Tuza Ahe Tuja Paashi

 

This morning I came across a post from a virtual friend where she shared a recent personal anecdote about being shamed by another woman for being “ too simple “. Wearing no makeup, wearing non-brand items, forsaking beauty rituals, visits to parlors etc. was the subject of criticism.

In my comments I wrote:

“This is highschool girls politics 😂. The lady never grew out of teenage! Your confidence about who you are and your priorities is a perfect model for someone else who could be vulnerable to such senseless rude judgements. It’s a crazy world out there. 

Some people have not ever heard the phrase Simplicity is the Essence of Beauty. What would they understand what essence means and what beauty means? This is not taught in school.”

A little later I came across a post by another good friend who talked about finding love. Specifically love between a man and a woman.

Now, love too is something that none of us are taught in school ! 🤔

Thinking about it, there are a lot of things we are not taught in school. How to raise kids, for instance. We just learn as we go. We go by instincts. We try to do it differently having seen the mistakes our parents made. Then we make mistakes of our own. But more or less we walk in uncharted territory and try to make the best of it.

Finding love is also something similar. It is almost a universal need felt by every human being, and who knows, even by animals, to find someone who we can love and be loved back by that person. Some of us who are lucky find love early in life. Some must go through long periods waiting for it to happen. Some find love and then it’s gone for various reasons. Distance, differences, divergence of paths and priorities, death being some of them. Some like Mr Ratan Tata go through life alone, whether they wished it that way or not.

Having completed sixty circuits around the sun, I have been there, done that. And learnt a few things about love, loss and fulfillment. As a young woman coming of age I’ve been through phases of having a “crush” on good looking men,  mostly those seen on screen. I can even name a few for those curious readers who would be tickled with these useless tidbits. Dharmendra is one of them who made my heart skip a beat when he was young and I was even younger of course. Robert Redford was another man I would have said yes in a heartbeat if he had proposed to me. Of course these fantasies were just that. Fantasies. I was grounded enough to not believe these could ever become realities. Secretly and paradoxically, I wished and hoped they would never come true. 

Real life was a different story. Much serious and closer to the heart. I found love at a much younger age, perhaps too young of an age. It was an age filled with innocence and purity that adulthood abruptly shakes off at some point. My good fortune was that my love was reciprocated in almost equal measure. Until of course life took a turn in ways that one would never anticipate. Love can be the first priority for one person but not the other person. And when life tests you by putting you in that corner where you must choose between your top two priorities, you come face to face with the harshest side of truth, or as they say, situation where rubber meets the road. The jolt that came with that parting was so strong for my young mind that it almost killed me. 

A near death experience, physical or emotional, has often proven to be a cause for spiritual awakening. And that’s what happened in my case. I was so totally devastated with the loss that I had to build my life from an emotional rubble. On one hand I sought the support of what my rudimentary mind understood as God. On the other, I survived by accepting a life of practicality. The social structure goaded me to meet and marry the man I spent the rest of my life with. 

I was walking somewhere yesterday with Abhay and as I watched him a thought came to mind. If, hypothetically speaking, the clock were to be turned back and I was given an opportunity to choose my man, would I choose the same man (who is now my husband)? 

And then came the answer from my heart. Yes, I would. I would probably not find a better man than him. He is kind, intelligent and has been good to me. He has led a life of hard work and honesty. He has been faithful. A lot of sexy and beautiful women could have lured him when he was a young handsome doctor making good money, and potential to keep them comfortable. But he never got swayed by them. I got a secure married life because of the person he is. It would not just be ok if I was given a choice to marry him again. It would be an honor and a privilege. A stroke of luck like it was this time.

And this is despite the fact that he and his family deliberately kept a critical secret about a hereditary condition from me when we got married. A condition that has caused a great deal of pain and damage to us all as a family unit. 

How can I look past that deception?

I don’t have the full answer.

But it remains a fact that I still can value him and choose him despite that abberation.

Although I do not have a full answer to the why, I have some insights on this.

