Till divorce do us part...

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 26 October 2013


During my visits home, I spend the first two days gathering news from my mother about people around that we have known for long. Earlier, weddings, deaths, newborns and retirements used to constitute much of her neighbourhood reporting. But of late, I am treated to something that shakes me as badly as any other personal human tragedy — marriages on the rocks. The speed and spontaneity of conjugal breakdowns taking place in my vicinity makes me worry about the future of India’s much-prided family structure, which social theorists aver is not in peril despite the spurt in frayed relations.

A young girl in her mid-20s we know broke off her engagement for ‘incompatibility’ reasons. A couple barely into their third year of marriage called it off, owing to ‘irreconcilable differences’. Yet another with conflicts galore was clutching at the corner, and eager to let go, but hanging in there for their five-year-old’s sake. A marriage on the precipice is hardly a congenial way to lead the little one into life, but if they manage to work their way and claw back to some stability, it will be a unique victory for the child than for her parents.

Time was when parents got their sons and daughters married and returned to their retired existence, happy in the belief that their wards were well and settled. Not anymore. Parents these days live in the secret fear of having their daughter storm out of her husband’s home and breeze back into theirs, with the nonchalance of a hotel guest. Yes, she is plucky, educated and emancipated, and it’s heartening that she won’t take crap from her man or his people unlike women of earlier generations. But the definition of a bad deal in marriage has become so fluid and untenable that any lame excuse is reason enough for pulling out of a relationship that our parents and grandparents had maintained as holy matrimony. And that’s what disconcerts me.

Abuse and infidelity are unpardonable in a marriage and are legitimate grounds for separation. No woman can be excused for swallowing violence and misdemeanor in stoic silence. But mere ‘incompatibility’ and ‘irreconcilability’ as reasons? If that could be a motive to rush to a lawyer, a majority of us would have grown up in broken homes. In our parents’ times, compatibility was not even a consideration to keep a marriage. They stayed together, not because they made an enviable twosome in a tango but because divorce was not even a remote option to them.

We can indulge in endless discourses on the shifting dynamics of our society and the need to change our patriarchal patterns to give our women their due credit and status in a relationship. We can debate till the cows return home about the need to release marital relations from their constricted confines. We can argue that marriages cannot become emotional entrapments in a new, progressive social order.  Yet the fact that when a marriage fails, lives do fall apart and people do get severely singed remains.

Couples who head for spiltsville don’t do it alone. They drag their children and the rest of their families into the vortex of turmoil. No, let’s not take celebrity lives as templates. Life in ordinary Indian homes isn’t as flamboyant to make divorce and its aftermath tales of chivalry and personal triumph.

Of course, there is life after every crisis in life, and one is bound to tide over it sooner or later. But when a crisis stems from an indifference to the basic tenets of life and when it happens because of sheer arrogance and irreverence, it becomes ugly than agonizing. That more marriages are failing and nuptial knots are loosening because there is enhanced wherewithal for personal upkeep and disposal  is truly heartbreaking.

The theory of Relativ -ity

Khaleej Times (Life) / 18 October 2013

                                                            

 

It’s queer but the two things that give me a rattling sense of the passage of time are weekends and children, especially when we are in their birthday week.

“Wasn’t it only the other day that she came onboard?” many an amused mother would say repeatedly, relishing the sight of her young thing, birthday after birthday. For some reason, it’s only when we see the children grown that we realise our own age and grasp with disbelief the fact that they haven’t grown alone. We have aged with them, regardless of our frequent denials and clever attempts to conceal any apparent signs. Their rites of passage have been our milestones in life too.

So is it with weekends. The arrival of weekends, much as they are a relief from the mad routines, are also unrelenting markers of time. Sometimes, it feels as if we have hopped from one weekend to the other, the days in between obliterated by ceaseless chores. “Wasn’t it only yesterday that we were on a Friday? And here we have another! How time flies!” we often exclaim, sometimes with a shudder caused by the subtle connotation of it.

Apert from my awe at the fleeting nature of time and the fear that it inspires, I happened to experience something unique recently when I viewed some photographs taken at a family reunion in India. Frame after frame of extended family members flashed in front of me as I played the slideshow. I gazed on three generations of relations, most of whom I had not met in ages. I tried to travel the time machine to summon up frescoes from the past, shaking my head disbelievingly at the changes time had wrought in them — the irrevocable assault of age on the older generation, the slow yet perceptible takeover of maturity in the succeeding generation (to which I belong), and the spurt in the bracket of nephews and nieces, many of whom I have not even met.

What I felt in those staggering moments is hard to explain. There was a cluster of relations with whom I haven’t touched base in a long time, some that I haven’t even known, some whom I know from days in the past when writing letters and being in touch was in vogue but now felt distant and disconnected from, little ones who have now grown into handsome, young adults and some brand new entrants. I was staring at an array of my own people who knocked me into the realisation that a lot of time had passed by and in its passage we had forfeited many connections.

