How often do you use the word ‘No’ in your relationship with your partner?
Try this for exercise: Over one week, try and keep a count of the number of times any of you say ‘No’ to the other person. It could be for anything: Do you want to get an ice-cream? Shall we go to the terrace and sit down there with our cups of tea and plates of pakoras? Shall we take a walk with our masks on? Can I cut my hair short, or just trim it down till it is almost tonsured - this CoVid is driving me to bits? Shall we go to bed? Can I kiss you? Shall I invite my sister and family over for Onam lunch in two weeks? There are dozens and dozens of interactions that we go through in a day with our partners, and if you can keep track of how you respond to all those, and think back as to how your responses affect each other, the flow of energy between the two of you and the feel of the space itself, you will start noticing one thing: Saying ‘No’ is a lot more than just saying no. Often, these seemingly innocuous interactions are not just mundane transactions. Every transaction is a call for connection. Not necessarily for a connection in terms of needing attention or wanting to do something together, but a call for connection nevertheless. It is a sign of wanting some engagement, some flow of energy between you and a sense of feeling you are interested in each other and what you do. These calls for connection might easily be overlooked because you think you are only talking about dinner or the cat or the house maintenance - nothing very serious or important that is really about your relationship, but the fact is that the relationship is built on all these small interactions, and not just the big ones of money, love, sex, society, parenting and the such. What happens when we repeatedly hear No from our partner is that we start to make assessments as to the degree of connection that our partner is ready for or willing to offer, and that assessment generalizes into decisions we make, even without really checking with the other, because we know what we have heard and believe that to be true. We tend to then gradually limit ourselves, drawing boundaries as to what is possible in the relationship and what could have been a free flowing river of joy and intimacy full of vibrant life and connection, becomes at best, a small little oasis with a large desert around it, and at worst a stagnant, septic and toxic little pool of resentment and hatred. If you keep a track of the Nos you say and you find you say far too much of it, take a step back and consider what else you could do. Could you offer an alternative? Get a little time? Maybe even say ‘Yes’? Doesn’t it already feel livelier? As written for The New Indian Express CoVid lockdowns are relaxing, but positive cases continue to climb up mercilessly, especially in Bangalore. One is quite careful to avoid going out as much as possible, and a lot of us are self-isolating at home. This act of self-care and social responsibility is not a noble act or anything like that, but just common sense and self preservation that is playing out. We all should be doing that, but we also see in the media and in real life that not everyone is holding up the social etiquette that is demanded in these times. Half the people on the streets are wearing their masks below their nose, many wear the mask but pull it off when they need to sneeze or cough, or worse still, if they feel like they need to clear their throat and let fly a glob of their snot on to the street somewhere. We see people wandering around without much of social distancing, and milling around.
A lot of people are getting really angry and quite agitated with all these happening around them and feeling the powerlessness and helplessness that goes with that. There is much anger and frustration building up amongst those bearing for themselves the burdens of safety and hygiene. It is exacerbated in these trying situations, but even under ordinary circumstances, we see that anger and frustration that we experience with the world around us staying with us much of the time. It might be from things we notice in the workplace, on the streets, in government offices, in social circumstances - pretty much anywhere, really. Given the power differentials and how we as a culture, find it hard to speak truth to power, there is just so much that is being bottled up. Where does all that anger go? The only place that all this bottled-up negativity and pain finds some expression - at home, and often, the expression of this rage is at the cost of the most vulnerable people at home, be it children, the elderly, the people without independent economic means, the dependent partner and the such. For far too long, well-intentioned elders would advice the suffering partner and the children, “This poor creature is out in the world facing all sorts of harshness, and if we can help them get some relief, then so be it!” Children are shushed and told to behave lest anger finds a soft target in them. Food given great attention to, lest plates and food go flying in fits of anger. We are told to accept bad behaviour as just “angry behaviour,” and sometimes, in perverse ways, we are coached to accept such behaviour and violence as even a show of love. Should love be making space, cushioning and holding all this anger brought into its space from outside? Is being a punching bag love’s labour? The answer is a clear and emphatic No. Love is not a dumping ground for anger, and any attempts to paint it so, needs to be called out for the toxicity that it is. As written for The New Indian Express There is something wonderful about witnessing someone experiencing being in love.
