 2014, Kunjukunju decided to legalise his relationship with his long-term partner, not out of personal compulsion but to help ease administrative hurdles that faced their young grandchildren.
“It was our ideology to live like this, but it should not affect our children’s future, society won’t allow us to live in the way we want” says Kunjukunju. He could not bear to see his son's struggle to secure a caste certificate for his third child because of the lack of legal papers to prove his parentage. Government officers in charge of issuing this in their village of Ettumanoor in Kottayam district of Kerala had refused to issue one till Kunjukunju and Leelamani produced a legal document confirming their married status. “We love each other more than any other married couple around us. Still that warmth of love remains between us. So I never found a necessity of ‘thali’ to bind us,” proudly said Leelamani.
