Love and marriage don't go together like horse and carriage

We often forget that the celebrated Romeo and Juliet were teenagers who were madly in love, and died in their teens.  Had their feuding Capulets and the Montagues blessed the young love, the two would have gotten married.  If that had happened, not only will there be no story of Romeo and Juliet, chances are also that Romeo and Juliet would not have had a happy life ever after.

It is not that I am pessimistic about teenage love.  Au contraire!  It is simply that daily life sucks away all those glorious emotions that made Romeo and Juliet.  Such is the life that we humans live.

The men and women of literature help us understand this human condition.  Gabriel García Márquez is simply masterful in Love in the time of cholera when he presents the complex emotions that make us who we are.  Through one of his characters, he writes about matrimony:

an absurd invention that could exist only by the infinite grace of God. It was against all scientific reason for two people who hardly knew each other, with no ties at all between them, with different characters, different upbringings, and even different genders, to suddenly find themselves committed to living together, to sleeping in the same bed, to sharing two destinies that perhaps were fated to go in opposite directions. He would say: "The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast."

Perhaps every teenager in love, every young bridge and groom, thinks that theirs is the true love that would defy all odds and past human experience and would last forever.  Maybe we need such optimism among the young; if not, humanity has no future.

What every starry-eyed couple find out sooner than later is that the routines of everyday existence can seem boring after a while to most people.  Life can be Groundhog Day over and over again.  Marquez writes that "the problem in public life is learning to overcome terror; the problem in married life is learning to overcome boredom."

I am pretty sure that Romeo and Juliet had no idea about the boredom of everyday life, and how life--married or single--"must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast."  Perhaps they lucked out not knowing that life is a procession of “frustrations and irritations.”

Did the Lepcha believe in Dante's nine circles of hell?

A long time ago, in the old country, I loved going to the local "Park club" every weekend, not only to chance upon that girl but also because that's where I could get to watch movies that otherwise was not possible in that small little industrial township. The first ever Malayalam movie that I watched was in that open-air setting.  I never forgot the movie or this song because of how much I was compelled to seriously think for the first time about love and sex and age.  In that Malayalam movie, it was an old man marrying a young woman, whose love was another young man.  To borrow from a recent movie title, "it's complicated."

Of course, in our daily lives back then, people did not talk about love and sex.  Those were essentially taboo. Via metaphors, the elders reminded us youth to control our impulses, even as we were being transported to the fictional print and film worlds where love and sex ruled supreme.  And love and sex and marriage in the old ways was anything but the practices of today.  Children got married.  Sometimes it was fully grown adults who married the children.

The Humbert Humbert character in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita explains his fixation in nymphets and draws comparisons with societies elsewhere:

Marriage and cohabitation before the age of puberty are still not uncommon in certain East Indian provinces.  Lepcha old men of eighty copulate with girls of eight, and nobody minds.  After all, Dante fell madly in love with his Beatrice when she was nine, a sparkling girleen, painted and lovely, and bejeweled, in a crimson frock, and this was in 1274, in Florence, at a private feast in the merry month of May.  And when Petrarch fell madly in love with his Laureen, she was a fair-haired nymphet of twelve running in the wind, in the pollen and dust, a flower in flight, in the beautiful plain as descried from the hills of Vaucluse.

My idiocy means that I am stumped about: (a) Lepcha: who are they and did they really practice this?; (b) was this Dante thing for real?; (c) the name Petrarch rings a bell, but I can't' place it; and (d) what the heck does "descried" mean?

I knew I would run into such situations even when I chose Lolita as one of my summer deep reads.  And that is exactly why I chose that--it was not because of the plot of the older man's relationship with a young girl.  That story-line is merely the vehicle for me to to understand a little bit more about the human condition, and it is working out well thus far.

The annotations in the book answers a whole bunch of questions that arise as I read the book, and Google fills in with the rest.  But, I got really, really curious about the Lepcha.  In India?  Wikipedia helps out!

What amazes me is this: Nabokov did not have any Wikipedia. No Google. No nothing.  Yet, he easily strings together a paragraph in which he mentions the Lepcha, Dante, and Petrarch, and the fine details about them?  WTF!  At this rate, when a new academic year begins, I will be really, really convinced that I am a fake who doesn't know any damn thing and I will hope that students never ever find that out ;)

To love whom they please and to marry whom they love

As a kid, as a teenager, and later even as an adult in India, I hadn't known a single gay person.  For that matter, I hadn't known a single black, or a Mexican, or an Arab, or a white ...  But, I had at least seen black and Mexican and white characters in movies, and read about them in fiction.  I had no idea about gays.  Well, the only thing I knew about gays was when in college there was a "wink-wink" about a guy.

Sex and sexuality was not talked about in the old country.  An old Tamil saying captures well the essence: "மன்மதக்கலை சொல்லி தெரிவதில்லை" (the art of the (god of) love is not taught and learnt.)  What I knew, messed up and incorrect that was--as I would find out much later in life--I knew from friends and fellow-classmates, who were also equally ill-informed.

And then I came to America.

I distinctly recall being shocked, intrigued, a month or so into my life in the new country, when I saw two young women locking lips in the public, outside the apartment building, just like how a young man and woman typically displayed their affections in public.

Since that first exposure, it has been one heck of a rapid education about love, homosexuality, and the politics of it all.

