In these times of the Corona Virus, or Covid-19 as it has finally ben officially termed, the one single phrase that stands out in all the social media chatter is "Social distancing." It is the single most important thing to flatten the curve on the spread of the virus and curtail the impact of it on the stretched medical response infrastructure. In practical terms, what it means is more time at home, less time in public spaces, especially around possibly ill strangers.
It is an absolutely necessary step to flatten out the spread across the community, and yet, within the home, for people used to seeing each other for a few hours a day and perhaps the weekends and the occasional longer break, this stay at home period can be something else altogether. We tend to romanticise the idea of being together forever with movies and books playing up the image of the lovelorn person yearning to spend every moment clinging to the beloved, pained at the thought of being away even for a day, and calling out "I miss you already!" and "I miss you more!" at the door only to quickly start messaging each other on their smart phones. In reality though, most relationships have long periods of time away from each other each day, if not through the week. There is a lot more intimacy and connection to be shared when there is time spent away from each other. To be able to go away and come back allows us at the very least ask, "How was your day?" and have stories to share of the outside world, and seek support from each other in terms of how we each relate to the world outside. For people who live and work together constantly, not having those gaps and always knowing what's up with each other, often reduces opportunity for intimate connections. What do you talk about with a partner about them when you see them all day, every day? There is no "What's new?" conversations possible, and with the over-familiarity, contempt could set as the old adage promises - "Familiarity breeds contempt." So, how does one maintain the little bit of distance necessary for healthy relationships even if you are mandatorily stuck with each other 24*7 for weeks on end? The key is to recognize that we all have inner worlds that are distinct and unique. We need to give ourselves time and space to live in those worlds, even if we are within the same walls, be it by reading, journaling, the content we consume, the activities we do. For us then to actively be interested in each other's world with questions of, "What have you been up to?" can still bring up interesting aspects of this person we are trying to love. This period of Corona inflicted home alone time may just be the Universe trying to get us away from being in Doing mode to more time in the Being mode, and learn to love each other in the spaces between us. As written for The New Indian Express Have you been tracking the financial news? Yes Bank has been very much in the news for all the wrong reasons, giving ride to frustrated customers queuing up to withdraw their allowed fifty thousand rupees per day and waiting for the world to go right again when all is again Yes with the bank after the reserve bank rescues it with a new partner that really can take care of it. In the meantime, the bank is losing close to 90% of it's value.
Financial relationships are relationships too. We get quite invested in the institutions that we go through for our financial needs. It isn't just about the interest rate we get or the interest we get from the bankers, most of us don't change bankers even if we know there are better banks around that offer maybe a percentage or two better interest. Even now, there are banks that woo clients with great offers, asking why we are with a four percenter when we could have six percent. Then there are banks which actually offer a lot more than just a couple of percentages more, it can even be as high as four percentage points more. In reality, sometimes we actually take the lesser percentage because it seems like the higher percentages are a bit too suspicious. It is like in high school dramas on Amazon prime or Netflix where the hottest people in campus don't necessarily get the Star - often it is the stereotype that the best looking people are also the meanest or not the smartest or something else that is taking away from their attractiveness as a long term prospect. It is like really we are programmed to avoid the better looking of things because we expect they will be less than great when we get to know them. Perhaps it is from evolution and how as people living in caves centuries ago, we needed to run away from the colourful and the brilliant because they were usually quite literally poisonous or threatening. We learn to admire things from far but learn to stay far away from them. We might even copy them to look dangerous ourselves but we stay cautious of the attractive rosary pea and the brilliantly colored butterflies Here in the times of big banks teetering, there are likely hundreds of customers of the bank who have been sticking with the bank anyway. So many of us don't just up and leave for a better looking prospect. We hang around, quite sure that we aren't going to get dumped. We are loyal to our banks, even when things look really scary. We trust at some level that the big bosses in the government will not let it really break down. We persevere. Thing is, are we really as loyal to the people in our lives as we are to the banks? Or, do we need that big boss guarantee? Life and love are tough. When even banks need a bail out, is love any different? If our love suffers, can we look for someone who might help? As written for The New Indian Express Everyone is talking about Parasite, the first movie in a language other than English to win the Best Picture Oscar. The director Bong Joon-ho famously said that the Oscars weren't really an international film festival and so he didn't play much attention to it, though one imagines Bong Joon-ho did enjoy getting the Oscar. There is so much talk about it being a movie on class and the inherited inequities of wealth, the emphasis on the smell that class gets and how this smell is at once reviled and sexualized.
