posted April 03, 2008 10:47 PM            

Why marry in the first place? Such specimens.

HYDERABAD: Peddapuri Ramakrishna, a 30-year-old software professional committed suicide along with his wife Soumya (23) by consuming pesticide at their rented flat in Chandanagar near BHEL in the city. Police sources said the couple may have killed themselves on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday evening, police were informed by the house owner after the latter got suspicious as the main door of the techie's house remained closed for the whole of Wednesday. Neighbours reported that the couple was last seen on Tuesday evening.

Acting on the house owner's report, police opened the doors of the house on Wednesday evening and found the techie and his wife lying dead on a bed. According to eye-witnesses, the bedroom was bolted from inside and two glasses and a bottle of pesticide, were found beside the bed.

Ramakrishna was to join Satyam Computer Services at Bangalore this month and then fly to Canada for an onsite assignment. Son of a temple priest and a native of Edida in East Godavari, he was all set to take up his new job after a two-year stint at Infotech Enterprises. The couple also left a 10-page suicide note detailing the reasons for their actions.

"He (Ramakrishna) mentioned that there was no understanding between them (the couple). He said he was committing suicide as he did not want to trouble his parents by forever fighting with his wife," Chandanagar inspector Tamarkanth Reddy said, quoting the suicide note.

After talking to the parents of the couple, police discovered that there were some marital problems between the two. "Soumya had threatened to commit suicide earlier too," the inspector, quoting family members, said. Soumya, a graduate and a home-maker, had married Ramakrishna in April, 2007. "They are yet to celebrate their first wedding anniversary," Raghavacharyulu, a relative of Soumya, told TOI.

According to an Infotech spokesman, Ramakrishna put in his papers on January 21, 2008, but continued to attend to his duties till February 6, 2008. "We tried to convince Ramakrishna to stay back. But he had taken the decision to move on," a former colleague said. According to the techie's relatives, he has been jobless since he left Infotech and had been spending all his time preparing to go abroad.

"We never noticed the couple fighting. He had no habits that could have led them to take the decision. It's a mystery," a relative said.

posted April 03, 2008 10:49 PM            

LONDON: If a new research is to be believed, the adage — and they lived happily ever after — may not be true. Married bliss lasts only for about four years for most women, says a new study.

A team of researchers at the Princeton University has found that beyond a period of four years, the benefits of marriage are often outweighed by having less time to see friends and a larger household workload.

"People have very high expectations, and marriage does not necessarily live up to them," lead researcher Daniel Kahneman was quoted by British newspaper the Daily Telegraph as saying.

On the contrary, according to him, those who stay single are more likely to feel lonely and have less sex, they have greater freedom, more time to socialise and fewer chores. Kahneman’s findings, presented at the recent British Psychological Society Conference in Dublin, are based on a study of more than 10,000 women, known as the German Socio-Economic Panel. The latest study came just days after a research by an American team revealed that wedded bliss is linked to lower blood pressure in couples.

The US study, published in the Annals of Behavioural Medicine, sampled 303 healthy men and women, and 204 married and 99 singletons. It found that married people had larger dips in blood pressure during sleep than others.

"People whose blood pressure does not dip during sleep are at higher risk for cardio-vascular disease," the study’s lead author Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University had said.