The End

Running a household means saving, scrimping, conserving, preserving. Basically making every purchase last till you’ve extracted every last rupee/paisa spent on it. Hence, you find most Indian women preserve pickle jars & odd bottles & pots & pans. We don’t like throwing away old anything around the house. Will we ever want to throw away our husbands? For us, marriage is for keeps. We girls are programmed to make things work (most often – single handedly!). THE END is not an option we consider. It’s a rare woman who wants to knock it all off.

I chose to walk away from my first relationship because I realized I was trapped in a “headed nowhere” situation. We both had our well-paying jobs, his parents’ complete support, a nice car, a plot of land purchased to build our future home in Kannur (Kerala); we also had a long history of having stood beside each other in good times & bad & seen the highs & lows of life. But then, gradually we realized that, we had altogether different tastes, worldviews & expectations out of life.

I wanted to experience life. The job, the money, the savings everything was meant to fulfill that desire; the means toward that end. He wanted security, a highly predictable, well orchestrated, comfortable life. I wanted everything in extremes. He wanted everything to be in moderation, a sedate existence. His only extremity was food. My only moderation was food. He could lie on the sofa & watch Malayalam movies starting Friday 6p.m right through Sunday 11 p.m. I couldn’t wait to go out into town during the weekend.
Life had become a cycle of working, saving & buying. And more buying. And more buying. Whether it was buying furniture, vessels, electronic goods, car, household items or investing in policies or paying the rent or the credit card & phone bills, even recreation & entertainment expenses, I did it with complete affection for the life we shared together. I never once worried about the future. No woman just throws it all away. After all, a home is built with a great deal of hard work, persistence & patience tinka tinka jodke.

But some relationships are best when you let go of them. Because clinging on to something in the hope that ‘it will all work out in the end’ or simply because you’ve no one or nowhere else to go, is just not the way to live life. If something ties you down, if it doesn’t let you grow as a person, in whichever direction or whatever way, it’s just not worth it. For a relationship to work, both people must want it to happen & work towards it. If it doesn’t work, it’s not your fault. There’s only that much you can do. Relationships need a little maintenance. One person can fight for it but you get tired after a point & just let it go. And it’s best that way.

If there’ve been women, who’ve walked out of relationships, it’s always because things went way beyond their highest point of endurance. Why should anyone put up with verbal & physical abuse? Or a life where your only reason for existence is because your spouse wanted an unpaid cook, maid & nurse all rolled into one & at no extra cost other than the two-meals a day deal? Or the only opinion you’re allowed to have is saying “yes” to whatever she/he says, her/his every whim & fancy? I know of several women living just this kind of life right now as I write these lines. When I see them & the sordid lives they’ve surrendered themselves to, I wonder, if this is marriage, the most sacred of all human institutions, then I’m better off being single. In some cases, The End isn’t such a dirty word, after all.

Consumption & Kids

So far, Tanvi has only requested (the key word!)for things saying, “Mummy, will you buy this for me?”Whether it’s a Barbie or a Doremon figurine or the kinder joy range or the Mac Donald’s Happy Meal toy collection, T.V advertisements are always behind one of her new requests. Don’t know when the requests will turn into demands. So far, I seem to have been able to reign in her wish list & not let her get away with some of her fancy demands. But for how long?

Kids are driving India’s consumption. They influence us in many of our buying decisions. (The ONLY reason I go to Mac Donald’s is for the Happy Meal toys so prominently splashed, there’s no escaping it.) David Ogilvy (the advertising legend) had said, “The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.” Today, it is “she is your kid”. You must’ve heard of KGOY (Kids growing older, younger). Because they are maturing faster, they tune in with the world around them much faster. They are very sure about their likes, dislikes & preferences; whether it’s clothes, cars, restaurants or even holiday spots.

No wonder then, that kids are the ones, brands want to cuddle up to. No wonder, young children feature in most ads. No wonder then, that with children turning into consumers much sooner than we did, brands are widening their reach. There is an opportunity to seed the brand & logo in the minds of children who could become customers of the brand’s adult line in the future. So, Garnier Fructis Kids shampoo becomes the first contact with the brand for the child; as she grows, she can go on to use hair colors, skin care, & deodorants all under the same umbrella brand. The children’s segment is a big & serious business. Tommy, Burberry, Lilliput, Zara, a few big names. From kids wear to fashion, from toys to beauty care, they are most definitely targeted at the 0-15 age group.

I remember my own childhood. My every ‘request’ would begin with an underlying tone of negative thoughts. I’d start by saying, “Can I go for the school trip?” (School trips were a BIG deal back then!!) & but out loud, it would sound more like, “I know you will say NO. But I want to go. Pls please let me go.” And even before I’d complete the sentence, my eyes would fill up with tears & choke my throat. This was because of my ‘imagining’ that they would deny my request.

I don’t remember asking anything with a positive attitude. It would invariably be a “NO” at the back of my mind. Interestingly & quite surprisingly though, my mother never actually said no to me or denied me anything. It was hard on her; I realized that much later but she did give me everything I asked. But asking something from my parents was always a tortuous thing for me. I would die a 100 deaths before I could finish my plea. But today, kids know how to ask & also to not take No for an answer.

Rama Bijapurkar (the author of “We are like that only “) says “The objective of life’s work for an Indian, whether rich or poor, is to give his children escape velocity into a higher orbit of living”. True, isn’t it?!

I definitely want Tanvi to go beyond the orbit of living I have gone as compared to that of my mother. My struggle, however, is to not limit this to her clothes & footwear & bags. I want her to go beyond. Along with her accessories, I want to be able to shape her thinking & the way she looks at life, like my mother did mine. I want her to enjoy the world of consumption, which my mother couldn’t but I sure do now, in my late 20’s &early 30’s. There is nothing wrong with being a consumerist. I just wish she doesn’t enslave herself to it. I hope she learns to stop & think & maybe even say No when needed.