It is not only I who have moved, and moved rapidly, from not knowing anything to getting to know gays and becoming very good friends with them:

In the 1950s gay sex was illegal nearly everywhere. In Britain, on the orders of a home secretary who vowed to “eradicate” it, undercover police were sent out to loiter in bars, entrap gay men and put them in jail. In China in the 1980s homosexuals were rounded up and sent to labour camps without trial. All around the world gay people lived furtively and in fear. Laws banning “sodomy” remained in some American states until 2003.
Today gay sex is legal in at least 113 countries. 

A remarkable transformation in our collective attitudes.

What could help spread tolerance? If the past half-century is any guide, the prime movers will be gay people themselves. The more visible they are, the more normal they will seem. These days 75% of Americans say they have gay friends or colleagues, up from only 24% in 1985. But it is hard to be the first to come out in a country where that means prison or worse.
...
For those who cling to the notion of progress, it is hard to believe that tolerance will not spread. After all, gay people are not demanding special treatment, just the same freedoms that everyone else takes for granted: to love whom they please and to marry whom they love.

How are things in the old country?

In India the past decade has brought considerable change. The first national magazine for gay people, Pink Pages, was launched in 2009. Gay-pride marches, if not necessarily very large ones, are a common sight in big cities. Bollywood has produced sympathetic films.
Yet even if it is becoming slightly easier among India’s elite to be openly gay, almost no one in public life dares declare it. And the legal position for homosexuals is in flux. In July 2009 a high court ruled that the ban on “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” in the penal code violated India’s constitution, a ruling which in effect decriminalised gay sex. In December 2013 two Supreme Court judges overturned the ruling. They said that parliament could pass a law to legalise gay sex; at the moment, that looks unlikely.

 With a party that actively talks up Hindu nationalism, odds are far from favorable for India's parliament to pass laws legalizing homosexuality.  But then politics works in strange ways.

While I can claim ignorance of youth for the errors that I made in plenty, I have always felt awful about the "wink wink" comments about that college guy.  I have no idea whether he was/is gay; but, in any case, I suppose I can come clean with a public apology via this post.

All excited to meet my love ... 25 years!

In a world where love seems to be more and more fleeting anymore, and true love appears to be less terrestrial, I have been in love with her for a quarter century.

A love that has never wavered.

An unconditional love, despite not getting anything in return.  Not even a glance in my direction.

She is quite a charmer--very few have ever charmed me like she has over the twenty five years.

I first laid my eyes on her in graduate school.  

I was a naive graduate student from India with youthful dreams, and it was so easy to fall for her.  I knew she had a long line of fans.  I too joined that line.  But, I never felt jealous of the others in the line.  In fact, it was a case of love, like misery, loving company.

Over the years, I made many plans to spend time with her.  But, until a few years ago, I was married, and it is not always easy to work such deep love for another when the spouse has other plans.  "Some day" I told myself.

Meanwhile, my daughter said she was going to visit with this love of mine.  She didn't know, until she described her idea, how much I had been longing to visit with this love.  Yet, she didn't want to take the father along with her, and I told myself, "some day."

My daughter returned with stories that added fuel to that decades of fire.  My love was beautiful in the photographs.  My daughter was immensely happy, and I was even beginning to feel a little bit of jealousy towards my daughter.

Now, I am only days away from meeting my love.  

Oddly enough, I am not at all nervous. It can't be because of my middle age.  I get nervous about so many issues even at this age, yet the thought of meeting my love of twenty-five years doesn't make me agitated even one bit.  

Perhaps I am confident that I won't be let down.  I am confident that she will only treat me well.  Not like some of my other loves.

I will soon find out.

Wish me well, dear reader.  After all, such love is rare these days, and don't you want this story to end well with a "happily ever after"?

PS: I love you!

I like to think that the reason for the adoption of English as a dominant global language lies not in its adaptability or the geographic reach of the British Empire, but in a phenomenally easy one: the utterly uncomplicated, and simple-syllable, way of saying "I love you."

That phrase explains it all.

Many of the Tamil and the Hindi movies that I watched when growing up in India, if they were not stories that were strictly rural in their settings, had "I love you" sometimes even more than once in the dialog.  After all, most movies dealt the affairs of the heart and they ran for nearly three hours.

My guess is that thanks to the movies, even quite a few among the population who didn't know how to read and write were familiar with "I love you" as an expression and its meaning.

If one of the characters had to say "I love you" in Tamil, for instance, it is way more than three syllables.  நான் உன்னை காதலிக்கிறேன் (Naan unnai kaadhalikkiren)

Way easier to say "I love you" instead and seal the deal by running around the trees!

Or, consider in Hindi (I hope I am correct here with my rudimentary knowledge that is nearly 30 years old): मैं तुमसे प्यार करता हूँ (Main tumse pyar karta hun)  Isn't the English version way easier for the mouth?

I like to also think that the words and sounds needed to express that feeling is why those were also not said much when I was a kid.  To this day, I have never heard my parents tell each other "I love you."  Of course, it is the cultural aspect here--where such expressions were not a part of the everyday existence.  I wonder if India has changed, and whether my generation, or their kids, freely say "I love you."

Back in my life in California, once we had invited over for dinner an older couple, who had immigrated from South Korea.  It was hilarious when during the conversation the wife remarked that her husband doesn't say "I love you" to her.

She then looked at him and practically dared him.  He didn't bite though!  My guess is that it is way more syllables in Korean than it is in English :)

He had a wonderful sense of humor, too and maybe that was his key to success at home and at his business. Without a pause, he replied in his Korean accent, "but, what has love got to do with marriage?"

We all laughed.  Unlike "I love you" laughter is easy and the same in any language.