There are many ways to see this movie, and one of them is to see how romantic and familial love plays out at both ends of the economic spectrum. The climactic scene is especially brilliant in how the families are polarized in which child they take care of - one is fainted, and the other is bleeding to death. There is the expectation briefly that the bleeding child be left to die and everyone rally around the rich kid, but in the second that there is clarity among the confusion that this is a family, there is a surrender and the rich person just asks for the keys. Parallely, the romantic interest cutting across the sections is doing its own thing, with the rich kid carrying the poor kid on their back and running to get attention. That poor kid survives and there is a bit of a narration of that life, though we are left to assume that the romance is washed away, given the rich kid is so young. Looking at it, the movie seemed to ask: who would you save? Your familial love? Or, your romantic love? An older dilemma that was often asked: imagine you are three of you in the house - you, one parent and one partner. One night, you wake up quite suddenly, smelling something off and you discover that your house is on fire. The parent and the partner are both passed out. You are strong but you can carry only one of them. Which one would you choose? The dilemma posed usually leaves out a child because if it is parental love versus family or romantic, chances are there is totally no question - the young thing is what typically everyone would choose. We are just programmed to look to the future generations, to the potentiality of the young and would put their needs first. To suggest anything else would mark us out as some kind of a sociopath. But when we leave out kids and just keep the dillema to a parent versus a partner, it gets complicated, ethically confusing and puts the focus squarely on what matters to us most: family love, or romantic love? Maybe the next Oscar winner is there in answering that dilemma! As written for The New Indian Express Are there things that you love that your partner hates?
Chances are that unless you are in some perfect romantic dream in some Bollywood fantasy or an old fashioned Mills and Boons novel, you are likely to have a less than perfect overlap with the people you love. We are sold so much of perfection that we often do not see that our lives are not exact matches. Even the awe inducing full solar eclipse, complete with the diamond ring formation, isn't really a perfect overlap. The reality is that we would often have atleast a few things that we hate about our partner and know that something about us that our partner hates. I mean hate - not just mildly dislike, or kinda annoyed, but downright hate it. Things that make you want to gag in revulsion. One might have mild annoyance for things like wet towels left on the bed, active dislike for an irritating habit like biting off one's nails (hopefully not toe nails! That would be really something for an adult!) or leaving hair in the shower drain for someone else to clear. Active hate though is reserved for even more personal matters. There is no universal list of hateable aspects. You might hate the way they lick their plate, for instance, even though they are otherwise the epitome of etiquette. They might hate how every morning you call up your parents for a half-hour chat. Maybe it is how the family dog gets more hugs and kisses than the people. Or even how one haggles with the vegetable vendor while dishing out thousands without as much a blink of an eye for a meal at a fancy restaurant. We may not have these hates when we start a relationship, but sooner or later, we start developing serious reservations about some habit or the other, maybe even some connections one has, or work or interests, or even political leanings. Relationships can go to ways: the first where what we tolerate when starting a relationship can soon feel intolerable, or the second where we are able to make space away from the relationship for what we just can't take and the other just can't leave. Let's take a simple thing like going out for a few drinks with buddies from college, imagining that you just don't like drinking at all. At the start, you might accommodate it but later on you get absolutely mad about it, or you are able to carve out separate times where your partner goes out drinking and it doesn't bother you. The difference between which path a relationship takes is often not about what you hate, but about how much you are able to love the rest of what happens in the relationship. Few things just turn deal breakers over night. Most of the differences we have in a relationship have generally existed anyway, and whether they now cross the limit of tolerance is mostly about how large and deep your relationship is, not what you don't like. As written for The New Indian Express Valentine's Day is marketed everywhere as the day of love. There are pink and red hearts all over the city from ice cream parlours to bookshops, movie halls do special film screenings, restaurants have curated multiple course meals for the day, flower-sellers make a killing on their roses. Love is celebrated as if it is the one thing that really matters in life, and for many of us, it might feel as if it really is all that matters. For many who aren't in a relationship despite really wanting to be in one, Valentine's Day can be the worst - it is like a diabetic being forced to really through candy stores, chocolate factories, cupcake bakeries and the such one after the other without end.