Online friends

Are online friends impairing real friendships?

Whether it is my phonebook or Facebook, I don’t keep contact info of people who don’t make an effort to keep in touch. I promptly delete profiles & numbers of people who add me as friend & then go missing. Months pass & not even a “Hi how are you?” If he doesn’t have the time to message or call/scrap/comment/post a line on the wall, why have him at all in my list?

The ‘friend list’ on FB/Orkut can easily turn into a mere contact list of social connections. Many so-called friends only have profiles, not faces. They share with us videos of cats chasing dogs or dogs chasing cows. (Don’t get me wrong; there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, it spices things up.) But I would also want us to go a step further than that. I would want us to share our lives, feelings, achievements, emotions, secrets, hopes & fears.

I’ve no desire to create any world record in having X number of online friends; particularly, if there is 0 level of actual connection with them. I would rather have just 5 people on my list & consciously try to be a part of their lives in more ways than one. Social networks reanimate a past relationship or help push a new one forward. But they cannot be the entire relationship. Because all said & done, things can get mechanical after a point. For me, FB/Orkut is a way to get closer to the people I really like & who I miss not having around me physically. The occasional phone calls, surprise visits, & impromptu online text chats, all these add spice to the otherwise stale online exchanges. These keep the relationship real & the feelings intense & mutual.

Same holds true for phone numbers. The 30-35 numbers I’ve on my cell phone are mostly of the people who call me or I call them, at least once in a fortnight. Even if we don’t always call, we may meet on google chat occasionally or write a mail sometimes or send an interesting forward or a funny sms. We inform each other if we changed jobs/delivered a baby/went on a holiday/not well/going through bad phase in our careers/life or whatever. But we touch base. THAT is the most important thing for me in a friendship – whether online or real.

I believe if 2 people are separated by space & time, cyber space is a great way to connect with each other. It spurs you to reestablish your contacts & work towards meeting each other or at least planning a future, possible, actual, face to face, interaction. For instance, I feel very much ‘close’ to a few of my school friends who are in different parts of the country or the world. That’s because we put in the effort & interest required to keep the spark alive.

What’s the fun in having 536 friends in my friends list? Or 200 numbers on my mobile phonebook? I can’t do things half way. If it lacks zeal & intensity, it isn’t for me. I would rather have just 10 people whom I am constantly in touch with than 100 people who I’ve added as friends but then never looked back. What’s the point in adding someone as a friend & not communicating with them? After all, it’s not like we are living on different planets. Everyone is just a phone call away. Make the effort! And keep it real!

Younger = smarter ??

I am faced today with the eternal question of intellectual supremacy, the newer generation versus the older generation. Am I smarter than my mother was? And, along the same lines, is Tanvi smarter than I am?

I refuse to believe she is smarter than me (although it would delight me no end, if she were!). I feel her so-called ‘smartness’ is only a result of a bigger & better exposure to the things around her. She is more exposed to the world, social situations, the media & technology today than I ever was. Same holds true for me & my mother. I wasn’t smarter than her. I just happened to be far more aware of things happening around me than she was, thanks to better & easy access to information sources. My daughter started ‘playing’ with a mobile phone by the age of 2. It was one of her earliest ‘real’ toys. Compare this to my first brush with mobile communication. I bought my first handset in 2002 that was just eight years back at the (ripe, by today’s standards) age of 24!

It’s like a twenty year advance introduction to mobile technology for my daughter. A giant leap in the ways of the altered communication systems! Obviously she is going to find it easier to understand the nitty-gritty of a handset, is going to make/receive calls with ease, run through the features of the mobile like a pro; in short, she is “smarter” when it comes to usage of mobiles. Unlike me; whenever I have changed handsets I have taken pains to get used to the new features on the new set. Most often, I have missed the familiarity of the old set & felt lost in the jingo of the new one. But then, that doesn’t make me any less smart than my daughter or any smarter than my mother who actually never went beyond using the BSNL instrument for calling people.

I was still actively using our dear old Indian Postal service as a main channel of communication right till I was 20. My daughter might never lick an envelope to seal it - ever! She would most likely send her first letter through an email or better still a text message or maybe even a ping on Skype! But that in no way makes her smarter than me! It only gives her the ‘at the right place, right time’ kind of privilege. Of course, she may be ‘better’ (in the sense of ‘faster’) than the others of her class/age in how she uses it but definitely not more intelligent than a previous generation. And by the same logic, I am no smart-ass for knowing the do’s & don’ts of email etiquette compared to my mother whose greatest & most complicated use of postal correspondence was a telegram.

Even when it comes to the world of movies & entertainment, the same thing holds true. Tanvi knows the names some of the Bollywood actors & actresses & their movies & their songs & dances to their numbers simply because she has been born & grown into a world of an entertainment overload. Calling out for Shah Rukh in a theatre & doing an impromptu jig is so normal for her. On the same lines, my father-in-law has been a Sean Connery fan from like forever. In fact, he introduced Sathya to the action & thrill of Hollywood films. But now that Sathya shakes a leg to the beat of Eminem doesn’t make him any more ‘cool’ than his dad. If his father would have had the on the ‘click-of-a-button’ access to youtube & dime a dozen DVDs & posh multiplex screens in every street worth its name, during his youth, maybe he would end up being ‘cooler’ than Sathya!

The newer generation is NOT smarter than the older generation. If circumstances could be controlled & if we could live in the same world so to say, we both would react & respond similarly & also excel equally. Our sensibilities are shaped by the availability of all forms of media. The lack or surplus decides how comfortably we relate to the ‘in’ things of today, the newest trends, whether it is in social networking, or entertainment or communication.