What keeps you happy - relationships or money?

March 7, 2008 

Alright, I’ve had enough of this. It’s time to get it out of my system. First - before you let your thoughts run wild, let me clear the air that all’s well with our relationship. Sunday’s Time Life supplement from The Times of India is lying on my desk next to the laptop for the past three days and as always I can’t believe what they write or I am almost sure they just make up such fancy stories to increase readership.

The story called “Best of both worlds!” with the description “Many couples believe leading parallel romantic lives is no big deal. Biswadeep Gosh gets to the bottom of it” is either a work based on fact or fiction. I would like to think it is fantasy but Mr. Ghosh would like readers to face the truth.

The underlying surmise of the article is since colleagues spend over 16 days at work trying to meet and beat deadlines - in his words not mine, they get into an extra-marital relationship. And this is on the rise in today’s corporate India and to those who are involved being an extra marital relationship is a hopelessly minor concern. Really? So, how many such relationships does one get into during one’s stay in a company and how many pairs would you have around in one project? Seems like a nice plot for next Madhur Bandarkar’s movie but this is stretching it too far to as much generalize that couples with long working hours in diverse fields have such liaisons. If indeed, to the person who was interviewed,extra marital relationships are a hopelessly minor concern, then what takes higher priority in his life. What values do they plan to inculcate in their children - that it’s alright for you and your spouse to cheat ? Oh, excuse me - cheating is rather a derogatory term in their lexicon, it’s just having fun after all.

Questions galore! Can a marriage survive under these circumstances or is it just an agreement to live under the same roof and ignore what’s going on with the other person or do you still love him/her as if the third person didn’t exist at all? Then, why get married at all - why not be in a live-in when it’s accepted? Is it the need to be considered cool and get accepted or is it the drive to have fun? Are there no long term consequences? Ofcourse, the article does not deal with situations where only one of them is two-timing because that is nothing new - it’s been going on for ages right? And neither does it address scenarios where the two two-timing couples have kids. I’d like to think the probability is minimum when kids are involved. And what are you earning by working so hard for? Is it the money that can buy you happiness or is it the people in your life? We’d never have an unanimous answer to this, will we?

A small town-bred girl with simple thoughts on life, I’d rather live in my naive world and not believe that our society has changed so much so that our marriages have become extremely fragile to be influenced by external factors. But it would be too naive not to accept that marriages are forever; gone are those days. Divorce is in as are pre-nuptials. This had to happen. We’ve been aping the West in everything - it’s influences on societal and cultural patterns are just beginning to show. It’s just a matter of time for our 2-minute Noodle generation to treat marriages with the same attitude - good so long as it’s there. If not this, then the next one.

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Comments

2 Responses to “What keeps you happy - relationships or money?”

  1. Puli on March 15th, 2008 3:37 am

    Good stuff. Did you write this to the news paper? I have been in the USA for over 17yrs.

    I was shocked to see TOI when I visited India - I think it was also a Sunday edition - and there were some articles on life style etc. They were essentially promoting some dangerous concepts into the amongst the Indians. I guess this type of material generates readership - and hence the advertising dollars.

    One of the big reasons people do stupid things (cheating, drinking, drugs whatever) is because they might be thinking that everyone else is doing the same and they are getting behind on the scale of having FUN! The articles like the one you mentioned play a big role in this process. The reality - even in the western world is quite different - it is never going to be a perfect world - but it is also not as bad as what some of those articles suggest in a subtle way. “Everyone does it, its cool” - is what they suggest, and it is totally in accurate. People who fall for this pressure pay big time - affects of these type of vices (alcohol, promiscuity, drugs etc) are difficult to neutralize.

  2. lakshminl on March 15th, 2008 4:51 pm

    Sadly, we are influenced heavily by the media these days. And, we can’t discount the fact that such stories even if there is not an iota of truth in them would have us believe this is the way of the world. End result - low self restraint and having oneself believe it is acceptable.

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