There is probably just one category of people who suffer a lot more, and that is the people who are bubbling over with love on that day, only to have their heart crushed by their beloved. Did you know that a significant number of breakups happen around Valentine's Day? Some studies have shown as much as 7 to 10 percent of all breakups happen on this day. Another lot happens around New Year's, and a third lot happens around anniversaries. What is it about Valentine's Day that makes some people call off relationships? It is not just the quick Christmas - New Year winter loneliness triggered coming together that gets called off with the early signs of spring. It is even relationships that have stood for years that often get broken up on this day. Has Valentine's Day become some sort of a day of testing of one's feelings for another person? Does the heightened focus on love in all its colors, flavors and sizes make one check in for the authenticity of their emotions towards their beloved? Is it harder to lie to oneself about what one feels towards someone when it is blown up extra large and one can't ignore the superficiality of those feelings? So many of us are in love with the idea of relationships, of being a 'we' and 'us' together, of finally not being alone that we might take up a relationship just because it allows us the temporary relief of not being lonesome, of belonging with someone, of being seen as 'taken.' These seen such beautiful phases in life and we want so badly to feel those emotions that we take up relationships that aren't really soul-satisfying. We might even make do with such connections, feeling satisfied that atleast there is this much and it is better than nothing. When we are really pulled into looking at our relationship by the social magnification that happens on days like Valentine's Day, we have no choice but to take a deep, hard look at ourselves. It becomes really hard to deny our truth if we aren't really in love, just as much as it is if we are and if we need to break up to give ourselves freedom to get to real love, so be it. As written for The New Indian Express The Golden Globe awards are over, and so are the BAFTAs. The Oscars are around the corner. If you are excited about feature films, documentaries and the entertainment industry in general, you might be really interested in all these celebrations of the craft, to the extent of staying up or taking time off to watch the telecast live, track it on twitter and if you are really a huge fan, you might make it a full party at home, perhaps with chips, salsa and drinks, or go the full hog and have a barbeque with friends and family dressed up to cheer their favourite movie, maybe even have a side of betting to make it spicy.
Awards season can be exciting, but for many others, these awards mean nothing at all, and they would be doing all these party-like celebrations for other things, like cricket, for example or American or European sports. Maybe some of you had Super Bowl parties and got your game on for Kansas, and others did something like that for European football. Maybe it is neither movies or sports, but pageants or MasterChef – the lists of awards and celebrations are endless. In a world where practically anything has an audience and special occasions are live telecast somewhere or the other, on the internet if not on cable TV, we get to celebrate these things live and on as big a screen as we want. Whatever the hobby or interest area that you are keen on, there is something magical about watching it happen. The movie buff could very well just read about it on social media next day, and the sports fan could just watch the highlights along with the news or on Hotstar during their commute, but there is so much joy in watching things live, especially with loved ones. Love is something like that. One could also be in a relationship where everything is functional, and things happen by calendar appointments, routines and structures, with hardly any emotion. Most of us though, want to love like it is the big awards night. We want out love to be the big winner, to be celebrated with friends and family, to see it live. That probably is one of the primary reasons why people have major weddings and commitment ceremonies for which they call hundreds if not thousands of people, throw enormous feasts and make sure it is an event everyone will remember – like having Jennifer Lopez and Shakira dance together for a Super Bowl and keep this one so special. One could love quite privately, and really not want the huge big blowout of a party, but chances are that you’d still want to celebrate it in a more intimate manner, like the sedate but special ceremonies of the Nobel Prize announcements and the dinners after. The scale and size of the awards, and how public they are might be different, but loving and being loved can certainly feel like the Best Picture award on Oscar night, and by all means, celebrate it. As written for The New Indian Express How often would you like to be told that you are loved? Just think about it for a moment and honestly consider the question - would you like it if your beloved tells you they love you every day, a couple of times each day? What if you hear these words whispered first thing to you reach morning, and last thing before you go to sleep? How about if they tell you the three magic words once every few days or even once in a few months back when there is something extraordinarily lovable going on? And what if they tell you these words really, really rarely to the point that you can't even remember hearing it?
For most of us, just thinking of the decreased frequency of hearing these words can be quite the dampener. We can feel our heart rise at the idea people of being reassured of being loved often and on the other side of the same, if we imagine being never really told we are told, we can feel our heart sink. We might tell ourselves we don't really need it and that we are quite alright without hearing it, or we might try and read that meaning into many different things, but the truth is that we do want to know that we are loved. Now, consider the other side of the same question: how often do you express love for your beloved? How often do you say those words, or do things that clearly show you love this person? Do you show or say your love as often as you would like to hear it? Do you say it a lot more than you hear it? Or are you more tentative in your expression of such love, waiting for it to be told so that you can reciprocate? Is it easier for you to love or to be loved? Chances are that we are different in how much we express love and how much we want to experience being loved on an ongoing basis. The difference is rarely genetic or just how we are built - it is a result of how our previous experiences were. How we were loved, whether it left us hurt and made us retreat into ourselves just so that we feel safe, or did we get to love deeply and safely, and were able to let it go lightly - that is what makes the difference. If we were beloved in our lives and if we had good endings, we learn to cherish being loved and not fear its loss so much. We are ok to share those emotions even at the risk of losing it, and we have faith in ourselves and the world around us. A good love, well-remembered doesn't usually take away the ability to love again and as deeply. In reality, a well-loved person is usually able to love again deeply, and that is worth aiming for in all our lives As written for The New Indian Express When was the last time you were at a clinic for a regular health check?