There is a lightness about their being, a spryness in their walk, a twinkle in their eyes, and just the hint of a smile on their lips. You can see it a mile away and, when in close quarters, it almost feels like those feelings flow out and lift up those around them. There is a certain energy in that which is just delectable, like the sweetness of the honey flowing out of an over-full beehive bringing in eager bears who wanted the same in their life. That is just exactly the kind of energy that attracts and one to the person in love. It is a story you find in every major love story - the story of the ubiquitous best friend who is helping out the one in love, who does all the labour of creating situations or escaping people that are against the lovers, just so the lover can get closer and closer to the object of their love. Shakespeare had it, and the old classics have it in whatever language you read them in, whether in Sanskrit or Tamil or Kannada or any other languages - the trope of the friend helping out the person in love is always there. Even in most of the modern love stories on screens, there is a wingperson or two for the star or the stars of the film. The love of the leads is only one part of the story - the stories of those supporting the lovers and even basking in it are rarely the centre of the stories we read or watch but they are just as rich and sometimes even sweeter that the main love story as it were. In real life, it might not happen as often as one might like. Perhaps one would be lucky to have helped a friend or two find each other, fall in love and enjoy that experience. In families, maybe the odd sibling or cousin might have had the experience. The rare parent might experience the sweetness of seeing their child go through these feelings, and if they did much of the parenting really right, might even be allowed to participate in bringing that together. If and when one really sees it happen, it is like seeing magic unfold in front of you and that is really something special and wholly different from experiencing it for oneself - somewhat like watching an artist paint a masterpiece versus just seeing the finished work of art. The jealous sibling or the covetous neighbour who would kill to try and take the love for oneself, only to see it disappear in tears knows this - the pleasure of seeing something as magnificent as love expressing itself and truly enjoying it requires one very special characteristic - the ability to witness without envy, a compassion that seeks not to possess but just to appreciate, a spirit that can enable without needing to own for oneself. Loving others being in love is something precious in itself.. As written for The New Indian Express One of the biggest fears people have is of dying alone. People often enter into relationships with little else as a motivation to be in a relationship other than the idea of not being alone when old, sick and certainly when dying. Of course, there is no guarantee that such company will be there at the time of sickness and death, but the hope of such company is enough for people to take the long leap into relationships even without love and all the other things that one typically looks for, and in any case, as any cynic will tell you, the tragic truth is that in any relationship, chances are that one of the partners will just not get to enjoy that companionship at death, having to outlive the others.
The life of the survivor in any relationship, especially one that had much love in it, is something quite different than one expects. Grief is a painful thing to live with. It makes itself felt in a million ways, many of them totally unexpected, and yet, all of them correct and valid at that time. There is no wrong way to grieve. Love lost to death hits us in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. You might just be driving a car to work, park just as always in your usual spot, and something might just crush you back into that dark abyss of grief as if it were just yesterday that you lost your love to grief. You might be laughing with someone, even flirting, trying to make something happen and you might find yourself back in grief. There is no telling quite how or when grief finds itself back in the moment, back in your reality. The idea of "moving on" is not about being done with grief or forgetting about the person lost as much as it is about making space in your life for yourself and maybe some new people in it that can bring you different and wholly new meaning in how you relate and even love. For many, acts of love itself can be a gateway into grief that has been denied, and being in a moment of great tenderness and love can bring forth a geyser of grief where one might find oneself weeping and sobbing for what was lost. Grief is a theme that many people in relationships visit with their beloved, often as expressed wishes to be the first to go. Sometimes, people even fight over it in that tender way, wanting the right to die before their partner. Yet, in love, one might also find oneself wanting to outlive the beloved, just to spare the pain of the bereavement to their beloved believing oneself to be hardier to that pain. We may choose to ignore loss and grief, leaving it to the vagaries of fate, or we can choose to engage with it, talking about it with tenderness and affection, even making plans for it. To love fully is to love in death as well. As written for The New Indian Express As different parts of our country go in and out of lockdowns of varying degrees of strictness depending on how rapidly CoVid-19 is spreading through the population, we are getting used to spending many of our milestones locked down, be it birthdays or anniversaries. Instagram, Twitter and all other social media are filled with memories of such events with hashtags of locked-in celebrations, with some taking the effort to coordinate zoom parties, complete with everyone having Identical cakes, beverages and all the other markers of the event. Some people tired of the crowded tiles of a videoconferencing screen went a few steps further, getting a whole lot of screens for each of the individuals, though there is still room for the ultimate intervention of social mingling where people at the party wander around the party, socializing with whoever they like, the hosts walking around making sure everyone is comfortable, and some people who do not quite enjoy these big parties hanging around discreetly in the background, popping up to make their attendance known but keeping to themselves.
