How to be successful at marriage :-)

 Now that I have been married for almost 10 years, and my spouse and I have not murdered each other (yet :-) I feel experienced enough to turn into the agony aunt that we all love to hate. You know, the one who gives unsolicited advice whenever you meet ? (Oh Jeez, Can I not enjoy my coffee in peace before it cools down ?) The one you nod at with the same expression on your face for 10 minutes and hope she goes away? Yup, that's me now.

Now, the title of this piece could easily be " How to be successful at anything" but then it would become like a Dale Carnegie Book. 

1. Remember only the good things in your marriage and keep at it . Really - that's about it. First and last piece of advice. 

For those who need elaboration - here goes : Every aspect of our lives come with the good and the bad experiences and hence memories. Our jobs. Our studies. Our families. Our spouses. The only way to be successful at anything is keeping at it. And to consciously remember only the good things and not linger on the bad ones. Because when we keep bringing up and remembering the bad aspects of anything, we turn bitter, we lose the enthusiasm for the good parts, we get depressed and slowly turn towards ending the aspect- maybe job or the marriage or the course you are are studying. Then what? Finding the perfect job and perfect spouse can be a never ending search and is that really an effective use of our time instead of investing in the bird in our hand ? So, remember only the good parts, and live through the bad parts and immediately forget them. And be kind - to yourself and others. For, surely you aren't perfect at everything- and I'm sure you're a pain in some parts of your life and people have to put up with you just as they have to put up with me. 

But this is an ongoing process. This need to make yourself forget the bad experiences that come with married life. In the olden days, middle class women had a very different attitude to marriage- they were made dependant on the institution - Coz -not able to generate money for food is a big dinger. (Because mostly they were not employable because they were not educated.  Not to mention, that most middle class life across the world had women as only home makers because society was more unforgiving in those days for those who went against norms.)

 These days we have freedom  of choice about our education and career and it hardly inures us to hardships - because we don't face big hardships in our early years and marriage forces us- women and men equally but in different ways- into making space for someone else's wants and needs and the hardest aspect is to make space for the wants and needs of our spouses's families - in India at least where women are trained and groomed to leave their parents and go and live elsewhere with their husband's families, make career choices within constraints imposed by others - even if they don't want to.  When we begin to do things in our lives that we don't really want to  - in the interests of having a traditional family and raising children - it really jars with our individual needs, doesn't it?

 This unpleasantness is a part of grown up life and it chafes us - some more than others. So, the people and women in particular that succeed in a marriage are the ones who can look at the larger picture and put up with the small nuisances with good cheer. (Disclaimer - I'm not talking about putting up with wife beaters. I'm merely talking about putting up with your run of the mill, middle-class Indian Kumar and his family in the interest of the larger picture. Indian Kumar may not be so bad, he can even be Prince Charming on occasion:-)

Now for those who scoff and say I don't need to have a traditional family, or I don't need to have kids or I don't need a spouse's support even if I do want to raise kids, well kudos to you.  (Some recent studies show that the happiest people on the planet are women who are unmarried and have no kids - by choice. Here's a link if you want to know more : https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/women-happier-without-children-or-a-spouse-happiness-expert ) If you are one of the above, then this particular blog article is clearly not meant for you. This is meant for the countless women and men who struggle daily with the idea of - Why should I put up with this shit? Because in India - while the rate is still low compared to global divorce rates (1.1% is India's divorce rate) the rate has actually doubled between 2000-2020 - here is a link about that if you want to know more -  https://www.livemint.com/news/india/non-marriage-very-rare-in-india-but-divorces-doubled-in-past-two-decades-report-1561486297890.html) and this question looms large : Why should I put up with all these choices that I haven't really made for myself?

Because the larger picture maybe worth it. And it's for you to decide if you want to make your marriage succeed , or if it is too horrible to live in and it's better to cut your losses and run now. Because the line each of us draws in the sand is different. I can put up with this much and no further. So, find your line. Sometimes you may be willing to re-draw it (if you have a supportive spouse) and sometimes not. And I will leave you again with what I started with: 

Remember only the good parts and try to live through and then forget the bad parts. Else every marriage we attempt will end in failure. 

Marriage is not for everyone

This is something I still believe in, now having been married for a while. It is HARD. And the good parts of marriage (whatever they might be for each person) do not necessarily score out the bad parts. And it is not for everyone, especially if one looks at marriage as a true partnership of two individuals as a way to form a family.

 Not everyone is made for such an existence, however much society wants everyone to conform to the unit/institution it has set up as the best way of managing disorder, chaos and anarchy- the dissenting , individualistic, non-conformist thought thinking, ‘I can be a part of  this society -even though I don’t like your ways of keeping order and organisation and will abstain from participating in some processes’ people by forcing, cajoling, convincing them into marriage, and then keeping them there by the pull of the emotional bonds that living in small units(forming a socially constructed ‘family’) and having progeny with a long term partner, create.

And now there are more and more options for people who do not subscribe to society’s way of making one live in a way that is easy for society to compartmentalise and disregard – “ OK, he seems to be following our rules, let’s move on to the next guy/girl to harass.”

Otherwise - “Oh, you have two wives? That is not cool, not acceptable. You say they have no problem with it, and happily co-exist in the same house? Sorry, that is not good enough assurance. This is wrong according to our rules. You want to live here, then lose one of them...” or “You have an adopted child? And you are single? Your parents are okay with this? But a man cannot look after a child by himself, that just is not allowed.  Either get married, or you have to return the child to the agency you got it from, I mean, unacceptable,” or “You are gay? You will go to jail if you have sex with a man in this country, ” or “ You are co-habiting with a man you are not married to? Shame, shame. We will proceed to give you so much trouble that you run back to your mama,” is how society scared people into following its tunes.