I am not sure if it is fair to blame it all on the pressures of life, although it is the easiest thing to do. We have fallen victims to the habit of crouching behind reasons and absolving ourselves of guilt and responsibility. But somewhere, haven’t we ourselves to blame for not giving enough to our associations in life?

It makes me think again – don’t we any more value relations and friendships in the way our folks used to before the Internet was born and the mobile phone was discovered? Is it that associations these days are merely need-based and not rooted in good old genuine affection and attachment? Have we grown too egocentric to reach out on our own? Or are we truly pressed for time?

I have been troubled by these thoughts for quite some time now. That recent experience has only added credence to that dull ache of lost affections in our constantly shrinking world.

Mark the irony – while the world is shrinking, gaps are growing! So much for the service of technology!

Can we ever hope to fill in those gaps? Do we have what it takes to reclaim and resurrect the crumbling citadels of lasting relationships?

Those pricey junks of life..

Khaleej Times (Issues) / 11 October 2013

                                 

 

At last count, there are two cameras, one VCR, one GPS, one music system, three mobile phones, two fixed line phones (one even with the primordial message recording facility with a cassette and a broken tape), and dozens of audio cassettes — all in excellent nick and ready to run a race. They all tumbled out of their hiding places recently, one after the other, when we did some spring cleaning in summer, and gave us that silly grin of a child who is caught behind a cupboard in a hide and seek game.

 There was enough stuff to open a garage sale, but a dingy basement parking can barely be dubbed a flea market. Further, the risk of getting our ‘antiques’ mixed with the old, broken furniture and other junk dumped by fellow residents was high, and we couldn’t let the valuables that we have been preserving for so long be trashed as if they were worthless scrap! After all, we had spent time and money on them and at some point of time, they were our coveted possessions.

 A majority of the above items have been through one round of auction and they have had no takers. Now, who would want a VCR when movie watching has moved to Ipads and smart phones? I remember how once, another old VCR of ours in India was paid for its weight by a scrap dealer. The GPS, except for the fact that it gets a bit perplexed with Dubai’s roads and has little clue about Sharjah, is a pricey thing that even has roadmaps of Europe and other GCC, but it remains unsold. People are probably taking their road and geographic sense a bit too seriously, and giving the GPS the place it truly deserves as a vain accessory. Yet I would hate to call it a white elephant in our closet.

 Then the cameras! Do they even make film rolls now? The Advantix, with its odd specifications was a dud that we discarded from day two, but the Kodak  has captured so many moments of our life, and with such unmatched clarity. How can something that has recorded the happy nuances of our life be dropped in the e-waste box so stoically? Just because it has no practical use now, and there are smarter things on the shelves, you can’t render it totally dispensable and worthless in spirit. Can you? We have started doing that to people now, but that’s a different story.

 It is easier to chuck things when they go out of order. But if there is even the slightest bleep in it, you would want to either keep it, or give it to someone who just might have a use. The latter is a hard species to find now, for no one takes mobile phones that can’t click pictures, play music or have apps, even for free. Not even a ten-year old. Analogue cameras are long shots too in that respect. Old things weren’t smart, you see. They were just useful, and had long life spans. Anything that overstays in this world will perhaps be condemned to disuse.

My father’s first car was a second hand Standard Herald with which he shared a love-hate relationship. It would develop respiratory problems, heave and then stop breathing at the signal, or frequently sulk on a dead battery, thus thwarting our weekend outings. Yet, when he sold it off fed up with its tantrums, our hearts broke. A few months later, we saw the car in an alley, dissected and torn into parts.

 Had my father kept the car, it probably would have been a vintage beauty now. Old and infirm, yet precious. Alas, there isn’t enough room in our lives to carry and store sentimental baggage from the past. Someday, we have to empty them all into the waste bin and be free from clutter for good.

How green was my alley !

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 5 October 2013

WE RECENTLY said RIP to the seventh indoor plant in two years, and I am depressed. Not just because we have lost another green friend to what now seems to be developing into a civil strife between my plants and me, but because they simply don’t understand how it feels to have someone slight you when you go to such great lengths to tend them, as if they were babies. They are ungrateful, I lamented, when the latest piece of our live indoor décor wilted and died. We felt betrayed yet again, like parents with defiant children.

 There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we are keeping them and we must seek expert advice on how to raise plants inside the house, I suggested. So we went to the plant counsellor, who is the guy at the shop that we get our indoor stuff from. Like a tough, uncompromising customer, I complained that his plants had high mortality rates and that I wanted each of my horticultural disasters to be accounted for and replaced.

He listened patiently to my rants, asked me questions like a shrink does his patient, and finally declared, “You are not keeping them in the best of conditions.”

