It’s been an eventful year for most people I know. I must admit, for me personally, one of the more challenging years of my life, and yes challenges I’ve indeed had my share of. That’s what actually gives me the bandwidth to chat with you on varied issues, the ability to unravel the secret behind making things work despite the tests and trials that life throws at one. As things go, unless there are calamities at world level, turmoil’s in human relationships assume almost as gigantic proportions as earth shattering events. I have seen so many of these cataclysmic chaos-es this past year- almost like an epidemic.
In 2013 , some of the most happy relationships broke down and public declarations of divorce, separation and severe cracks euphemistically termed as ‘taking time out’ from the marriage dotted the relationship scene like commas and full stops in a page.
The biggest buzz all year was the breakdown of
Hritik Roshan’s marriage of so many years, and their public declaration that
came some recently with speculations of the divorce settlement. The golden couple
of seventeen years is no longer in the happily ever after. There was an alleged
entry of a third party, Arjun Rampal to which Suzanne declared- “it is only
about me and Hrithik, nobody else” and wouldn’t you agree? An outsider, of
which there are always many prowling about cannot be the cause for fracture of
a relationship. Things go wrong in deeper multifarious levels.
An equally
amazing causality of 2013 was Kalki Koechlin and Anurag Kashyap, who issued a
public declaration of their desire to give the relationship time out. For me, I
was heartbroken to hear my favourite Cathrine Zeta Jones is undergoing a
similar separation from Michael Douglas. This was perhaps the most shocking
split of the year , when this Hollywood A-list couple, together since 1998
decided to take time out. They have thankfully come back and are going to renew their marriage vows.
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An equally
amazing causality of 2013 was Kalki Koechlin and Anurag Kashyap, who issued a
public declaration of their desire to give the relationship time out. For me, I
was heartbroken to hear my favourite Cathrine Zeta Jones is undergoing a
similar separation from Michael Douglas. This was perhaps the most shocking
split of the year , when this Hollywood A-list couple, together since 1998
decided to take time out. They have thankfully come back and are going to renew their marriage vows.
To my mind, Love is an outpouring of feeling for
one single person, that spontaneously makes you want only that one particular person-
now then and forevermore to the extent of exclusivity over all others. Commitment,
fidelity, trust almost naturally follow without high faulting definition in
this scenario.
The ultimate case that comes to mind is Emperor Shah Jahan who like all grand Moghuls had an entourage of several hundred wives but consistently had the most committed relationship with Mumtaz Mahal and if he visited any of the other wives it was as a formality to keep up tradition but it was Mumtaz Mahal whom he was devoted to.
The ultimate case that comes to mind is Emperor Shah Jahan who like all grand Moghuls had an entourage of several hundred wives but consistently had the most committed relationship with Mumtaz Mahal and if he visited any of the other wives it was as a formality to keep up tradition but it was Mumtaz Mahal whom he was devoted to.
Like all phenomena, in our generation, it appears
that this very love is of the moment and transient like all things of the now.
The happily ever after is endangered. Commitment, fidelity, trust, loyalty
raise their fragile heads like serpents raising their heads in the Garden of
Eden. In this scenario, while marriage should hold better chances than a live
in relationship, the statistics tell us otherwise.
So where do the serpents come from in these gardens
of Eden? There is an alleged apple, in the form of Arjun Rampal or Huma
Qureshi, and in the case of Michael Douglous- oral sex which he publically
admitted to. Deeper than that, there have to be more intrinsic cracks and
disenchantments with the personal equation which one has to work out with
communication and understand that that seemingly eternal love has gone the ‘way
of all flesh’.
Cracks at the seams may be at various levels but
the social fabric to maintain its integrity needs conscious care, effort,
protection from tare-ing to give any relationship its true potential of companionship,
long past the age when the physical nostalgia has blown away. You cannot on a
whim say ‘now he doesn’t enchant me, one day he did”. The rewards come when you are long past the nostalgia, and you’ve come to accept the warts and kinks and enjoy the companionship and camaraderie. That is the winning point that saves us from a meaningless, lonely, futile existence, because with a companion by ones side, the eternal round of challenges that life throws at us at every step is much more easily met. All this is a play toward the final ultimate of a meaningful existence. You cannot exist in isolation- no man is an island. This is a situation that equally apply to the social gamut of friendships, joint families, siblings and parents.
So what makes it work? How do you save a cracking,
crumbling relationship?
It is about acknowledgement of the other at a human and a humane level, which is what makes relationships work. A relationship is a different ball game with wide and multifarious operationals than ‘love’. Sometimes considering the other before oneself is all one requires and an earnest effort towards building bridges of friendship. If one respects existence as a manifestation of the divine, then regardless of disenchantments one extends respect to the human being that life, chance or choice has thrown into my ambit. That is the magic fulcrum of toleration at every level. To make the integral fabric sustain you have to work at it. You come down to the operables that make this a possibility- give space, responsiveness, communication, understanding and a will to work at stepping up the game in terms of one’s appearance and intellect to keep the challenge and spark alive. A will to accept the differences because we are not toothpaste out of a factory, but individuals with differences in personality and mind-sets.
It is about acknowledgement of the other at a human and a humane level, which is what makes relationships work. A relationship is a different ball game with wide and multifarious operationals than ‘love’. Sometimes considering the other before oneself is all one requires and an earnest effort towards building bridges of friendship. If one respects existence as a manifestation of the divine, then regardless of disenchantments one extends respect to the human being that life, chance or choice has thrown into my ambit. That is the magic fulcrum of toleration at every level. To make the integral fabric sustain you have to work at it. You come down to the operables that make this a possibility- give space, responsiveness, communication, understanding and a will to work at stepping up the game in terms of one’s appearance and intellect to keep the challenge and spark alive. A will to accept the differences because we are not toothpaste out of a factory, but individuals with differences in personality and mind-sets.
When we focus only on the worm we tend to forget
the fetching picture that the attractive apple presents, that escapes us. We
need to see a situation in entirety. If we look in the whole expanse of the
being viewing only the nits and warts and see the worm in the apple only, we lose
the entirety of the apple, and become sour entities who have flung away the
rose coloured glasses, disenchanted with all the romance the world has to offer
and we are the losers. Not for nothing was Jesus called the prophet of love.
Heidi left the extreme comfort of the mansion as
she pined away for the rudimentary hut of her beloved grandfather and goats on
her adored mountainside. Wealth has proven that it is ill-equipped as the
provider of happiness, however comfortable it may make life. My ideal of a
state would be Bhutan which calculates its wealth by the happiness quotient,
the index gross national happiness rather than the GNP.
An endeavour to begin every interaction from a
point of conscious love is the win-win at every level.
Nisha JamVwal
@nishjamvwal
nishajamvwal.blogspot.in
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