About a month back I had written a fiction three part “love story” about a couple hopelessly in love, but out of their wed-locks. It was supposed to be another take on a different and relatively less explored facet of love...the so called “extra-marital”, technically not allowed to be termed as love at all by social norms and the moral police, but then love nevertheless!
Out there I received some lambasting and some accolades for my interpretation-a few eyebrows raised in disdain or suspicion and a handful even hinted at a near heart attack!*wonder what would happen to those weaklings after this!*
But what struck me as obvious was a certain amount of public distaste for such a possible concoction!
I even received a comment saying that no love was evident there but just pure lust and infidelity!
Phew!
INFIDELITY!
A new age offering you’d say that we would have to get used to of seeing around, not so far away as on on-screen but in our very vicinity and sometimes even dealing with in-your-face threats of the same in our own little worlds!
But with the opening up of the globe, notions and minds, perhaps we need to open up also to the fact that “everlasting love” may also be edging towards the obsolete territory. We have to wake up to the idea that deviations in love may occur and hence gear up our defence mechanism and quaint little hearts for the same instead of pretending to exist in the land of oblivion. Ignorance is not always bliss. An ‘open view’ is a phenomenon that we need to understand first before scrunching our hoity noses or jumping onto the band wagon of self derived conclusions.
I hate mindless boxing and indexing of human beings...I hate branding of character without enough back up proof...I hate pre-conceived notions and judgements...and hence this!
1. Monogamy is great...but then it is a concept whose brunt has been largely borne by the weaker sex alone. Till she was largely monogamous, the world was said to be relatively moral no matter how much the male counterpart indulged even then! Those moral dos and don’ts were heralded by an era where women and men were more segregated and the former being confined within the four walls*for our ancient history is richer n bolder...somewhere down the line we developed the pseudo attitude*. No exposure means no realization of what she was missing and hence no strife to attempt to attain it!
2. Man on the other hand has been a wanderer from the initiation of history. He is the bread earner who must go out to seek it and in doing so, he many-a-times comes across that which he receives often without having sought! So if he strayed, he managed to cover his tracks...wear the garbs of a devoted husband...also enjoyed the strings of unabashed, on the side, wild love...and everyone lived happily ever after!
3. I am not defending or shredding either genders here...for the roles of the victim and the accused are easily interchangeable now, based on the universally accepted hypothesis that there is bound to be sufferings anyways!
There was recently a soppy serial on television that dealt with a couple in the dusk of their lives. She retires from her bank job with public declarations reeking of love and gratitude expressed to the “perfect” husband who had stood by her through the thick and thin of life. However just days later, she discovers he has another wife and a daughter in another town and suddenly the marriage she clung to, becomes a sham!
She feels all those years of matrimony which were hitherto bliss, were suddenly meaningless and make her feel dirty!
Oh come on now...I know this would be a natural reaction of most women, but then how can you possibly erase and ignore all good memories just because one blot has marked that sheet of your relationship?
You may be expected to be angry but why vindictive?
You ought to analyze his needs instead of raising fingers at his intensions or your worth! Reflect that a thing like this just happened or did he go out of his way to make it happen! Think woman, before going into the whole melodrama stance that sucks out the very life breathe of the relation, drench it in tears and gobbles up the smiles!
4. Most people would empathize with an infidel partner if the spouse is indifferent, abusive or family conditions incline towards being non-cordial. But there would be absolutely no dint of pity or attempt for understanding the reasons behind a cheating man/woman who walks out of line of a seemingly perfect union of two individuals. I remember watching the movie Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna...the Karan Johar-Shahrukh Khan flick, that bombed at the box office for it dealt with spouses who felt suffocated in marriages chosen by them out of love or motivated by security. I remember the flak of women in my gym for Rani Mukherjee for cheating upon the “perfect” husband played by Abhishek Bachchan. “What more could she ask for?” they reverberated in aghast horror!
It is still very difficult for us to understand the existence of an emotional void! There may be a loving husband, enough money, freedom, lifestyle...yet something may STILL be missing...a connect that the soul inconspicuously seeks!
5. Why does fulfilment of voids-emotional or otherwise tantamount to being selfish? We do have just one life to live and if we please ourselves, only then we remain pleasant for the outward show to the society.
I am not advocating wanton conduct, mind you! But I do believe in self help when in dire straits! It is okay to seek for happiness that we deserve, without crumpling someone’s feelings or sentiments!
We are taught to think bigger, aim higher, crave for the best...but then also in very tiny fonts below are given the limitations as to what such dictums apply on! They become evident and preached only after you falter!
We as a generation are an unsatisfied lot! We no longer depend on trains...we want to reach faster by planes, typewriters have been replaced by computers... we want high speed internet, multi tasking quicker gadgets, speedy home deliveries, reservations at the click of a button...
But if we want to attempt to elevate our mental disposition, remove the discontent in our emotional baggage, there are more ‘stop’ buttons than ‘enter’. There are just ‘backspaces’ and forced ‘deletes’ or ‘escapes’!
So while you deserve the best facial cream or are ‘worthy’ of the extravagant hair colour or motivated to imbibe the latest trend to project your outward prosperity, you are discouraged to do the same for your insides!