Ideally, all of us need to go in for a regular full-body health scan every so often. Doctors recommend annual check-ups for all people, half-yearly for people over forty, and quarterly for people over sixty, even if there are no known health issues. If anyone has a chronic health condition like diabetes, thyroid issues, blood pressure or any of the hundred things that could go wrong with one’s body, then there is a definite requirement for ongoing monitoring and management. Chances then are that you probably go for these health checks every quarter, if you are a good patient, and in any case, at least once a year. While the first visit or two might be nerve wracking, after the first few visits, you get to know the routine really well, become quite familiar with the staff and maybe even really friendly with them. You know them by their look, might even know them by name and definitely smile at the staff with a sense of recognition and familiarity, and they very likely return the warmth, even if the place is crowded and you know they may not really know you or remember you personally. It is the rare patient that remains cold and aloof in such places, and the rarer doctor, nurse or staff that is curmudgeonly in such a place. Even though it is a clinic, there is little that is clinical about such places, with the staff acting as though they were indulgent teachers in a nursery school and the patient behaving as if they were naughty children hoping to get the approval of their elders in the class. The family of the patient assume the role of parents in such situations, at once protective of their ward while at the same time, behaving like the guardian of the patient. It is evident in how the staff and the patient look at the blood and other body function test results – it is hardly different from how they might have behaved in a parent-teachers meeting when they were in junior school. When you treat your body with this much regularity of care for its health, what would it be like if you took similar care for your mind, and more to the point, how would it be if you checked in on your relationships in this manner with regular checkups, and if you discover any issues, then to really work on it? Love and relationships are like any other function in our lives. They can be running along peacefully for a long time, and you never know that some issues are cooking below the surface till they explode, like how we might discover an underlying blood pressure issue or diabetes quite suddenly, or discover there is a slightly off heartbeat in a regular ECG as part of an annual health check. Issues in our relationships may not be readily apparent. Maybe we need regular health checks for love as well. As written for The New Indian Express Having indulged in tons of sweets and snacks through the festival period, for many of us, this question becomes the dreaded one. We know we have been a little too indulgent and not particularly aware or conscious at the time, even having told us that it is okay to take a little holiday from Intermittent Fasting, or the Spin classes, or the thrice a week swimming lessons in a refurbished swimming pool that offers warm water and aqua aerobics, or whatever else we were doing to try and keep ourselves fit. It takes a certain kind of soul strength to have stayed fully committed to one’s health goals and the regimen required to maintain it through the festival periods when everything feels so special and “once in a year” occasion.
The question is: Is it easier to stay on those goals if one were single, or if one is in a relationship? Do relationships strengthen resolve or do they weaken it into a kind of settled feeling where one doesn’t really feel the need to be quite so careful? Relationships are meant to make individuals better for the most part. We want to feel more secure, more connected, more loved and cherished in a relationship. Sometimes, it feels like this very same secure loving connection that we so cherish, acts against our self-interest. It is quite the common story to hear of these hot, fit 20-somethings who get into a relationship that is the envy of their tribe, only to quite swiftly balloon out into these unkempt, unfit and slovenly sloths in their thirties, happy to wallow in their togetherness, snug as bugs in a rug, while their more single tribespeople are still slogging out in the gym and doing everything else to stay fit. The “Have you put on weight?” question is rarely asked between the people in the relationship. They tend to be complicit in the putting on of the weight, and the shared guilt of it keeps them in silence over it. It often takes a health scare or some other such event to reverse the trend. An ominous declaration of the doctor that one or more people in the relationship is ‘pre-diabetic’ might do the trick. Maybe it would be a child who laughs at one’s inability to touch one’s toes. Or a friend who collapsed with a cardiac episode in the middle of watching yet another season of Bigg Boss in their family couch. Then, the relationship might huddle together for fitness sake. It can then morph from the weighty questions to lighter ones, the surprise gifts change from special pastries to fitbits and joint yoga sessions. We ask each other whether they got our 8,000 steps, and try to motivate each other, setting up a cycle of positive returns. Relationships can set us off into vicious, unhealthy cycles or great virtuous, healthy spirals of growth. Whether we can be conscious of it is really the weighty question. As written for the New Indian Express |
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