musingswhileunlearning

  Sit with the title of this blog for a while. What comes to your mind? Do a few scenarios come to your mind or do you feel that’s not possible? Love becomes torture when it is no longer love; when other emotions take over under the garb of love. And, every other emotion that stems up which is not love, or from love, is from fear. Here are a few scenarios where love can become torture for one or both, a few or all parties involved. 1.       A loves B and B loves A so they decide to commit to each other. For a while, things are hunky dory and then A gets possessive about B. When they bring up the subject, B is horrified. B brushes whatever A claims as nonsense and is being true when they say so. A is not satisfied. B decides to let A into B’s world to see for themselves. A is appeased. A few days later A is triggered again. Doesn’t B know how much they love them? Why is B spending time elsewhere or watching too much TV or on the phone? B likes space. A doe...

  This story is loosely based on the story of a mother and daughter I knew for a couple of years during our stay in Bangalore in 1986. The story has been fictionalized; the names changed as well but the basic core of the story is very real. I was a girl of twelve when my mother told me this poignant tale, for I had witnessed the rather appalling and heart wrenching change of the girl in question. I had made a quiet promise to never get married, if at all I did, till I was financially independent. Of course, I had to convince myself that studies were a nightmare I had to go through which would save me from all the bogey men and their terrors! Credits: Pinterest.com   Like most girls, Mala had been ingrained with the idea of growing up to get married, have a home of her own and children to look after. At sixteen, she was impatiently waiting to have a taste of marital bliss. Her marriage had been fixed with her maternal uncle, Raghu, as is prevalent in some states in southern I...

  Take one guess as to what sparked this blog! Indecision over the menu! I would never want to be the waiter of a polite group! I might end up waiting forever. When our family goes out, the menu invariably reaches me with a “You order”. Is it because I am a foodie while the others are not? NO. I enjoy food indeed but so does my family. Is it because others in my family are indecisive? Absolutely not! With a majority being fixed signs, most of the family are headstrong with absolutely clear and fixed ideas save for my brother and daughter, who are willing to experiment! Then, why don’t they order? No one wants to hear a “no, not that” every time they open their mouth, perhaps. Do I enjoy it? Of course not! Yet, I cannot stand the ambivalence and I know that the minute I open my mouth and order, the order will be replaced quickly in the way they always wanted it, which would be different from what I had ordered. Then, why on earth didn’t they do so in the first place, you’d wonder!! ...

Having been a lawfully wedded wife for nearly 22 and a half years and a mother for more than 18, the spouse and kids seem like extensions of myself! That feeling that you were born with them stuck to you! (Joey has added himself as an additional limb!) I have had those few rare trips sans them but that seems like ages ago and I can’t help but wonder whether it is the same me that asked her shocked mother a few days before her marriage “ Do you think I will stay a lifetime with the same person? What if I get bored?” My mother was shocked at how times had changed; that I had the audacity to ask her that! Wasn’t it bad enough that I was having a “love marriage” to a North Indian boy?! Unheard of!! Blasphemy at its best!! And look at me now! Thoroughly domesticated despite being largely unconventional and I don’t take credit for it. I have had more freedom within the marriage than I ever had before, even the few years that I was on my own, and that is why despite small rebellions every now...

Credits: quickmeme.com What do you do if you pass on an undesirable gene to your child? Amongst many traits I may or may not have passed on to my kids, this is one trait I have passed on to my daughter- utter dislike for school! Credits: imgflip.com From as far as I can remember till the very last day of my twelfth grade, I strongly disliked (I have been actively practicing to avoid use of the word hate) going to school. Without exaggeration, I had a stomach ache every morning before I left home and nearly always had tears in my eyes. When I was in kindergarten, I used to roll in the mud outside home, crying, even as my mother and the maid would unsuccessfully try and get me up to walk to school which was nearby. An Army Officer, our neighbour, used to emerge from his home for work at about the same time with a baton in his hand much to my mother’s satisfaction and my horror. My mother who happily used fear as a weapon (very successfully) to keep me in check had told...

redits: pinterest.com Love: The most beautiful of all emotions and perhaps the only emotion that is so badly treated! Osho, how I love his thought, said that we compartmentalize love and in doing so we ruin it. How very true! Credits: pinterest.com Love is a limitless emotion. It cannot and should not be bound. It knows no territory, caste, socio-economic status, gender, age, handicap or anything else. It is unconditional and it is for all. The only emotion that actually has the power to tide over every problem and bring the world together, Love, has been so wrongly misused and we as a society need to change that. Credits: pinterest.com Let’s get back to basics. A meets/knows B. A and B spend time together and talk about a lot many things; laugh together. A and B like each other. They spend more time together and understand each other a lot more. The more they interact, the more A and B want each other’s company. A and B love each other. It is possible that m...