The locked-in celebrations and the virtual parties are a pain in the neck for most people, and except for the very few who truly and magically enjoy what the virtual worlds have to offer, it really isn't fun for most. One would imagine that the heavily introverted people who are very little except wallflowers in the regular parties so far might be relieved at these virtual events where they don't have to physically mingle with the group, but really the online versions can be even harder, especially if the hosts are trying quite hard to replicate the offline, physical world experience online by asking for all kinds of coordination in terms of clothes, activities and accessories. The spotlight can be turned on the virtual participant a lot more directly and brightly than in the regular parties, and it is often harder to hide virtually than one imagines. All the tricks of muting oneself or pretending the broadband doesn't work, or even making it appear as if the electricity went off work only to a very limited degree. One can get just as easily trapped in as virtual party as in a physical party, though the converse one might expect - that people might have greater fun virtually than in real life - is hardly ever true. Here, the curve has decidedly shifted lower in terms of how fun these events can be. For people in relationship who are used to socializing with other people in similar relationships, moving from one party to another, the loss of these spaces can be quite painful. Without other relationships to offset one's own, we often end up having to really face what's going on for ourselves and that's not always pleasant. Birthdays and anniversaries are rarely as fun by oneself as one might hope. We put on brave faces, get really creative and do what we can, but the reality of locked-in lives can be quite stark. There's only so much zooming around one can do before stopping to just really see each other. As written for The New Indian Express Once, a sad householder went to a monk seeking solace and possibly some guidance. “There are so many issues I struggle with,” The householder said, “Such big issues that I constantly have to fight about at home, it gets really difficult. Sometimes, I feel like just leaving everything, running away and becoming a monk like you!” The monk was quite amused that someone might think that monkhood was just about running away from troubles and that they seemed to think that the monk’s life was one of eternal peace. On any other day, the monk might have unpacked that with this person, showing them a truth or two about monkhood, but this day, there was a particular issue that this person had come up with, and the monk really wanted to address that.
The monk looked around the sparse hut to see what could be illustrative, and spying a large brass pot, motioned to the householder to bring that pot over, and the householder happily acquiesced. Holding the brass pot, the monk said, “Imagine this is your relationship with your partner back home. Now, go look around in the compound and see if you can pick up things that are symbolic of what you are going through in your relationship, and put it in the pot!” The householder went around, and picked up some stones and pebbles of different sizes and shapes, some sharip, others rounded, most were hard though a couple were balls of clay. The monk put them all in the pot and shook the pot - they jingled and jangled in a very unpleasant way, till the householder could not take it, and said, “Stop!” The monk stopped, and it took a minute or so for it to all settle down. They looked into the pot and, some of the pebbles and things had broken and even powdered, but most were as they were. “See!” The monk said, “All that rumbling around, and very little really changed, except the pot is dented and dinged from the inside.” The householder nodded. “Now, fill it with water, and try to do the same!” The monk encouraged, and when he tried, the pot was quite heavy, and he couldn’t move it much. The stones and things had settled at the bottom as well, and didn’t move much - a couple of the clay balls had softened and become a sediment. “Do you see how a pot full of love holds the same bitterness and fights?” The monk asked, and the householder, feeling suitably chastised, left for home, but not before the monk got the mess cleaned up. The story just goes to show that very often, the loud, jarring and unpleasant fights that people in relationships experience are like so many pebbles making a racket in an empty pot. Fill that pot with love and kindness, some of them just melt away, and others settle down - like the differences that will exist between any of us. We can’t wish disagreements away, but we could keep the pot full. As written for The New Indian Express Covid seems to be getting closer home, isn't it. People in major metros in India are hearing of someone testing positive for CoVid closer and closer home - someone in the street next to yours, or the apartment building next door, or even an apartment in your complex, and for the unfortunate few, right in your home. The lockdowns have not quite slowed the spread and it is here, and the thing with this particular disease is the degree of isolation that it calls for.
