Is romance dead?

Remember the time we swooned over SRK dialogues. He always got the most romantic dialogues.

Remember his monologue in veer-zaara?

Remember the way he looked at Manisha Koirala in Dil se?

Remember him saying "agar Ganga ki iffazat karna Pyaar hai, toh hai"

Remember how as teen agers,  the idea of perfect romance was someone,  somewhere, who would say the perfect things,  look at you the same way.

That was all a decade back.

Today, remember the moment we read some one expressing their feelings on Facebook and cringe?

What happened between then and now to turn us into such cynics?

The thought entered by mind as I got a recent article published and cringed at the editor's change of the title.  I literally hid my face and tagged a few less people on Facebook as I felt it was too cheesy.

And then I remembered the mushroom-cut Tomboy of a decade back who daydreamed of the perfect man,  blushed at every word SRK uttered, listened to Enrique, watched Notting Hill, When Harry met Sally,  Serendipity endless times.

And we played a game, wherein the next song on radio was what our crush thought about us.  It was a way to please ourselves.  (cheesy I know)

I refuse to believe that this is what growing up is.  Being practical isn't being cynical. Somewhere the innocence is lost,  but the idea remains.  Makes me question is romance really dead?

Agreed that being romantic doesn't necessarily mean being vocal about our feelings. That actions speak louder than words.  That not every relationship can be as intense as Heathcliff-Catherine romance in Wuthering Heights.( wish it could)
we live in an age of over-sharing where posting on FB  has replaced the private talks we shared with our best friends.
Where clicking that "in a relationship" button on FB is equivalent to commitment.  But does this not also mean that we should replace the word cheesy with sweet.  Maybe it's ok to express your love on FB.  Let the whole friend list know how you feel about your partner. It really is okay. All judgements aside. ( all this coming from a person: Me; whose partner is not even on FB)

What I mean is,  agreed that actions speak louder ( I already said that! ) so while on a personal level you feel the love in the cup of tea your partner makes for you every Sunday morning (not forgetting to put the cream of milk in the tea, coz he knows you like it), remembering to order your burger without onions each single time,  singing "kaho na kaho" with all the Arabic lyrics for you while alone in car.
Once in a while you also need the intensity,  the public display of affection, the right words said by the right person and doing that without calling it cheesy!
So next time someone does that,  please say sweet, coz it is sweet, it takes courage to wear your heart on your sleeve.  And hearing cute, lovey- dovey stuff really brings one closer and keeps us young. SRK maybe old,  the idea isn't!
so here's to keeping romance alive-
-Say what you feel! 
-write poetry for your partner.
-tell him/her how important he/she is ( on a social site may be or just sms)
- take a bottle of wine home with a dozen red roses.
- better still cook dinner together.
- rent your favourite romantic movie together (for guys)
or sit through star wars with your partner(for gals)

point is- do something to keep it alive.

Letting go

It started with Greys Anatomy. I got addicted to watching the tenth season airing on Zee Cafe. I had already seen some episodes from earlier seasons but didn't have a clear idea of the story line.
With too much of free time on my hands, the next step was buying the boxed sets of earlier seasons. So now I am on season 3.

And I know there were some characters that were killed, New characters added and season 10 just has half the cast of the earlier seasons. But the point is its still running. It's still interesting. At some point someone decided that the plot needs to be savoured. Maybe they discussed the possibility of ending it against giving it another shot. And maybe giving another shot worked with all the changes.

Well, Friends ran a decent 10 seasons without being boring. To be honest "How I met your mother" was dead in first few seasons but they pulled till 9. But it died a slow death, it lacked the finesse of Friends.

Another series I have been following since long is "Supernatural" after catching a glimpse of it while switching channels on AXN. Just a glance at Jensen Ackles and I was hooked. Apart from a super hot cast combination of Jensen, Jared and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, what it had was a strong storyline. I mean the whole Michael Vs Lucifer track was awesome. But guess that ended in season 5 and since then it's dragging, and frankly I never quite enjoyed watching it since. They do come up with sporadic good episodes, but it's done with. I don't know why none of the producers see it and end it decently. Why is there this stubbornness to reach the season 10 by just relying on pretty faces?

And that got me thinking about life and relationships, when do you decide if a relationship is worth saving or giving up on? Or in case you decide to drag it, does it deserve the slow death of HIMYM.
And who calls the shots of bringing about some changes to bring it back on track like Grey's anatomy, or let it drag and become boring like supernatural, just relying on pretty faces to see it through or in this case some aspect of relationship.

