Kuch to Log kahenge

Some days back I had attended one engagement party of my very close Maharashtrian colleague. I claim the privilege to convert this feminist to a humanist. I was confronted by her initially with the same concept of your-side-of-the-story but time healed things.

She was suffering from the mob psychology that prevails on a budding lady who has never seen the other gender from a different angle who gets carried away with the wave to support women at the cost of putting down the other gender and blindly support someone by virtue of gender congruency. But she is the same person who later became one of my major strengths in my team.

Not only she proved to be an efficient colleague but she from her side tried her best to put me to a spiritual guru, TV Journo and what not when she realized my problem. Well but now let us talk about the topic that I would be discussing in this post.

During the party since I was stranger to almost all, I was all the more keenly observing all the people around. I encountered some newly wed couples and some in courtship out there. I could experience a compassionate smile on my face as I kept on Looking at those couples as a match made in heaven and made for each other. All those Jineshes were crazy for their girls and so were the girls madly in love with their guys. Like Shobha De says, I could imagine each couple actually in bed making love to each other intimately, kissing passionately, and link the same bond with their intimacy now in the hall. Touch wood.

Suddenly for a second I started missing that status of the couple. My feelings only got accelerated. I crossed my legs and one of my folded hand started to reach my forehead. But suddenly as usual resilience stuck inside me. It reminded me of the genuine efforts to save my relation and genuine reasons to let it go off.

The thought process went on in my mind that bought me to realities too than fantasies. After the bed scene I could also imagine them, like everyone else fighting on petty matters posed by ego as a hurdle. And I realized that this thought is no fantasy and that was the ultimate reality that happens with each couple. And I only wished that my thoughts on them fighting are proven wrong.

But I also saw the not-so-newly-wed-couples and now I could suspect their smiles, were they genuine smiles or plastic? Like most of the couples who have been exposed to have faked their love in front of the junta who later only discovers how much they hate each other. Since I have been single from past 26+ months now, I have come across so many of them comfortable with me on this topic and confessing to me their discomfort with the married status. It is only then the fear of social pressure that keeps them intact, otherwise they are unhappy. Some of them even envying me.

Now, my resilience told me that yes you could have enjoyed a companionship of a wife tonight but it would have lasted only for the party that comes once in a while may be in 6 months or a year. And as once one reaches home the pretension fades away reality captures the aura. And the negative vibes retires from back seat and takes over. This event of public intimacy will now be only in display on next occasion till then a refrain.

For many couples such parties are there once in a while where you may require to rat race as a couple with others and get a mental satisfaction of 2 hours where peoples testimonial of a good couple counts, where the couple flaunt each other. But in the back end you land up paying premium to this by tolerating each other with irretrievable differences for years together back home. In that case does that testimony matters? How far and where does it take both the parties who form a couple and are not ready to come to terms.

On the contrary I did feel that I was happy otherwise after separation and wished the same for the estranged half. There was peace otherwise in the back of my mind and back home. And with my kind of fate in marriage I think…
(a.) I have to arguably suffer only in such parties for 2 hrs and have peace of mind back home for the rest of the year till next party comes, as compared to…
(b.) arguably enjoy in such parties and then reach home with a stale relationship tired with a plastic smile. Whatever be the reason and who so ever is at fault.

I read somewhere Q: What is the most dramatic loss experienced in a new marriage? A: The idealized image you have of your partner." Which I think is very scary and in cases similar to mine such feeling which is still on mind of the other half. Who also meditates on what was lacking rather than what is there. Thus, leaving all others as spectators of the demonstrations of things like bouts of frustration and depression, suicide threat, Threat of Police, 306, and 498a, blaming and then curfew and then being held captive, etc. One day this, other day that, the something new and then something that was old and forgotten then both trying to improve each other and then in some cases the couples also compete in who is improving better and getting better and then again a fight and so on… gosh….enough. Then call neighbors to intervene or relatives to referee. At least all this is missing for good.

So, in cases of fates like mine where things went far off and tangent very frequently, and since there are no kids. Then, It is better to be alone and enjoy life, free from a constant duty of desperately impressing someone and striving to be a good spouse as hard as maintaining ISO and getting certified, pacing to prove your worth without a break, since you are on a constant audit. An unconditional love is a rarity.

But then comes the questions in mind that what would people think, say and talk about me.

• May be that he is at fault and hence never got settled.
• Or may be he is having some-problem of impotency, you-know-what-I-mean? It was nice of the girl to have kept quite or not done anything.
• May be he is a gay
• May be he is having a secret affair.
• Divorce nahi hua, jawani aur kitne din? Tu settle kab hoga.

... and many other...

And to prove all these wrong thinkers wrong, should I get in to something that did not worked out just to keep their mouths shut and be called as a couple in a once-in-a-while party? The conscience said No! Never!!! Kuch to log Kahenge, logon ka kaam hai kehna. But, you live your life. Be alive and Come alive. If the grapes are really sour then you may choose not to have it.

More Importantly, Main Zinda Hoon. And I choose to be happy.

Jinesh Zaveri.