Happy Birthday Baby.!!

"Wow, how long has it been since we have been with each other?" Lavanya asked him, taking another bite from her pizza.

"This friday, it will be three years," Angad told her and smiled.

Lavanya laughed briefly, "What happened to that playboy I met years ago who had to get into another relationship right after getting in to one?"

"Well," said Angad and took a bite from his chocolate dessert, "that playboy became thirty today."

Lavanya grinned, "You have grown up now?"

Angad shook his head, "Nah, and I never will, but everyone around me has grown up."

"What do you mean?" Lavanya frowned.

Angad looked deep in her eyes, "Remember back in college, when dating meant just dating? When it was just about having fun! You had no idea what would happen and in a way, you didn't want to know. Because sometimes, not knowing is fun. It was just so exciting. Now, the definition of dating has changed."

"As in?" Lavanya said, now ignoring the food on the table and getting more engrossed in the conversation she was having.

Angad frowned, "Like you don't know."

Lavanya smiled, "No, I don't know, please tell me", and batted her eyes.

Angad sighed, "Dating is still fun but it is not the same anymore. 'My parents want to see you.' 'Will our parents approve of our marriage?' 'How are we going to get married?' 'Are we going to follow your customs to get married or ours?' 'Will society approve this inter-religion marriage?' God, it's all about what others will think when we will get married."

Lavanya looked at him confused, "That's wrong?"

Angad shook his head, "Of course, it is not wrong. It just isn't, you know, what I want."

"What do you want?"

Angad took Lavanya's hand in his and smiled, "To be in love without worrying for what others think of us."

Lavanya didn't even blink her eyes, "I am not sure I understand you."

Without breaking the eye contact Angad continued, "Why do you think people want to be with each other? Because they are in love. Marriage, having kids; it's moving forward. Moving forward with a person you're in love with. Anybody can fall in love, but very few people have guts to be committed to that person for a life time. Right?"

"Yes"

"So, if we love each other, and want to be with each other, than what business others have with that. I love you, you love me, and we want to spend the rest of our lives with each other. It doesn't matter how we get married, as long as we are getting married and are happy with each other. It doesn't matter what my distant relatives think of you as my life partner or whether your relatives approve me to be your life partner or not. What matters is whether we are happily in love with each other or not. It doesn't matter if we are following different religions, all religions preach love, and our love for each other is above each and every religion in the world. Our parents have a right to be worried for our future, but they shouldn't be the one to decide whether we should get married or not, or how we will live after getting married. That decision is solely ours, and ours alone, not mine not yours, but ours. And most importantly, the only deciding factor on marriage should be our love for each other and nothing else."

Lavanya took a deep breath and finally spoke, "Is that what you want?"

Angad smiled, "No honey, I want us to be together in love with each other. I want to be busy; busy living my life with you, busy loving you the way I love. I want to travel every corner of this world and I don't want to travel alone. I want to travel with someone I love, and that's you. I want you to be beside me, living the moment as it is - not worrying about what we would be tomorrow. Not worrying if society will label us as outcasts. I agree, society matters. But they don't matter as much as our love for each other. I don't want us to get married for the society, I want us to get married for our love, I want us to get married for ourselves. I want us to get married, have kids, settle down and be together, be in love."

Angad sighed and continued, "Marriage is not just a ceremony, or papers. It is not just a wedding. You hold hand to show your affection, you kiss because that makes sense in love. You marry not because you have to, because you want to, because it's just another way of showing affection, another way of declaring you are in love. It's not a promise of being together for the rest of your lives, it's only if you spend the rest of your lives together, you realise that it was a promise. Another beautiful start to an already beautiful journey. You don't wake up just to a person you love, you wake to your wife or husband the next morning, a person you dreamt of waking up next to, since you were old enough to love."

Angad looked deep in Lavanya's eyes and said, "I am in love with you, and I cannot stop loving you. After marriage, I might be a jerk and fight with you over silly things, I may be irresponsible and get home late at night, while you will be awake waiting for me. I might pamper our kids a lot, to the point of spoiling them. But I am sure of one thing, I will never fail as a husband or a father. I will love you and our kids, more than anyone else in the entire universe.

There will never come a day in our life when you will get tired of cooking three meals for us, as I will be helping you cook them. There will never come a day in our life when you will turn to opposite direction fuming in anger before sleeping, as I will always hug you and kiss before sleeping and make you sleep in my arms.

When there will be wrinkles on your face and grey hair on your head, and you won't remember how many days are there in a week. I will make you sit on my lap, hug you tight and show you photographs of all the happy times we have spent together, and make you smile.

Lavanya smiled and tears found their way to her cheeks, "If things are supposed to go this way, then trust me, no matter what others say or think, things will go this way. I love you and I am always with you."