I know the comparison is bizarre. But it's not that incomparable too. You put your blood and sweat in making a television series, it's teamwork. The same holds true for relationships. You make a mistake in a series which your audience doesn't accept, you retreat and correct yourself. And wait, for acceptance. The idea is to milk the cow dry, till one of your writers say, I'm done. That should be the stopping point. The whole struggle is to give up before the audience gives up on you. Before your TRPs die, so that you go out with your head held high.

Relationships work the same way, you make a mistake, you retreat and try to savour the situation or wait till one of you gives up. The whole point is in knowing when to give up. When to let go. And letting go is the most difficult part. Sometimes you can work past the mistakes and still reach season 10 without it being a drag, or sometimes you just let go with dignity and move on. And when you do move on, it's a one way road, there's no looking back.

Reminds me of an old poem-

"Taarruf rog ho jaaye to usko bhoolnaa behtar

Talluk bojh ban jaaye to usko todnaa achchha

Voh afsaana jise anjaam tak laana na ho mumkin 

Use ek khoobsoorat mod dekar chhodna achchha"

So here's a question applicable to all relationships, 


Are you Friends and by default perfect.
Are you HIMYM, heading for a disaster
Are you Supernatural, pretty on outside but boring.
Or Are you Grey's anatomy, ready to reinvent yourself ?

Pregnancy and Beyond

This piece was also published here:

http://www.womensweb.in/2014/11/effects-of-pregnancy/


Motherhood changes you. And it isn't an overnight change but rather a frog -boiling-to-death(not the right analogy, I guess) kinda change which you only notice when you're on the other side of the bridge- a totally different person altogether. 
For me, however, the changes were in spurts. 
First to go was my appetite, something I initially blamed on bad batch of faasos chicken rolls. What I realised later was that the little girl inside me had decided that she was a vegetarian like her father, so there I was a true bred punjabi, a purely non-veg girl puking at the smell of chicken!!! And that also meant no more weekend trips to Hard Rock Cafe for the chicken burger, and tea just meant tea not the Long Island one! And mind you, that has to remain for more than an year.

Everyone tells you how great the whole experience of giving birth to a child is; no one tells you what all you lose.

Next to go were my favourite pair of heels. That's right! I was wearing flats! Shoes I won't even be caught dead in. And now here I am an year later with exactly 15 pair of shoes that don't fit! No one bothered to tell me that even after having a child, your feet or for that matter you won't suddenly go back to your earlier size. It would again be a slow painful process. So that leaves me with shoes I keep trying every week, hoping to fit in some day. Oh and yes the same is applicable to finger rings.

I am not supposed to talk about this or even feel a tiny bit of remorse as I have to act motherly and take peace in the miracle of life I created. And say profound things like how its all worth it in the end. And I do say it with the right amount of emoting. Maybe I will get there, once my hormones settle down, which by the way are yet another set of things that don't go back to normal very soon. And when they start going astray, you cannot even guess what all can happen to you, right from pigmentation to dry,itchy,flaky skin. You end up hating yourself and doubting if you ever will have the infamous radiant skin. 

The hormones also play with your emotions, so till they get back to normal, I am going to be snappy and thankfully , being in India I have an understanding, supportive family.
That's one side of the story, a materialistic girl trying to cope with loss of her things. 
Other Side is the ambitious girl who is suddenly on maternity leave with too much free time on her hand. Again, the advice is to cherish these moments, my Lil baby will only be this age once, so my heart should be swelling with pride over her every mile stone, how the first smile and first giggle should make me cry and make me feel how it is all worth it in the end. I did cry at her first attempt to talk to me. And my daughter is a Lil chatterbox who likes singing with me as I sing lullabies for her. And I love it. 
But there are 24 hours in a day, and one tends to reminiscence over the carefree old days especially at night when the clock says 1 am and your little bundle of joy refuses to sleep anyway. So you remember the time when u voluntarily stayed awake at night reading, chatting, watching movies, doing projects. When stress meant force/area, not the kind you feel when your Lil one sneezes twice in a row.

What I am trying to say is, no one prepares you for the reality that is having a child. The pregnancy books are full of advices and anecdotes of perfect women who were well just born to give birth. Maybe few years down the line I would pretend to be one of those women, but for now I want to be real. 
And in real world, all the confusions, sadness, coping with changes holds, and you live with it. Try to live past each day as it comes, hoping to reach the other end a saner person. And your only ray of hope is the cute little girl you created, whom you decided to bring in the world and whom you love unconditionally and irrevocably in spite of the fact that she is an exact replica of your mother-in-law and every woman knows that speaks volumes for the kind of love you feel.

