Relationships... (5th Jan.'10)

A clinical psychologist of Indian origin with a practice in Chicago recently got famous after writing a book with a provocative subtitle: 'Love Will Follow' (sub-title: 'Why the Indian marriage is burning'). The book purportedly attempts a look at the emerging contours of Indian middle-class marriages, especially the changing & progressive behavior of wives in traditional marriages, based on interactions with a clutch of couples (mostly the wives) in NCR. The author has also put up a group with the same name on Facebook, and initiated a number of discussions. 

One of the discussion topics was: 'Do you think wives drive their husbands into the arms of other women'. It quoted another site with a reference to the recent Tiger Woods episode.

What is stated in the above topic line (never mind the referred website article, too long) may be untrue for the vast majority of marriages in India. Husbands may have other reasons to philander (if that's the right word). But it may well be true for some Indian marriages, even if in a minuscule minority right now. There are some husbands (and mind you, not all staying in a family home, but as a nuclear family, so the 'culture wars' factor - ref. the book - may be as good as absent) who may consciously try to get out of the MCP mould in which their then family/society may've tried to mould them into while they were of an impressionable age. Wider exposure, sometimes on travels, sometimes due to interaction with 'emancipated' individuals/bodies, may also push them towards 'progressive' behaviour.

But then, they may find the shoe on the other foot. Now that they seem to be doing all they can (in their own perception, which is of course moulded by their own upbringing) to go all the way to 'progress' (read equality in relationships - physical, financial or otherwise), they may find they are being pushed around. Perhaps not 'unfairly' from the other's standpoint, but hugely in their own perception. Like, perhaps, having to take care of the child and home single-handedly (with some help, hopefully, from in-laws and others), while the wife focuses totally on her career. Again, not 'unfair' from her point of view (esp. if she had made career sacrifices in the past for family reasons). But the point is that, for the moment, 'equality' in the relationship is gone. And a double whammy would be the total lack of face time (and consequent lack of intimacy) that it could be accompanied with.

So, what does a typical, 40-ish Indian man do in the circumstances. Perhaps he can't think of a divorce, given extended family pressures and more imporatantly considering the effects of a failed marriage/single parent on a small child. And perhaps he's not of the disposition to shout around and cause visible unpleasantness. Some men could perhaps tend to sublimate their frustrations by getting more involved with their friend circule (drinking binges?) or community efforts. But some could think of relationships outside the marriage, sexual or not. If only (and perhaps mostly) to have at least 'someone to talk to/listen'.

Caveat: No generalisations. We're not talking here of numbers or general trends or majority, only of what could happen, perhaps in a very small minority of cases currently.

And seen from another angle, the topic itself seems to be somewhat anachronistic in these 'modern' times. After all, an emotional disconnect should absolve people from the 'duty' of keeping up the pretenses in these 'emancipated' times, no? Making a brouhaha about an 'affair' is "so 20th century", if one goes by current trends. (:-)

Cellphone manners (7th July'09)

[A recent post on an HT Blog on travel touched upon how being connected may enable busy people to holiday more. I share here my abridged comments]

While it’s true that new technology is good if it actually ‘frees’ you, is that mostly the case? Some personal experiences may be diametrically opposite. You schedule a holiday to ‘get away from it all’. And then all your companions seem to be doing is going around like zombies with the cellphone glued to their ears!

The new tech. may enable some people to holiday so much more now than 20 years back, but does holidaying just mean physically going around places  and sites? Isn’t it an added (the main?) benefit that people otherwise too busy to connect with one another in daily life, except on a perfunctory basis, should be able to get adequate face time to ‘really’ connect? And how do you get that face time if the face itself is partly obscured by a cellphone almost all the time!

It's no wonder that some people are truly sick and tired of the cellphone, which is perhaps the most ubiquitous manifestation of new tech. More to the point, they are tired of the blatant misuse of the cellphone, if it can be put that way. People seem to be hiding behind new tech. in general (email?) and the cellphone in particular, seemingly to avoid any personal contact.

In days of yore, most people would be offended if you so much as looked away while talking to them, much less start talking to a third person. But these days nobody seems to notice how the cellphone is accorded the pride of place and the highest priority of response even while talking to someone face to face. You may leave the other person looking forlorn but, hey, what the heck, it’s the cellphone after all. And it HAS to be answered come what may!