Firstly, I see it as my prarabdha. The saga of the devastating illness is something that is part of my past karmic debts to be dealt with and get past eventually. It is also a means for me to evolve as a person by going through the challenges. 

I can spend the entire lifetime blaming him and his family for what is now on our plates. Or I can stop blaming others and focus on how the present situation can help me become a better, stronger version of myself. At some point I made a conscious choice of the latter option.

Secondly, my spiritual journey has drilled into me a few non negotiable values and given me some strengths that not many people are lucky to have but can potentially acquire if they want to.

 One of them is forgiveness. You can’t claim to forgive and then continue pointing fingers at someone’s mistakes. 

 Second is honesty. Non-betrayal is another way of looking at honesty. Honesty towards what? Towards my duties as a wife. With the clarity that my duties have nothing to do with him or what he does or did. I either accept my role and fulfill it with integrity or pack my bags and leave. There is no grey zone here where I stay married but retaliate his past dishonesty with the weapon or excuse of my infidelity. My idea of spirituality does not prescribe nor subscribe to this logic. 

Thirdly, humility.

 Fourthly, non attachment.

When I answered the question in my mind if I would choose the same man as my husband if I were to start over again, I also had an addendum to it. No, not that he should do better than what he did in this life. The addendum was that although I got who I thought was the best man a woman could get, I would not insist on him or anyone in particular in the next round if there comes one. Anyone that Providence chooses for me would be good enough. Why? Because no matter who it is, they would have something in them that I may lack. That would make them more worthy than me. I am always going to be on the lowest pedestal. So any other person would have something I could look up to rather than look down upon. I know I am not at all a perfect wife even now. Should I then work on perfecting myself in my role or care for a perfect man? The former option is something I would have control over. The latter option is entirely out of my control and can lead to disappointment.

Lastly, the strengths I mentioned above include amongst other things, a degree of emotional self reliance that very few people can claim to have. The rudimentary idea about God I had in my teenage and early twenties, that I referred to above, has over the years, slowly blossomed into a much direct comprehension and experience of the unshakable principle that constitutes not just my “being” but also the fiber of the entire universe around me. I can be momentarily shaken by the ups and downs in my life but that’s just how much it all affects. Momentarily. The deeper understanding and security allows to digest and process everything that life throws at me. And then I am able to take a solution oriented approach to move forward rather than be crushed by it. 

The other way to describe this, is to say that I found love, (as well as hope and positivity), right within me and all around me. 

Like beauty, essence, God, and truth, love is a subtle and indestructible thing. It is not a fleeting emotion that people commonly think it is. It must be experienced. Without experience, it is merely an idea. And that’s what most people have. An idea of love and of being loved. They don’t realize that it is a fantasy they have been petting in their minds all their lives. I love my mother, I love my wife, I love my child, I love my grandchildren. It is all fantasyland. Go to the source of where that love is coming from. It is coming from within and you are projecting it onto an object outside of you and subsequently experiencing it second hand. Like an echo. When you identify it at its source, you will stop feeling the need for objects( living or otherwise) to experience it. 

Most people go about life trying to find that ideal person who can give them the love their heart yearns for, in order to feel fulfilled. That’s where mind enters complicated territory.  It gets surrounded by innumerable questions and concerns pertaining to love with respect to compatibility, unconditional or not, ethical or not, social responsibility, morality, indiscretions, appropriate or inappropriate , disturbed family and social dynamics, legal and financial problems and many messy things . It is the distorted sense of incompleteness that drives a man or woman to do the circus of finding completeness at the cost of many other valuable things in life like peace, contentment, integrity, respect, family to name a few. Instead if you allow your mind to settle into simple thinking and focus on swadharma, chances are love will find you wherever you are.

Perhaps nothing sums up what I have tried to discuss in this post better than the title of a popular play by the famous Marathi playwright Pu La Deshpande. 

Tuza ahe tuja paashi!

What is yours, is with you! 

Saree is a kanchi cotton I had bought over two decades back in Matunga, Mumbai.