So much for our hypocritical thinking!
5. Who made the rules of our righteousness in our society?
Who can say for sure that ‘this’ is acceptable and ‘that’ is not?
Weren’t the rules made to facilitate discipline and not dictatorship?
Let’s say in the beginning of time when there was little understanding of things...man may have discovered sex!
He felt he liked it and wanted to try it more. Once explored with a certain partner, he may have been haunted by the query if it was the same with every other individual and he went on to experiment! He sauntered into new, pleasurable horizons with each, different experience.
But some in the species were lazy and easily intimidated! They could muster the effort for just one catch and having attained it, concentrated just on that exploration! Soon their number outgrew to those who dared and as such came about the set standard as guidelines for everyone! Monogamy became a fad and soon came in fashion and stayed there for so long that any other options beyond it became inconceivable!
So does the rest of the race pay the price for standards set by such lazy bones? Hmm...the argument doesn’t make sense, I know! Has no factual back up to support it either...but interesting and quite probable line of thought, if you ask me!
So like a thousand things that we follow blindly...we continue to follow relationship notions also- elders can’t be wrong, good mothers must sacrifice for their children and married people do not experiment outside for physical pleasures no matter how bad the inside story is! Period!
6. The extent of what you would term as cheating is itself debatable!
Flirting in the office, eyeing someone, going to a strip club, getting massages, kissing, dirty dancing, a friendly grab of the butt, cyber sex, one night stands, intimate friendships, phone pals, dating, lying about being single, fantasizing during the act, living in, wife swapping, etc...
You would say it depends from person to person...
Then why not let the persons involved in it decide for themselves?
Who would set boundaries and guidelines here?
You can’t attempt to form a preamble and let the public draw its own constitution...and before forming one, you must question yourself if you are worthy of doing so...if you are as impeccable as you would want the world to see!
You can’t say it is okay for Tiger Woods to do so because he is in a temptation prone zone and not okay for the common man...
You can’t say it is okay for a man to do any/all of the above but not seemingly for a woman!
So much that we must introspect deeply before brandishing someone’s character!
You have to shed some double standards!
7. “If a man strays, he may have got tempted...if a woman strays, she may not have morals?” Being a Casanova is cool...but being indulgent for a girl is slutty!
We encourage our boys to have girlfriends but we warn our girls about boys wanting just one thing and hence not wanting boys at all!
Why is a woman’s dignity considered more at risk and hence supervised more ferociously than that of a man’s?
How does having been in a relationship before, raise a question on our integrity concerning every other aspect of our lives?
Why is a man easily forgiven...or relatively easily forgiven for digressing but not a woman?
It is generally true that once a flirt, always a flirt....once strayed, chances of doing so again remain comparatively higher...but then don’t bar the accused of basic rights and leading a guiltless life!
Despite all the progress gender discrimination still looms over our lives. A boy taking naughty is attractive and a girl talking naughty is easy! When will we manage to shatter the stereotypes? When would we be able to give our children the joy of feeling like conscientious adults... “Do what you want to but don’t make us ashamed and be ready to accept its responsibility.”
8. We need to stop the alert radars from rising high upon seeing a man and a woman together just having fun. Our growing voyeurism is a matter of serious concern!
So many men go to Bangkok very often. They have no qualms about having had “fun” there on flimsy pretexts like it was not in their own country, it was just once or because they paid for it; Stress levels and long intervals from home sometimes induce a slight deviation. But these men act all moral-full and become super irritating when they cook up a gossip story about another married man who was only just sighted in a car with a woman! The masala gets added spontaneously and soon the whole town is talking about a flamboyant, flaming love affair!
9. Physical betrayal Vs emotional attachment...
Ask most men if they are likely to forgive their partner for physical or emotional betrayal...and they would choose to ignore the emotional crap as long as the woman’s body is prestine!
With women it works in the opposite way...they don’t mind physical indulgence for their man, but to think that some other woman over powers his mind is unthinkable!
Now which is worse and which is not...if it is not, is it acceptable?
In this argument I would also like to raise more issues...but from here on, I only have questions. I have no answers for them...perhaps you might help me here:
Is it wrong for a man and a woman to get into friendship outside their wedded loop...just friends or even otherwise, if they remain committed to their duties and relations?
Why is the world likely to blame higher education or a vocation for motivating a woman to stray? Should we refrain our daughters from studying too much?
Most articles I read on infidelity teach you what to do with the situation after the damage is done...
What about reasons...acceptance...motivations...empathy?
Why deviations are considered the end of a relationship and not a new opportunity to rethink things over for a better evolution?
I personally detest a man who would hop from one woman to another for satisfaction of physical urges! I absolutely abhor men who do not respect women and women who act trashy!
So have I made any sense above, without sounding as an advocate to extra marital flings?
Or in my bid to strike a balance between loyalty and self expression, I have screwed up this article?
After having read through the pointers I am sure you are pondering with conclusions...less so about the write up and more so about the author:
1. She is having an extra-marital affair for sure!
2. She leads too cushioned a mush life to realize the implication of the claims she is making and of such a betrayal...We’d ask, when it would come to her!
3. What the f@#$%! Did I just read all this long crap?