The bottomline is: how much respect does someone accord to you. Enought to give you his/her undivided attention for at least a few minutes? If not, s/he perhaps deserves the same response and the same level of respect.

This holds true even for those who are no technophobes, those using computers at work since years, present on FB, Twitter, G-talk, Messenger, Orkut, blogging regularly, having own websites, and having tried out IE 8, Opera & Chrome (does that qualify?!). But still the lack of cellphone manners, and the lack of respect for the other that it portrays, may leave them frothing in the mouth.

Doctor heal thyself (10th June'09)

Does aggressiveness and irresponsible behaviour flow from a kind of peer pressure? (The mob theory.) The question struck me when I heard someone I know being asked by his wife “Did you talk to the driver?” What had happened was – the errant family driver in question had gone off on a leave without prior notice, having gone on some sort of a short pilgrimage to another state with family. And on a Saturday (when the employers usually took it easy, not bothering him unless needed) when he was specifically called on duty. The reasons the driver/his wife kept giving during the 2.5 days of absence kept changing – wife’s ailment first, changing houses next, pilgrimage thereafter. So it was not wonder that the fellow was given a sound berating by the employer’s bro-in-law who had originally referred him, including a threat of sacking.

Still, it probably didn’t satisfy the wife until the husband himself ‘took on’ the driver. She was satisfied only when the husband told her (in suitable tones) that he himself HAD indeed ‘taken on’ the driver and repeated some of the same berating and threats. 


Takes me back to a day some years back when I was maneuvering my car through a narrow, one way lane when a fellow on bicycle came along the wrong side. Now, I am a most peaceful and ‘empathetic’ fellow in general. But that day, maybe because I was quite pissed off with the traffic and the maneuvering, I let the errant man have a piece of my mind (no expletives though – my colleagues 20 years back used to taunt me that the strongest expletive I knew was ‘saala’, almost an endearment). You should’ve seen the glow on wifey’s face – seemed to imply that for once I had ‘stood up’.

Got me thinking. Is a degree of aggressiveness ingrained into us by social conditioning. Say, your child comes home sobbing because some other child may’ve taunted him/her or even pushed him/her. What do you do? Do you try to reason with you child and help him/her put the incident in perspective? Do you talk/complain to the parents of the other child? Or do you tell your child to retaliate the next time around? While the level-headed response (the first one) may be quite rare, the response may’ve been limited to the second one till a few years (decades?) back. 

However, perhaps these days parents would be quite comfortable adopting the third alternative, telling themselves that ‘after all, the child needs to be aggressive to get what s/he wants in this bad, bad world’. The latent fear (sometimes brought on due to personal experiences while young) is also that their child may be seen as a wimp. But is it really the ‘bad, bad world’ outside, or are we contributing to making it that way with our attitude. This can be extended to parents looking the other way when their teenagers indulge in minor misdemeanors while driving, only to have them knocking down a few policemen, while driving drunk in the dead of night. I know this seems like a rampant generlisation, but so be it.

It seems we, as parents and as citizens, have abdicated our duty. Takes me back to the old apocryphal tale of the criminal who, standing in the dock, accused his mother of making him into a criminal by overlooking his early misdemeanours. At least those of us who rant against ‘the system’ can perhaps look at the issues from their micro perspective, to realize how they themselves are contributing to perpetuation of the rotten state of affairs. We continue to criticize the government for the power shortage, but leave lights/fans/ACs/geysers running in vacant rooms/toilets when the power is available. Same with water shortage. And don’t many of us (the paragons of virtue that we are!) gloat in private when the shopkeeper/bus conductor/ autorickshaw driver gives us back more money than is due? Then how can we even tell our children to be virtuous/truthful/honest/conserving (take your pick), leave along actually expecting them to adhere to such high standards.

Alas, it doesn’t look as if people are wont to learn from this. I am realistic enough to realize that people will go on blaming ‘the system’ or the ‘bad, bad world’ for all ills, while merrily going about doing the same things at personal level which, when done by the multitudes, evolve into ‘the system’. There is a sort of disconnect (accentuated by city living) which doesn’t let people see that it is THEY who make up ‘the society’ and then ‘the bad, bad world’. For people to realize this, perhaps we would’ve to go back (or forth, depending on how much of the ‘kaala’ mythology you believe) to ‘Satya Yuga’.

Till then, carry on!