25 years later...
“Shaadi ka laddoo jo khaye pachhtaye, jo na khaye woh bhi pachhtaye”
Magar laddoo toh hai
How long is 25 years
In marriage it may seem very long
In love it may seem like a breath
At times it may seem like a long breath, held in
At others it could be a long exhale
At times it could be walking on egg shells
At others it could be gliding in air
A few years back someone asked us, how long has it been
I said it feels like just yesterday
He said it feels like forever
I was being romantic and he was being flippant
This is us
The roles get reversed too
And that’s the game we play
The work is to meet each other halfway
I arrived in a kaali peeli
My baggage in my father’s old grey suitcase
A city I did not know
The smells throwing me off
The humidity giving me chills of anticipation
The unfamiliarity feeling new
With a sense of purpose, I climbed the four floors of a building that did not have a lift
A Delhi girl in Bombay
I did not come for him
But I stayed because of him
I was now in the cool , safe city. We could live together, no questions asked. Or maybe we were just lucky.
We met at a time in our lives when it felt like we needed a reason to marry.
We married for good reason.
And then we had two reasons to carry on.
I wonder if we would had been together for so long if we did not have these reasons.
On good days I thump the table and say aye
On iffy days, I wonder more.
As the wise would say, no two days are alike
Isn’t marriage really two wounded people looking to be healed
And then we find the ones with the same wound
Now who will rescue whom
Being in love creates an illusion of healing, a partial blindness of sorts that keeps us from noticing the weapons for wounding, just around the corner.
Marriage heals the blind spots first. It empowers the weapons for wounding.
This is not as bad as it sounds. Actually it’s not bad at all. This is marriage.
The work starts now.
When the masks are off
The blind spots cleared up
An invitation to look at myself
To break my old patterns
To find parts of me I had not met
To handle joy and accept happiness
It is called evolution
But it can take a while
Sometimes 25 years
The domestication of a love relationship takes romance to the bin.
Add children to it and you have the best contraception.
( not my quote )
We think so much about getting it right, and we think less and less about the fun we could be having.
Build a home, build a family, build a bank balance, build a life , blah blah blah….wish it was as easy as ‘build a bear’.
Two singles not looking for a doubles partner.
Beginning with lust, finding friendship, falling in love and committing to something…something the world is still trying to figure.
Marriage is the penultimate commitment. Ab kya hoga ?
25 years later, we move to quieter lust , the lust to know each other, more. To make up for the time we lost being institutionalised. Where we crossed each other and missed each other.
We can be and not do. We can stay and hold. We can inhale and exhale. Equal breaths.
The institutionalisation of life, love and relationships.
We survived it, we are open to celebrating it, our ‘reasons’ are people now, and may I add, fairly good ones ( there, I said it )
I feel like a veteran. Like one of those people who went into a cave and came out, maybe 25 years later, none the wiser, but with a lot of gyaan. Did I just describe a career on Instagram ?
My Marriage Mantra - Thoda Indulge Karo , Thoda Ignore Karo
Thoughts turning up on paper is with thanks to , and . Courage comes from my Circle of Writers. For this piece, I held out my hand to and I have so much to thank her for.