Personal

(I wrote this piece before getting married. So the thoughts in this writing are entirely those of my ‘unmarried self.’)

It’s now a proven truth to me that scoring first in the BCS exam five times is far easier than getting married once. Once you pass the preliminary, if you follow some standard techniques in the written exam, you can definitely place among the top 10 in the BCS! The BCS exam is essentially about doing well in the written portion. But what marriage is a test of excelling in—that remains an unsolved mystery to me even today! On top of that, I hold quite traditional views about certain aspects of marriage. Love and marriage are two completely different things. Perhaps that’s why 85 percent of all love affairs are unsuccessful. Unsuccessful in the sense that those romances don’t lead to marriage. I often wonder—has my future wife’s boyfriend been taking proper care of her? I hope she’s not facing even the slightest neglect or indifference! Women are like cats. They become incredibly happy with just a little affection. Whether that affection is genuine or fake. There’s no girl who doesn’t melt when spoken to with a little tenderness—such a girl isn’t a girl at all! She’s a goddess! So men have to be hypocrites in this matter. And they are! The rewards are enormous! Often, this whole love business has seemed utterly disgusting to me. I know little about anyone ever benefiting from falling into such romantic madness, except losing their minds. Everything seems trivially insignificant compared to this love. Only someone who has fallen into failed love knows that lifelong diarrhea is better than falling in love. After falling in love, it feels like—this is life! When love breaks, it feels like—alas! That too was a life! This is how it has been. This is how it will continue. When you say “I love you” fourteen times a day, it actually becomes true at some point. Yet if you truly fall in love, it should take several eras to utter those words! This approach of saying “I love you” to get close has always seemed sick and distasteful to me! Why must one say “I love you” to want to get close? Sometimes people take refuge in lies to remain ‘pure’ before the mirror within themselves, while living as they please in the real world.

I didn’t sit down to write about all this. Over these past two days, I’ve realized I’m an extremely typical kind of man. There’s hardly any trace of nobility in me, to be honest. What I do have is an infinite capacity to love in my own way. What kind of girl do I actually prefer when it comes to marriage? A girl whom I can have largely on my own terms. I know it’s an utterly low-grade selfish instinct; still! While women are more or less similar in being women, when it comes to being girlfriends and wives, each is different in her own way. How each one exists is her own style. And no style is wrong. Each is right in her own way. My philosophy is this: if I don’t like someone’s life philosophy, I’ll remove myself from their vicinity. Let her live with people who live like her. She has her own world. The inhabitants of that world are all more or less like her. I’m not her type, so I’ll let her be as she is while I live as I am. Even a murderer is godlike to his own child! Marriage too happens based on such considerations of acceptability. My not liking a girl’s way of thinking doesn’t mean she’s wrong and I’m right. Rather, she’s not for me, and I’m not for her. Let her be with someone who’ll let her be as she is. I’ll be with someone who thinks the way I think. That’s it! But this too is true: it’s never possible for two people in this world to have exactly identical thoughts. So I think one can decide to live together if 70 percent of thoughts align. The remaining 30 percent can be adjusted. Speaking from my own life, I truly fell deeply in love with a girl once, and we were in a relationship for about 2 months. I believe she loved me too. Being a person of low primitive instincts, I follow the principle of “appearance first, then character assessment” in matters of love and marriage. The girl I’m talking about was very beautiful, good height, and quite good-natured too. (Unfortunately, she was also far too good at studies.) Most importantly, she was a good person in every way. We met 3 times. We didn’t live in the same city, didn’t meet often, but loved each other deeply. That love was of the mind, not the body. Love that isn’t purely physical has ultimate trust and faith. Such love is largely selfless love. It takes extra strength even to feel the depth of such love! What overshadowed everything else was that we respected each other immensely. After 2 months, we decided we wouldn’t get married. I wasn’t her type, she wasn’t mine. You can’t live together just by being good people. At least some things have to match. She believed in “Career first!” I believed in “Life first!” This was quite a major contradiction. I tried hard to make her put life above career. She tried hard to make me put career above life. Neither of us was wrong, I think. She was right in her place, I was right in mine. But how long could two inhabitants of such opposite poles live together in terms of thoughts and beliefs? She would arrange her life to fit her career, and I would arrange my career to fit my life. I tried hard to have her on my terms, and she too tried hard to have me on her terms. It didn’t work! What happened was a peaceful separation. She married someone who thinks like her (I hope) and is quite happy now. Our marriage never happened in the end, but I will always respect her way of thinking. I believe she thinks the same way too. (If she thinks of me at all!) Such is life!

I’ve thought about the few things my wife should keep in mind after marriage for our household to survive, and I’ve considered them roughly as follows:

One. She must think of my family members as completely her own. I too am willing to think of her family in the same way.

Two. She must arrange her career in accordance with my needs and those of my (our) family. It often seems to me that a woman’s career is to be a good mother, good wife, and good daughter-in-law. Yes, if other things can be arranged while maintaining these properly, there’s no objection. This is Bengali culture and tradition. That’s why the word ‘grihobodhu’ (housewife) exists in Bengali, but there’s no such thing as ‘grihoboro’ (house-husband). A husband who cannot take responsibility for his wife’s maintenance often has to remain a ‘ghor-jamai’ (live-in son-in-law). Not just living on father-in-law’s money—even a boy who lives on his father’s money after marriage somehow seems like a ghor-jamai to me. But have you ever heard anything derogatory like ‘ghor-bou’? No, you haven’t. What does this mean? In Bengali society, the husband looks after the wife. Then what’s the point of a girl studying so much? Well, the more qualified a girl becomes, the more qualified a husband she’ll get. That’s how it should be! If both advance equally in their careers, maintaining household balance becomes difficult, if not impossible. Pandit Ravi Shankar’s wife was no less qualified than him. Rather, Annapurna was more accomplished than Ravi Shankar in sitar. Yet she herself created opportunities for Ravi Shankar to advance! The same was true for Rabindranath and Einstein! (Of course, there’s scope for various dimensional analyses of this. I’ll write about this in another piece.)