Yes, I married for love

This piece was also published here:

http://www.womensweb.in/2014/11/making-a-love-marriage-work/


India- The Land Of great love stories like Shree-Farhaad, Soni- Mahiwal, Laila-Majnu etc and also the land where love marriages are still scorned at by certain section of society. Lately I found out that it's not just the generation before us but some same-age people who also get judgmental over the issue. Here's the conversation I had with a male friend, actually an old school friend I happened to meet again on FB (sigh ! The downside of technology)
Him: So you got married? Bataya nahi.. What does your husband do?
Me: yup. He is an engineer too.
Him: whats his name? 
Me: (I provide with d name)
Him: (surprise smiley) Love marriage? 
Me: yup
Him: Ok
(Pause for 10 mins)
Me: what about you? 
Him: oh! I married in my caste only. Arranged marriage. Its simple and respectful to parents.

Duh-ahh!!!

Here's a person with same education as me, but in his eyes I obviously did the wrong thing. True that no one can make you feel bad without your permission, but the verdict is out, just coz I had a love inter-caste marriage. That's the hypocrisy of India, an eloped couple loses a bit of respect in the eyes of elders. SRK gave a solution to this elopement issue in DDLJ, where proper respect is given to parent's wishes. But even if one did not elope, even if you had a proper marriage, things are assumed and judgement passed. 

But it also made me think over the other side of it, how much percentage of marriages survive? And whats the statistics of how many arranged marriages fail over how many love marriages fail?
And by failure I don't mean divorce, I mean failure in the sense where a couple stays together for society, kids or just resigns to fate.
I have nothing against arranged marriages, I think its a beautiful way of union where everyone gets a say, two families come together not just two people and the flip side is you always get someone to blame if things go wrong!!

But then I have nothing against or for love marriages too. If two people are mature enough to feel that they can spend their lives together nothing/no one should stop them. And if the same couple after some time feels that they made a mistake nothing should stop them at doing what is right. Only love and mutual respect should be the reason for two people to be together, not "what will people say" fear, not kids , not finances and not the fear of being a social outcast in case a marriage ends. Sadly in India a divorced man or woman becomes a social outcast. And that makes many unhappy couple's to stay together. 
In my opinion as SRK said.." hum ek hi baar jeete hein..." we have one life and we should max out on it. Its not worth spending the one life we get in regrets or worry or sadness.

So, here's a list I formulated for love marriage couple's to stay in love 
( Applicable to arranged marriages too, I guess if the couple is in love and not in a compromised ah-that's-my-life stage)

1. Respect each other. One of the reasons you got married was respect for each other, don't let anything or anyone change that.

2. Accept that there will always be people jealous of you or just people like my school friend above who will be judgmental towards your decision, dont let them affect you. True that we get carried away with people trying to instigate you, but let your reaction remain till a certain level. Let a little sacred spot in your relationship untouched. As long as you both have that spot, nothing can break you.

3. Be bold enough to point out when the other one is being an ass. Remember the time before marriage when you were just friends and you rocked your friendship by being brutally honest to each other. Dont let the label of "husband" and "wife" change the honesty. Above all don't let responsibilities ruin your friendship.

4. Have realistic expectations from your partner. You are the best judge of whom you married as a person. If you fell in love with a modern jeans clad colleague, dont suddenly expect her to wear sarees, and when she does once in a while appreciate her. And girls, once in a while wear a sari just to please your friend. Trust me nothing beats the look of awe and happiness in your partner's eyes.

5. Most importantly, let go of the guilt. We have a tendency of feeling guilty thanks to the society which thinks you somehow robbed our parents of something by marrying according to our wishes. And if you yourself feel guilty and at every moment over shadow your marriage with that guilt. You wont survive long. Your partner should not have to suffer for your guilt. Grow up and move on. No one is suffering because of your decision. Only you are. 

6. Fight fair. There is no real relationship without fights. But when you do, fight fair. And most importantly dont let the other person feel unwanted. Coz in a love marriage the most important person for your partner is you. Don't ever forget that, try to see the love beneath the anger.

7. Lastly, know when to give up. In spite of all your efforts sometimes people change and if it's not working out , maybe it's not your fault. Learn to give up at the right time. Don't be a 50 year old person regretting a loveless marriage. Have the courage to call it. 

There are many more things that might work for people based on their individual experiences but I think the basic thing is to make it work. Like the parent in "just married" tells Ashton, most days you have to work on a marriage. A photo album will not have the days you worked on a marriage, but the album is made of the happy dayz that were there coz of the days you worked.