Lavanya leaned towards Angad, her lips found his and an electric current ran through their bodies, "Happy birthday baby!"

Letter To Soulmate

Dear Soulmate

I don't know where you are, but I know you exist. I feel you in my heart and I see you in my dreams. Only once in our life, we find someone who can completely turn our world around, I believe you're that one for me. I want to be the one with whom you would share things that you never shared with another soul, and believe me I would absorb everything you say and would actually want to hear more. I want you to share your dreams with me that will never come true, your goals that were never achieved, and many disappointments life has thrown at you, and I promise I won't make fun of you, I will comfort you and share my portion of disappointments with you.

I want our love to be so deep that when something wonderful happens, I couldn't wait to tell you about it, knowing that you will share in my excitement and would be happy for me.

I won't be embarrassed to cry with you, when you're hurt, or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. I won't ever hurt your feelings, or make you feel like you're not good enough. Rather, I would build you up and show you things about yourself that would make you feel special and beautiful.

There will never be any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when we will be with each other. You will be yourself and I will be myself, and not a worry as to what others think of us, as we love each other for who we are, and all that matters to us is that we are with each other for who we actually are.

A note to each other, a song dedication, a walk in the street, are some of the insignificant things for most people. But to us, these will be invaluable treasure of feelings kept safe in our hearts to cherish forever.

Memories of childhood will come back to us when we will have our kids, they will be so clear and vivid that we will be kids once again, everything will seem to celebrate our love, colours will become more brighter, seasons will become more brilliant, and we will be more in love with each other.

When we will be having tough day at work, a call or message from the other one will be enough to get us through the day and bring a sweet smile that will linger on our lips for the rest of the day. Laughter that was once very infrequent will become a part of our daily life.

When we will be with each other, there will be no need for continuous conversation, we will be more than content in just having each other nearby.

Things that were once mundane, boring and uninteresting for me, will suddenly become special for me, as they will be important for you. I will think of you in every occasion and in everything I do. Even the simplest things like pale blue sky, gentle wind, or even a storm cloud on the horizon will make me miss you.

I have been hurt in love, I have closed my heart for so long. But, I have realised that being vulnerable is the only way to allow our heart to feel the true pleasure of love. My only strength is in knowing that one day I will have you in my life, you who will love me till the end of the eternity and beyond, you who will be my best friend, you who is my soulmate.

Sometimes I gaze up at the stars, and I feel comforted because I know somewhere you're staring upon the same sparkling stars searching for me. Often while watching the moon, I become lost in thoughts of you and I, and the life we will someday share.

Will today be the day you find me?

All my Love

Your Soulmate

So Hard To Say 'I'm Sorry'

'I'm sorry', such a small phrase, seemingly easy enough to say, yet in marriage these words have a huge impact, whether said or especially, not said. Every couple has their marital battles, but I am willing to bet that if we all had the time to talk about these specific words there would be too much to say about them.

Couples often admit that in their marriage they want their spouses to say 'I’m sorry' more often.

In marriages couples often have lots of expectations from each other, and more so often due to these expectations they unknowingly hurt each other. But that's not the problem rather the beginning of problem.

Usually, in marriages when hurt, couples don't communicate with each other as to whether they have been hurt by each other or not, and how they have been hurt, instead they isolate themselves from each other, leaving them clues hoping they would see that things between them are not ok.

I suppose this is the “mind game” that people refer to, but I don't think these are the mind games. In all actuality, these are the expectations of husband and wife from each other, that they want to be understood by each other so much so that they want their spouses to notice even the slightest change in their behaviour, they want to be loved by each other, they want to be the centre of attention of each other during these times of emotional distress. Isn't that what love is all about? Isn't that what marriage is all about?

A husband or wife may not be willing to say 'I'm sorry', if they do not feel they were in the wrong, leaving the other person unresolved with their hurt feelings. Some may say them too fast, giving the impression they do not care about what happened, eager to move-on, again missing the point that feelings need to be validated.

Whichever way you typically respond to your spouse in your marital relationship, specifically with “I’m sorry,” the bottom line is that these words do need to be said, sincerely, and most likely often. Despite whose fault it is, the fact remains that feelings get hurt and need validation. The good news is that we have time to work on our approach to saying these words, and hopefully we will be great communicators in those crucially emotional times.

An apology is, and will always be incomplete without forgiveness, and unfortunately our cultures way of thinking is that we wait for an apology and then forgive.

Especially in Marriage, how often do couples wait for their spouses to apologise before giving forgiveness?

