Loneliness is a virtue if you are alone,
a learning if you are in a crowd and a curse if you experience it in a
relationship – particularly in a marriage!
Someone who read my recent blogpost on Bajirao Mastani (http://avisviswanathan.blogspot.in/2015/12/what-we-can-learn-from-kashibai-about.html)
shared her perspective: “I don’t think Kashibai deserves to be deified for her
choice of separating from Bajirao. Perhaps, she was uninteresting and very
traditional, housewife-ish? Perhaps Bajirao found Mastani very refreshing,
vibrant, oozing mohabbat from every
pore…perhaps the trappings of being a Peshwa and being bound to tradition –
wife, kingdom, mother, army – shackled Bajirao and he just wanted to break
free? And Mastani’s offer to be his companion gave him that exit route?”
Hmmm….! In the absence of the
real Bajirao, the real Kashibai and the real Mastani, you can’t entirely
disagree with this reader’s point of view. Besides, if that is what drove
Bajirao go with Mastani, nothing wrong with it at all. It is definitely a
better choice than being lonely in a marriage – which, interestingly, leaves
your spouse lonely too! In the movie The Lunchbox
(Ritesh Batra, 2013), Lillete Dubey, who plays Illa’s (Nimrat Kaur) mother,
poignantly alludes to how lonely – and dreary and traumatic – her Life has been
until her husband’s passing away. In fact, she confesses, not in a
grief-stricken state of stupor, but in a moment of absolute clarity, that all
she really wants to do, to perhaps celebrate her new freedom, is to eat parathas! The reference to parathas is purely figurative. It could
be anything that you love doing - anything except feeling lonely in a
relationship, anything except suffering alone, anything except being shackled!
A marriage is nothing but an arrangement, equivalent
of a business contract. If, for whatever reason, it doesn’t work out, the
arrangement must be dissolved. There’s nothing to grieve about, feel sorry for
or berate when a marriage fails. A marriage fails because the two people in it
have stopped looking forward to each other. They can’t relate to each other
anymore. They are lonely in each other’s presence. How much more banal and
painful can it get? When you put up with loneliness of this kind in a
relationship the entire responsibility of your suffering is yours. Remember: you
have a choice. And that choice is to opt out.
I am not trying to
suggest that all of us must break away from our marriages. All I am saying is
that if you are unhappy, lonely and suffering in a marriage – or any
relationship – exercise your choice to break free. The brutal truth is none of
us has too much time left here. This Life has to be lived – each moment is to
be celebrated and you must be happy every step of the way! When something or
someone pins you down and makes you lonely, sad or unhappy, either get it or them
out of the way or you get out of the way yourself! Simple!!
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