Three. She must have infinite capacity to tolerate my books and bookshelves. It’s fine to feel like smashing my portable hard disk, but actually smashing it won’t do. When I’m immersed in melody, she mustn’t break into discord! Because if all these things weren’t part of my life, she wouldn’t have gotten me at all!

Four. We’ll both accept or adapt to the agonies of love. That might be waking up at 3 AM to touch and gaze at the moon while eating Cadbury, or wearing light-colored sarees with white flowers tucked in hair buns and getting lost in the intoxication of hair’s fragrance. (Living with such thoughts even after marriage is quite tough, boss!)

Five. I sit down to write and immediately she says, “Why do you write so much? What’s the point of all these likes? Get up, get up!!” Or, “Why did that girl comment like that on your photo? Block her right now!” That won’t do. I often feel like I’d die without getting likes! (If this changes, it would be her sole achievement. I truly want her to bring me from Facebook into life, the way the protagonist in the movie ‘Oporajito’ completely forgot to write that book after marriage, intoxicated by his wife’s love!)

Six. I’d give my life for her if necessary, but I won’t give my Facebook password. I’ll never ask for hers either. I can give her everything, but I can’t give my password. Both types of creatures—girls whose boyfriends manage their Facebook accounts, and boys whose girlfriends manage their Facebook accounts—seem lacking in personality to me. Good God, why bother loving someone I can’t trust even this much? Why must I love someone I can’t even trust?

Seven. I can’t take care of myself. She’ll have to take on this responsibility. I don’t eat on time, don’t bathe on time, don’t do the right thing at the right time. For instance, winter has come, I need to apply lotion on my body and lip gel on my lips—I’m lazy about that too! I can’t remember the last time I put cream on my face. I want to not think about any of this after marriage.

Eight. I have a terrible habit—I can’t maintain contact with people. Can’t, meaning I absolutely cannot. This leaves me with very few friends. I am a person with infinite capacity for losing friends and well-wishers. She’ll have to take responsibility for making me more human in this regard.

Nine. I am terribly weak at socializing. No one could be more inept than me when it comes to maintaining social and family relationships. I want to entrust this responsibility to her hands with complete peace of mind after marriage. I want people to look at her face and not misunderstand me, at least.

Ten. I make countless mistakes. And when I make them—like hurting someone with direct words, walking down the wrong path, and many other things—the problem is that while I’m doing these things, they seem right to me. I want my wife to point out these mistakes to me, to discipline me when necessary. In my experience, I know that discipline born of love is incredibly powerful! Of course I’ll make mistakes! If I can’t make mistakes with the person I love, where else can I go?

Eleven. I love spending freely with both hands. I want my wife not to be miserly. But in some matters, I’d like her to encourage me to save.

Twelve. I love eating and feeding others. A wife who cooks well seems more worthy to me than one with a good job.

Thirteen. ……………… (This can’t be said. Top secret!)

Who knows what else there is! Nothing else comes to mind right now. Well, are you getting annoyed reading this? I know tolerating me isn’t easy. Apart from my mother, I can’t recall any other woman who has ever managed this task. I want that woman who can tolerate me, and whom I can tolerate too. I’m a very simple kind of person, so I can’t get along with anyone but simple people, and I don’t. I want a simple person to come into my life. I’ve spoken frankly about how I think. You are as you are, just as I am as I am. Just as I have no headache about your philosophy of life, I don’t want you to have the slightest headache about mine. Just as I praise the aspects of you that I like, I remain silent about those I don’t. Because I know this is your way of living. You didn’t come into this world with an assignment to please me, did you? You’ll live the way that makes you happy. If you go through life worrying about what others say or don’t say, living itself becomes difficult. In exactly the same way, I am what I am! If you like it, come close; if you don’t, stay away. As long as I’m not harming you in any way, or becoming dependent on you for my existence, I won’t tolerate any nasty comments or sarcasm from you. Who are you to say I’m not right? Where did you get this comfortable privilege? I have no headache whatsoever about your beliefs or disbeliefs. I respect your philosophy of life. So I expect the same respect from you. If you can’t say something good, then stay quiet. Otherwise, I’ll make you stay quiet myself. I have that much strength.

If what I’ve written has hurt anyone’s feelings, I’m not apologetic. Because I know very well that most men think more or less like this. But no one says it out loud. The other day a dear elder brother of mine told me, “Sushanto, women become ‘proper’ after marriage. You don’t need to say all this beforehand. So-and-so’s wife said before marriage that she’d stay in Dhaka after marriage. But look, after marriage she stays with her husband.” I listened to him, I thought about it. No! I can’t manage that kind of deception. Not everyone can do everything. Whoever comes into my life should come knowing and understanding everything. Better the bitterness before than the bitterness after.

I believe that liking someone doesn’t mean I have to like everything about them; or disliking someone doesn’t mean I have to dislike everything about them. If it becomes too unbearable, then please unfriend/unfollow/block me without making any bitter comments. Live & let live!!