Forgiving your spouse even before they have done wrong and hurt you is a powerful depiction of sacrificial love! In marriage, if one can forgive their spouse even before they wrong them, they are then exemplifying the love at it's purest form! That’s powerful and very difficult to do; yet the reward is beyond words! The reward is lifetime of love, happiness and companionship.

Many times one may sit and contemplate whether their spouse deserves forgiveness. Forgiveness is not about what somebody deserves. It is powerful and life changing when given even when someone does not deserve it.

When you are in an argument with your spouse, a fight, or if you are hurting in any way because of your spouse, both of you need to stop and evaluate your love for each other, for above all, you love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of arguments and fights and misunderstandings.

Ground Reality Of Love Jihad

The current Jihad against Love - for that is indeed what has gripped the imaginative fervour of the Hindu Right and its luxuriant undergrowths and counterparts - is only the latest and most visible instance of a virulent Indian misogyny. From its beginnings in the south to its tentacular spread in the north, the thick smoke screen of "love jihad" - by which Muslim men are alleged to have designs on Hindu women of an entirely dishonorable kind - disguises a far more familiar face, one that even many Muslims will recognise. It is a deep seated fear among many sections of Indian men that too many Indian women have taken control of their lives at a much faster pace than expected, show little patience for strictures of the past, and therefore need to be taught a quick lesson, and kept in place. What better strategy than to create a fear which will unite a seriously fractured society, and bring it back to its familiar, hierarchical whole?

At the least, two sets of recent developments have stoked the fears of an Indian patriarchy that is firmly entrenched in rich soils of religion, caste, region and class. December 16, 2012 ended the silence of women about sexual violence and harassments in schools, colleges, work places and even households. Angry, voluble Indian women showed no reluctance in taking journalists, slum dwellers, uncles, fathers, judges and teachers to court, or before sexual harassment committees. She talked, she argued, she wrote and she organised against that which had for too long been cloaked in the mysteries of silence.

Even more difficult for not only men but for some women too to accept were the recent signs of men and women breaking free of the stifling binds of the  official kinship. There was much publicised violence with which the Khap Panchayat reinserted women, and some men, into kinship relationships which they had rejected. To take some liberties with Foucault, an older "symbolis of blood" appeared to be giving way, slowly but surely, to a new "analytics of sex". The bloody violence of Khap Panchayat has been a warfare between generations and also between genders - beleaguered older and very Hindu patriarchs versus the young men and women who risked a great deal in dreaming of caring, sharing partners and a less hierarchical life. The ferocity of Khap Panchayat attacks on these men and women, and prevarications of a state which did not doubt the moral authority of these actions, has done a little to deter these daily transgressions.

These kind of developments could not have come at a worse time for those whose generational and gender authority is being challenged. The time was ripe for fostering a new and more threatening fantasy to bring the strays back to the fold. As long as the fantasies of inter-caste or cross-caste relationships were confined to the silver screens, women's 'khushi' was not interrupted. Real women are another matter - they are often "loved" to death by men who, once spurned, wield the axe, knife or acid bottle with deadly skill. Indian cinema has nurtured this version of loving, a unidirectional flow of feelings from man to woman, whose outcomes - eventual female acquiescence - are always predicted.

On the other hand, Indian feminism's very success has produced some contradictory outcomes. An ever eager and sophisticated state has altered its laws, policies and plans to accommodate the language of women's aspirations. The corporate world has found it convenient to borrow the language of feminism to reach a large and ready pool of independent consumers. For some time now, International Women's Day has been another hallmark moment. For a while, even Hindu right wing parties chose to adopt the slogans and battle cries of Indian feminism. Yet, the public life is replete with irresponsible utterances and outrageous actions, no protocols of political correctness are observed by the loose-lipped parliamentarians or legislators, judges or journalists, since there is no accompanying political cost.

Quite simply, many Indian women are no longer the passive bearers of caste, religious, ethnic or other meaning - but the makers of the meaning. That is surely a cause for dismay among those who feel their grip is loosening. Large numbers of women have gained a measure of independence, freedom from domestic tyrannies, and have won some economic and legal liberty. Straw polls, discouraging editorials and sensational headlines notwithstanding, these hard-won gains will not be diminished.

Hence need for a clarion call to place all Hindu women under a protection they did not demand; back to a lock up where they will be safe from the dangers of independent thinking and action. We should therefore take heart in these difficult times from the courage shown by judges of the Delhi High Court in naming a clear and present danger to married women, the matrimonial home. The judges, who have noted the frequency with which husbands are convicted for murder - no less than one in ten murder cases - have declared that even the streets of a dangerous city like Delhi may be safer for women than the private sphere of the home. This is a damning indictment indeed of a space which is constantly being saved from the vividly imagined dangers of "love and companionship".