What an apple is to Isaac Newton, a dried coconut is to Murphy Mony and Raghunath Damodaran. Sounds bizarre, doesn't it? But the duo's love story began 21 years ago when a dried coconut fell on Murphy's head. Or at least that is what their friends say!
If we had a DeLorean and a flux capacitor, we would have had Doc Brown create his time machine just to take you back to 1996. That is the year whenMurphy and Raghunath first met. Murphy was then a freshman at the Government Model Engineering College, Kochi and Raghunath, a second-year student at the same college. "When you think about college love stories, what comes to mind is a teenage love story. But that wasn't our case. Both of us were in our early 20s. We knew each other from the beginning. A common friend, Biji, introduced us," recalls Murphy. Little did she imagine that a strong friendship would transform to a bond of eternity. She tells us how they'd talk regularly and how Raghunath would give her his textbooks and notes to study. "We spoke to each other for a while and then I thought that he was kinda nice, so why not extend this," jokes Murphy.
A year passed by and the duo continued to be good friends. It was at Biji's betrothal when a dried coconut fell on Murphy's head. And a friend of theirs, just by seeing how concerned Raghunath about Murphy, knew something was up. Raghunath finally he opened up about how he felt about Murphy. A couple of days later, he proposed to her. And we're not talking about 'Will you be my girlfriend?’ type of proposal, but an actual marriage proposal. "The first thing that I told Raghu after he proposed was to ask my father for his permission. I was pretty close to him. And Achan told me that we would think about it only after I was done with my studies. He trusted me so much and knew that I would make right decisions," recalls Murphy, sadly remembering that her, "Achan died a few months later. But on his deathbed, he asked my brother to take it forward.”
Now that we've heard the coconut story from Murphy, we wanted to hear Raghunath's side of the story too. "It's a pretty funny story. But that's just a part of it. I was a bit too mature for that," he says. He recalls how Biji would talk to him about Murphy's family and her father, and Raghu could relate so much to the ideologies that the family followed. "Later, I met Murphy and for me, she was her father's daughter. Then we started talking and I felt that she had a very endearing personality. She was fun too. And I proposed to her. I was very serious about it," he says.
After a three-year-long relationship, the couple got married in January 2001. "Our families were very happy. They trusted us and were always in support of our relationship," says Raghunath.
Going back in time, we ask the couple to recall a few of their favourite memories. While Murphy couldn't think of one precisely, Raghunath had something to share. "I still remember the first time Murphy rode pillion on my Suzuki Samurai bike. She once asked me why I hadn't offered her a lift yet. I asked her to take the seat and she did. That day will always be special," he says.
17 years since they tied the knot, Murphy and Raghu are truly content with the decisions that they took when they were just two young students. "It is just that; you've got to be very sure about all your decisions. And once you do make a decision, make sure there's no turning back. It is that simple," says Murphy