I was mortified. I had even poked the pot mix frequently to check the moisture content. What more did I have to do? He said that I needed to keep the air-conditioner on, if not all day long, at least to keep the interiors cool enough for them to survive. 

That’s the beginning of this on-going battle between my plants and me. My metabolism doesn’t allow keeping the coolers on for more than 10 minutes. I shiver, my teeth chatter and my limbs go numb. Imagine me opening the door to someone, wearing sweaters, mittens and a monkey cap in the peak of summer! I must either allow myself to be scrutinised suspiciously or be ready to narrate my plant story if they would care to stop and listen.

 “I can’t keep the AC on for long,” I said. The plant counsellor nodded and looked at my husband. “In that case, it’s your choice. Either she or the plants stay.” That’s what he meant to say, I could see it on his face.

 We women have ways to read the malicious thoughts of men. My man nodded in reply as if to say, “I will chew it over, buddy, and take a final call.”

 I was glad that he wasn’t impulsive enough to call it quits with me at a plant store. There are decent ways of doing it, after all.

As we drove back home, I thought of the garden in our house in India. Lush and left to the care of nature, it’s a weed-ridden little yard tended by the elements. The greatest service that we do to the plants is water them in summer, and prune them out of our path when they grow over.  They weather all seasons and all conditions. They don’t demand to have the soil tilled and turned.

 I wish I could carry a bag of the rich earth with me to give my plants here a feel of home and habitat. I remembered how I don’t find time to go around, looking and checking on them during my vacations. I felt guilty about taking them for granted, and I compared them with the spoilt brats back here that died for no reason.

 Meanwhile, my husband might have considered the gardener’s choice between keeping me and the plants. But I know, for all his secret desire to get me a one-way ticket to Mars, he will keep me, because plants can’t cook and keep house.

Clueless about a cure

Khaleej Times (Issues) / 27 September 2013

SOME AILMENTS, like chewing gum stuck under your shoes, are hard to get rid of. Allergies, arthritis and migraines for instance. Regular in nature but less sinister in prospect, they are a nag than a pain and are the ones you don’t know what to do about.

You can’t ignore it, for it hinders your routine and throws normal life out of gear; you can’t cure it, because it either has no known cure or hasn’t been even diagnosed and tagged with a pronounceable name, nor can you bear in silence because it is anything but sufferable. All that you know is that there is a pesky disorder in your system that makes you walk vertical on the wall and run around in circles when your tolerance levels are breached. When I say run around in circles, I mean literally, between doctors and quacks, astrologers and time fixers, counselors and experts, and others (including strangers on the internet) who have had a similar condition and have somehow got it fixed.

 A friend of mine had been suffering from an all-pervading ache, so much so that she could tell the number of joints in her body at any point of time. After numerous visits to doctors of various specialties and endless rounds of medication, it turns out that she has ‘fibromyalgia’, from which there is no deliverance. Resigned to pain, at some point, she decided to shed a few pounds just to shape up and voila! The incurable got cured.

 Picture this. For months I have been suffering from a pain in the hand that has its origin somewhere in the shoulder and can’t seem to decide where to settle. I go to the orthopaedic, get some tests done and come home in a sling and some pills that would have killed me but for the insurance cover. I’m okay for some months and then the horrible condition kicks in again. Another ortho advises physical therapy apart from the wallet ripping prescription. I learn that my shoulder is frozen! The doc says I must have lifted a weight or suffered a fall. I don’t remember either. The physical therapist says it is age or diabetes. Neither of those, I aver.

 Meanwhile, the alternative medical practitioner to who I go for my migraine objects to the allopathic intervention in his holistic treatment. As per him, even external handling like the ultra sound, high frequency or gel on my shoulder can reverse the effects of his treatment. Now, I am left to decide what to tackle first — the migraine or the frozen shoulder. I choose the former and suffer the latter loudly, even as the homeo includes my shoulder in his notes.

 Friends back home have a new suggestion for thawing my shoulder — Ayurveda. I am tempted to pursue it while on vacation, but remembering my homeo doc’s warning against any interference, I desist. Meanwhile, the shoulder freezes to ice in the monsoons. I rush to an ortho in my home town, who puts me through tablets and physical therapy again. The physical therapist categorically says his is the only way to rectify things. Neither medicine nor mysticism can do it. I think of my homeo doc and waver, but put migraine on the back burner and go with the physio. I temporarily accept the opinion that alternative medicines are mere placebos. I choose to ignore my homeo doc’s contention that allopaths administer only steroids for migraine and if anything can cure my headache it is his little white pearls.

 Post physio, I return to homeo. Caught between multiple systems of medicine and healing, between hot and cold packs, I go by my instincts and put my body through rigorous tests of endurance and remedy, in the sole belief that something will work. Meanwhile, someone has suggested acupuncture and the occult to me.

 I am still gathering details; just in case all else fails.