Back to Square One - The Questions-Part I

From the point I stand in life; simple things have started confusing me. Love. Friendship. Life. Practicality. What are all these? A thousand random thoughts that can be summed up as the following questions:

What is the purpose of life?
What is the meaning of friendship and love?
What does it mean to be practical?
Why do we marry?

In a way all these questions are linked to each other and relevant to me in my current situation. “Why do we marry?” I have already written another blog(http://the-aphrodites-echo.blogspot.com/2007/12/whys-with-whats-trailing-behind.html ) asked this question (alas, with no satisfying answers) so would start from this one. Like me, I know that for those thousands and thousands of Indian girls (more specifically and maybe a few 100 guys) who have seen the transition from Doordarshan to the Cable TV, from the local kirana store to the Big Bazaar and from Dhabas to food courts in malls in their growing up years the question remains the same. Why do I need to marry? All my life, my parents guided me to be self dependent – emotionally, physically, mentally, financially and in every possible sense to fight the big bad world out there. Then I managed to get a job in a reputed MNC (one of the selling keywords in the matrimonial pages) where my hard work and dedication took me up and up to a five figure salary (here’s another of those!!) and I slogged day and night to be a somebody. I learnt sweep off the client bids against other competing firms; from right under their nose. I learnt to set my foot down as to what I can give and what I cannot give to the client. I learnt to enjoy books sitting in a coffee bar on a lazy Sunday morning. I rocked on Friday nights (till early mornings) and learnt to differentiate between martini and vodka. I learnt that love happened only in movies. In real life it was all about moving – because of time constraints, distances and work pressures. I learnt that guys and girls can be best friends without having any intentions. After I had done all this there came a big bang – or rather the black hole of marriage. I don’t need that guy – ok he can be my friend, he can even stay with me and I think I will manage to cook and make him (and myself) happy as well. But why the hell marriage? I don’t need him for anything- not for emotional support (100s of client meetings later- some good and some bad I know how to manage my mood), not for get pleasure out of fucks (did u hear about the latest sex toy?) not for finances (remember five figure salary going on six- the onsite assignment), not for the time when I am in sick bed (my company and my team from work takes care of that) and certainly not to make babies (how about adoption without marriage- its in vogue). I need to be with a guy all my life (I do not believe in divorces and can write an equally vehement speech on that). When I come back home from work I cannot be bothered to see another human being within my view area. All I want is to be left alone till the next morning…So do I marry just because everyone else in my family got married before me? Or just to go out for dates, holidays and shopping with one guy instead of anyone randomly picked up? To me the whole thing looks crazed out.

When I tell this to people a lot of them point that something is wrong in my head. That I am too independent, too moody and too “free”. That I take things too practically (thus bringing us to the third question in my list). The word “practical” has made my life so troublesome that I actually went to see the meaning in the dictionary. For those of you who are smiling at this- well I was actually worried about the fact if I am normal or not. Was I being too selfish thinking of self all the time? But the dictionary meaning (anything that’s guided by morals and voluntary desires; together) instead of resolving the knot confused me further. In my case the voluntary desires and morals were running in 2 separate directions and I would have been so much happier had the definition said “anything that’s guided by either morals or voluntary desires and not both”. I say, there is nothing called love. The 4 crore marriage industry and the whole of advertising industry that camps so heavily on that emotion is an absolute waste to everyone; except the people who are cashing on it. Love can only happen in the 3hour movies in real life you have to arrange things to make it happen. The only problem is when you start “arranging” things the emotion is out of it. You can arrange a romantic dinner with your partner to show love, but then at the back of the mind you would be wondering if the two of you can leave a bit early; since you have to make that damned presentation. Where is the emotion in that case? Still others tell me that “love is when you do things out of will to make the other person happy”. But for me that kind of spontaneous love is for everyone around- right from the dog whom I kick everyday from the main gate of the house to the madman who stays at the end of the road. The day I miss seeing either of them – I feel something is amiss. Guess, a lot of people call that habit. So is love a habit? If yes, then what do I leave special for my “special someone”? I spend 10 hours at the workplace – sharing the little joys and sorrows and anyone would agree that all that happens in office cannot be explained to a third person with 100% transmission; and not even 50% at the end of a work day. It just doesn’t make sense. What does it leave out for the partner? A glum face at the end of the day, a few hours over the weekend plus what you smell like when you fart, how loudly can you snore, how many birth marks are there over your body and how do you look when you wake up in the middle of the night. Is that love?

I know I sound critical and an absolute pessimist. I am not – I want to be happy (that’s my answer to what is my purpose in life) and want to make people around me happy. Don’t want to hurt even a fly (the dog that I kick everyday in the above paragraph also receives bread and milk daily). I try to follow the saying that “you can be happy if you want to be happy”. That’s possible if you ignore the dark things in life. But then what if there are so many fused bulbs around that you are actually struggling to walk? If love is sharing small joys and sorrows (the farts and the snoring contests) then what happens to the big ones? They obviously fall in the laps of colleagues. Some of them even manage to migrate to the category of good friends – trouble starts when the “good friend” is from the opposite sex. The spouse at home gets the small share of joys and sorrows and this friend from work gets the major share of your time and the joys and sorrows. It’s impossible to share everything with this friend and not love him. Ok there is something called being in limit. But for how long? There are limits even to “being in limit”. Is it unnatural to desire someone physically (remember practicality is driven also by morals as per the definition?) when there are so many linked emotions? If I can have 10 friends then why not 10 lovers? What’s wrong? Morals of course. That brings me to my second question. What is love and friendship? How do you “limit” love? Remember in the above paragraph you were wondering that this girl is crazy, when she is being practical in love and now you are thinking about limiting it to just one person who gets the smallest share of the joys and sorrows? Forget about physical love (lets reserve it for the spouse) but what about all those conversations over coffee and lunch? My practicality says it’s easier to get rid of, forgive and forget “spouse’s sleeping with some one else” than the emotional dependence and the chemistry that they share over what the world calls “small talk”. Coming back to the point I made earlier- if it’s permitted by the world to have casual conversations with 10 people (which may sometimes provide more pleasure than the sex last night) with whom you share a good rapport is one night stand with a colleague during one of those weak moments wrong? Wrong as per the world- but again seems practical to me. The guilt and the slight change from monotony, the sense of adventure that it provides may actually save a failing marriage.

I might be wrong on all points I made above. I agree I should marry, be reasonably practical that makes me stick to marriage and be in the limits with friends and colleagues. But then all this deprives the selfish me of the basic motive in life of being happy. I would be too busy pleasing everyone and setting limits and in deciding how many grams of practicality I need in a situation. So then what is the purpose of life? Just live day by day (I call that dying) and then create a list of “10 things to do before dying” a few months before death of all the stuff that was missed. Saying sorrys thankyous and I love(d) yous. My stupid tortured practicality again comes into the picture and tells me that if I do not set any limits to what I can give and take in terms of emotions (that is live as if every moment is the last) then I wouldn’t need a list at the end of the journey. But then that would mean being called a robot (if I go by the concept mentioned in para one of love being nothing but advertisement hype and an emotion that can be “arranged”) or a slut (if I live and love without limits).

Answers anyone?