How can you really have the "In sickness" part of your vows of "In sickness and in health, till death do us apart," when this is a sickness that can really bring death to anyone you love unless you stay apart? For most other common illnesses, even the seasonally dreaded ones like dengue and chikangunya, people in relationships stick together. There are loved ones who stay up mopping your fevered brows, taking your temperature every few hours, holding your hand and massaging your tired limbs, changing your sweat-soaked bedsheets and just really being there for you. Nothing like that is possible here. For the ill, there is absolute isolation, and for the duration of the illness, there is little to no contact with their loved ones, except maybe through layers of plastic. We have seen images and stories of people really sick with this virus begging doctors and nurses for just some contact, even a small kiss on their forehead - if not from their beloved, at least from the nearest human, but for the most part, no such luck. Till one is fully cured, the ill are under isolation, maybe with others who are also ill, but not with their beloved unless they are all ill and that is just even worse. How do you love in times like this when there is little to no possibility of contact with your loved one? In these difficult times, loving someone really requires us to see everything we do from the lens of our love for each other. Risks we might be willing to take just for ourselves may not be ones we might be willing to take once we see it from the lens of love. We might say for ourselves that we are cool with risking an unmasked, unprotected ride in a crowded vehicle just to save a few rupees thinking we are in superb health and great immunity, but when we think of our beloved who we will be seeing later in the evening and how we would want to hug them and hold them, the act of love is in staying masked, taking care. The act of love is in trying one's hardest to not fall ill at all in the first place. If your beloved does fall ill despite everything, then the act of love is not in taking care of them and risking falling ill yourself, but to stay away and hold. Wait. Suffer the pain of the separation. Love in this sickness is a weird thing that may not look or feel like love usually does, but that's what it takes this time around. As written for The New Indian Express In a couple of days, along with the summer solstice, we will see a solar eclipse. It passes right through India, and if not for the monsoon clouds, we would have had the chance to witness a spectacular celestial event. As things are, we might just experience a darkening of the skies, and with it, maybe hope for more rain and be disappointed as the clouds lighten again without the slightest bit of precipitation as the moon moves on and doesn't obstruct the sun any more.
It is a pretty regular annual feature and yet there is much apprehension, superstition and fear over it. In religious homes, there are prayers, fasting and rituals to overcome the negative energy attributed to such events. Mythology has us believing that copulation under such an influence is a strict no-no and children born out of such conceptions, or under such circumstances might just be different, and not in a socially accepted way. We are advised by believers to stay indoors, stay quiet and wait for it to pass, and when it is over, to then have a bath, give thanks for things being ok and get on with life. In love and relationships, every now and then, something comes up that eclipses our here and now experience of being connected on an ongoing manner. Many of these are recurring events, anniversaries and remembrances of events past, such as birthdays of an enormously impactful relationship in the past, or maybe anniversary of the death of a previously beloved, and sometimes, it is a re-occurrence of something, like an annual summer visit of parents or a trip one has to endure without much of a choice. When it occurs, it can be like the sun suddenly disappeared from your life for a bit - everything seemed like and general day in your life, you were all just being warm and friendly and it becomes dark and foreboding. You may not really know what it is and just miss the warm, happy times you had just experienced, and in missing those times, you might get angry, upset and even scared. The anxiety caused by the sudden change in your loved one can be very unsettling. It is so hard to let it be and just wait for the person to turn back. We want to feel like we have power and might try desperate things to get our love to shine back, but like with a regular solar eclipse, they may really have no impact at all in the private process that your loved one is going through at that moment. For a solar eclipse, even when we know what it is rationally, we might still do superstitious things, as if our efforts are what makes the sun shines again. When something celestial triggers that action even in generally rational person, is it any surprise that for any eclipse in more personal spaces, we panic? We really stop only when we fully understand and can accept with clarity. As written for The New Indian Express The monsoon winds are here. Our skies are darkened and the cool, wet westerlies are blowing through our lands, announcing their arrival with the rustling of trees and the clanging of doors and windows left unattended, sometimes with such force that we are startled by the noise.
