All knotted

Some time back a friend of mine said he wanted to marry a gal who knew what the relationship was about. That’s the first time it struck. My god! I never have thought about it either. I always took it as a simple friendship arrangement. Obviously, there is a lot more; like washing, cleaning; I almost forgot cooking.

Quite a few relationships I have seen in my life and I don’t know how many of them I can call truly knotted (u know, in the right sense).

My grand-parent’s generation had workable relations when the women hardly ever had anything to say outside the kitchen. I have seen some on the other extreme too; with a tomboyish granny and a lamb of a grandpa. What appalls me is the fact they were quite at peace with this arrangement. I think it was more because these people considered themselves modern (read ‘not beating up their wives and marrying any second lady in their sight’) compared to their predecessors. I cannot comment more here; as I have not had much of a chance to research this age group(they are either dead, widowed, or so used to each other that they wouldn’t treat anybody else any different). To tell you the truth; it hurts my imagination to wonder the romances of those era. Come on guys! I never heard of a divorce from their times. I guess they stayed together for the sense of belonging to whatever it was that they called their feelings for each other (love?).

Some of the better relationships I have seen from ‘my’ predecessor of a generation are the ones where you have a sensible woman. The one talking sense into madness. Here the man has the full advantage of appearing to be the master (very superficial these men can be), however in reality; it’s the woman with whom the actual decisions lay. She gives him credit for decisions which were actually hers. A bit of pampering from her side and pretending to agree with him (when in reality she is waiting for him to calm down so that he is sane enough to agree with her). The beginning of the relationship started off with herself trying to tame him (I have to believe this purely by word of mouth; they all say this) and slowly enrapturing him in her love and devotion (yeah right lady! You were pushing the unassuming chap into a vicious circle).

And the relationships of my generation seem to work on an even more balanced situation.
And they expect me to take their advice when they tell me what would have been best suited for my parent’s era. But as per my observation; now a days; the relationships work on the tolerance factor. If they can tolerate the negative strains of each other quite happily (forget the strengths of both parties), most of the times we see workable happy relationship (I guess this tolerance is what we really mean by chemistry). Since divorce is still a big deal in India; we see love turning to anger turning to frustration turning to desperation turning to mere indifference when there is no ‘chemistry’. Somehow this ridiculous state of cold war will pass for a stable marriage. And what is even more ridiculous is that the parents find solace in the absence of any outbursts. Sure! Tolerance was a factor always. But it has become a matter of choice for the womenfolk in India only very recently. Initially the women did not know that tolerance was a word, then they had to tolerate anything, now they have choice whether to do anything about it (I guess it’s still difficult for people who decide to). And now the poor men folk who’ve had docile moms and daring wives find in all this nothing but a big confusion (can you blame them entirely?).

I guess what I have jotted down is a set of theories that made marriages difficult for 3 generations. Well, once we know the problems we can at least start looking for a solution.