In spite of this, due to increased financial availability for all in the post LPG era, people have the luxury of choosing a lifestyle that they are happy with, instead of the factory produced, ‘Dad, Mom and 2.3 kids’ (Whatever the current number is.) that may not be their poison. They may choose to die a slow death in some other manner of their own choosing. 

The very mundane experiences of a recently paired-up woman

I now live in a big apartment complex in the suburbs, so far away from civilisation, that calling it the boondocks would be fair.  I see Aunties, Uncles and their kids all day. These aunties and uncles are probably only a few years older than me, but they seem like an era away from my age, their life and concerns. And the parents of the Aunties and Uncles, it is like being judged by a hundred different mothers and fathers-in-law, instead of just one pair.

I am teetering, neither where I was a few months ago, nor in my new neighbours’ spheres, where metal wheel versus rubber wheel durability on prams and correct use of the complex’s amphitheatre are the most debated topics. I couldn’t care less about these things. Yet, the things I do care about and want to participate in are all located far away inside the city where the people with less daily concerns live, because they  have no significant others, or because their significant others have the means and the interest to live inside the bustling city.

(Now, I can’t really blame the boy for wanting to try to live with nature and be one with the earth and all, given the fact that said boy has always lived in a city until now, a true city brat. So I feel that given a little time, boy will tire of having to drive to the grocery store instead of stepping into the one next door, or drive an hour just to catch a movie, or drive for 90 minutes to visit his cousins.)

(P.S : Not a word of the above to the boy :-) )

On a connected note, it is just short of miraculous to me how different are the things one starts caring about after one gets married. Like larger family dynamics, and who gets offended by what and what to do and what not to do when people from the other side visit. I mean, one starts caring about stuff one didn't have the slightest idea anyone would know or could care about. It is strange, this confluence of two different threads of life, and all the attached threads, coming together and trying hard not to choke any other threads off. 

Why oh why GOD!

My father told me this morning, the following dialogue.

"Rani Meyyammai hall cost 4 lakhs for two days rental, exclusive of water and electricity charges. And catering arrangements cost about a lakh if you want to give your guests good food for the two days."

After my non committal, "hmmm" he goes on, "And Hindhi Prachar Shaba hall costs only a lakh for two days...but its not in the same range as Rani M. hall."

Two of his close friends' daughters are getting married shortly. Both of them are exactly my age, one even with a degree more than me.

After being bugged about the marriage issue by my mother for almost a year now ( am only twenty frigging three now) , my dad too has taken up the mantle to fight for the cause of the establishment - namely - get a reasonably nice boy, preferably from the same community and get hitched.

Oohhh, the fact that I don't want to get married is something they think if they ignore, somehow slowly my though process will become like their's. It is like - their ignoring the elephant in the room will promptly make the elephant go "poof" and vanish.....and the fact that a ceremony to unite two beings in matrimony should cost atrocious sums that some people struggle to save in a decade is abhorable.

Ok, its not like I'm going to marry some inappropriate guy or elope with a hooligan or something.....I don't have a boyfriend..... only younger men seem to be attracted to me for now...don't know if that is good or bad in some ways....but I definitely cannot bring home a boy, who still has years of independence left to enjoy and make him marry me to satisfy my parents...

So, now that I have vented enough, I will go away.....

Actor and love/hate blues

I am going to interview an actor in a couple of weeks. I have interviewed actors before, it goes with the job. And in my job, you can't be in awe of celebrities, because interacting with them is your livelihood. And, if, in spite of knowing job specifications, you are in awe of actors, apprehensive or gobsmacked, once you see them in the flesh, sweating, bumbling, making gaffes and faux pas, you fall quickly down from the haze high up there.

So, why is this actor special? Well, he is not very popular, atleast not as popular as some of the other stars I have interviewed. But, I have kind of had a thing for him ever since he came over from a neighbouring state. Why? My friend from work asked.....and I am well past the age where girls fantasize seriously about actors......so I started wondering.....He has the typical looks of the type I am naturally attracted to ......of course I veered from my 'Type' once in a while(One has to, especially coz there aren't many to go around in the aforesaid type), but he fits the Type to a 'T'...but it is not just that....
His voice is wonderful, deep and gravelly, kind of like Yesudas, whose voice I love, and whose voice kind of resembles one of my first and few love-hate thingies. So I started thinking about all the people I have had Love and hate with.....There aren't that many in that list.....infact...it had just the one guy I mentioned.....the other two are females, but I am digressing here.

So anyway, I am going to interview him pretty soon. And I hope I can do a good job of it, because I kind of clam up if I am attracted to someone. Clammed up interviewers don't generate good interviews, do they? :(

My sister depressed me a whole lot, when I came home from work, today talking about a Taboo subject, which in my dictionary include "groom", "family", "relative" and everything that goes with that. She was in a strange mood and told me not to give in to the pressure, coz if I gave in , she might be tempted to...not that I plan on giving in to the pressure in the near future....not for another three years at least....In case you haven't guessed, yup am talking about the dreaded 'Arranged Marriage" thing.

Lots more to say, but when queen somna( what else can you call her?) becons, one has got to hit the bed,

so with that faithful narrative, I take leave.....
More later,
AV