It feels as if someone is stormily exiting a room after a quarrel. There is something quite universal about a banging door that signifies a fight ending abruptly in a huff. in families everywhere, furious parents try to train their children out of it, though the jury is out on whether it is a behaviour they learn from the adults around them or if there is something more primal in our nature that makes us express our frustration by banging doors or whatever else is around. Even if there are no doors to bang shut, people tend to make some big noise and dramatic action - anything from stomping their feet and jumping, to smashing a plate or seeing something crash. When we can see the storm outside, the storm inside finds some resonance and hopefully calms down to see what's next. The visual representation of a visceral emotion is gratifying. Thing is, the slamming of the door is the least of it. The violence of such actions inevitably causes damage. The door slammed shut too often tends to come off its hinges, or destroy the springs in its lock systems, or even the frame within which it is held. Sometimes, the slammed door can cause such massive reverberations that it might even crack a window near by or cause other collateral damage. If there is a storm coming about which we are forewarned, we would take all necessary precautions. Our windows would get shut and battened down, doors secured shut, clothes and things brought in, and anything that might fly away secured and tied down. We do all that to secure our household from damage. If we know there is an emotional storm inside that is likely to similarly explode into a storm outside, wouldn't we want to protect everything that is vulnerable and keep them secured against damage? Our emotional storms do more damage than just a bruised door here and there. We tend to hurt the most vulnerable parts of the people we live with and know very well. Our emotional storms throw out lightning strikes that are sharp jabs at exactly the weakest spots of the people around us, hurting them so sharply that it often just takes their breath away and floors them. The damage these cause is a lot more to long-lasting and painful. Worse, other reactive storms come up and it becomes a mess like some apocalyptic movie where survivors are trying to however they can between wild and destructive storms. We can secure our doors and things for the monsoon winds and storms, but when it is a person causing all that wreckage, we absolutely want that person to take the ownership and storm out responsibly. As written for The New Indian Express What do you do when your partner comes to you with a complaint and asks that you attend to their issue with you?
Imagine it is eight in the morning and you are sitting on your swing in the balcony with your favourite newspaper, sipping your first cup of filter coffee, enjoying the early morning pre-monsoon breeze and just being thankful for everything around you, including that CoVid has left you alone thus far and that your favourite newspaper continues to be your favourite, reporting right through the crisis, even if it has become considerably thinner. Just then, your partner comes in, says they want to have a conversation with you and starts to complain about how you have left the coffee mug from the previous evening still there in the balcony, and that this is just not on. How would you respond? Would you retort to your partner that they have not quite done what you needed them to either, maybe they didn’t sanitize the vegetables or put away the laundry? Would you tell them to not nag you when you are trying to have a peaceful time in the morning? Would you try and pull them to sit with you and just enjoy the morning, the chores be damned? Or, would you say quietly that you are sorry for the oversight and take steps to correct it soon? If you said the last option, you are among a rare few. For the large majority of us, the temptation is to do the first thing - point out how they were not perfect either, and worse we might not stop there but take it a few notches higher, calling them a hypocrite and making it a fight. It is so easy to do that, snap back with the hundred and one things we know they have not been great at. The temptation to bring us all down to the same level of “Not perfect” is so high, even when we tell ourselves that we want the relationship to help us grow. We don’t quite want to take the issue that is brought up and address it for itself - we feel the urge to bring the person into it and get quite personal. We ascribe motives, look for malafide intent, seek to poke at other vulnerabilities, and retort with “As if you are doing everything I tell you to,” or other whataboutery. We have all the opportunity and time to bring up our own grievances, and yet, it is only when someone else opens the door and shares a grievance that we feel our own grievance bubble over and we blurt it out. All parties then stay in this aggrieved position and nothing really gets done. Nobody is attended to and the relationship goes one notch lower in terms of what it can be. How would it be if we chose to address the grievance against us instead of retorting with our own? Would that actually help things get done? As written for The New Indian Express |
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