Love, money and sex:

I think sex, money, and love share an extremely dangerous relationship.

A thought that occurred to me today, after many days of trying to demystify the concept of love, was if it was possible to fall in love with someone just because of money and sex. And the answer was YES!

If I surveyed other woman in the world, most of them would agree with me. Not because they were loose, but, because the three were interwoven firmly by an invisible thread. The thread that sometimes made a woman’s --occasionally active-- over rational brain –falsely-- believe that she was immoral!  

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Let us consider a situation.

I went on a date with a guy I am attracted to and, voila, he treated me like a princess. He opened every door for me, took to me for a romantic dinner at a garden restaurant, helped me order the food and the wine, kept me on the hook with an engaging conversation, took me to a pub that played my favorite music, held me close all night, danced with me and, at the end of the eight hour long date, kissed me. He also said that it was the best date in a while, and promised many more. He did not treat me like an object.

He texted me until sunrise and asked me if I wanted to go ice-skating with him. Of course I said yes. He took me out to a restaurant with my favorite cuisine, then for ice-skating, held my hand and tried to teach me to skate, kissed me in front of all the young children in the rink, prevented me from falling face down on the ice, and paid for everything! After the short-lived adrenaline high, he invited me home for tea. And why wouldn't I go?

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Rationale: Money = Opportunities to make women feel special

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The next experience on the agenda was obviously the sex, and it was fantastic.

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Rationale: Making a woman special = Big turn on for women
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He was everything a woman could have ever asked for. The sex was almost always about me – unselfish and unconditional. What the hell, maybe he did not even cringe about my unshaven legs! We kissed for hours and hours before having sex. Though I would have loved to substitute “had sex” for the term “made love,” I didn’t have to say that, this time, for me to believe I was not “sleeping around.” What could be better? We cuddled and cuddled, till undone assignments flashed in front of both our brains. And this was my third date.

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Rationale: Sex = Opportunities to make women feel loved
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Parallel thoughts: I always knew how it worked in the West. Men and women lived through multiple iterations of the above and then experienced what they called, “A bolt out of the clear blue sky,” the cheesy “I love you.”

I also knew how it worked in India. Men and women lived through multiple iterations of the above, but in their heads. The men tried to cast the shadow of their dreams on the women, but most of them in vain. The sex came much later, much after the baby step – the “I love you.”

Two questions crossed my brain.

1.     Why did Indians need to wait to fall in love with the person before having sex with them?

2.     Why did the Westerners need to have sex with the person gazillion times before falling in love with them?

The answer was the same for the both of them – fear. One was the fear of losing respect, and the other, the fear of losing independence.
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I was an Indian in the West. My thoughts were mangled and so were my intentions, but I knew I belonged to none of those categories. Mine was the third category, a hybrid, I neither believed that I couldn't have sex with someone I just got to know, nor believed that I needed to have sex multiple times to fall in love with them. Something that I needed 800 more words to explain.
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There were three cases:

Case 1: MONEY = SEX = LOVE (typical American case), where the man won her heart, mainly, by paying through his nose.

Case 2: MONEY = LOVE = SEX (rare) and LOVE = MONEY = SEX (typical Indian case), where the man got lucky only when he won her heart, but needed money to take the relationship to the next level.

Case 3: SEX = LOVE = MONEY(common), where the woman considered giving her heart away a mistake, and dumped the man for not having enough money (for a future).

Conclusion: Money and sex balanced the equation, because love was too poor to perform alone.

I always respected prostitutes, but today I respected them more. We “apparently normal” women were no different – we were money-loving creatures after all! 

A bad Valentine

She waited for me all day, and did not see me once.

I asked her in a card, the previous night, if she could be my valentine. She kissed me cheeks and said yes.  But, all I did was break her heart.

She was not a lover, she was not a friend, she was a sister that I begged the angels to send. We had only spent six months with each other, but I loved her with everything I had. The only problem was that she loved me as well.

I told her I needed her help with my thesis, I told her I'd meet her for dinner or tea, but what I really did was far from what she could see. I was sleepless the previous night, and so I was groggy. I forgot that I had a job to do all morning. I could have told her not to wait for me, but I didn't. I assumed she was not going to change her plans for me. I went for an interview, I attended a lecture, but at the end of all this I was more hungry that ever. I stepped out for some dinner with a friend from school, I thought my Valentine, was going to be okay and cool. 

As I stepped out of the campus, and heard some Indian music. My friend pointed out to a group of undergrads dancing. I was so excited. Finally some Indianess in my life. I had lost so many chances to enjoy Desi nights --because of a schoolmate who was well known for fickleness. I watched the dancers perform with my mouth wide open, it felt like school Independence Days all over again. My friend and I did some Bhangra as well, shook a little leg from below the dancers. I was in awe! I made up my mind that I was going to send my children to the states for their undergraduate studies, they really needed to learn to have fun. 

My battery died when I stepped out of school. The next thing I knew was that I was in a huge auditorium, competing with my friend in an obstacle race, climbing up a wall, and sliding down the same. "Yay! I won," I thought, but what I did not know was that I was losing what was more precious to me -- my Valentine.

The enemy was assumption. I assumed that it was a normal day for her, when she slept very late, and continued  to have fun. I also assumed that she would not change her plans just because I wanted her for something. Two wrong assumptions that ruined my day. 

After a good dinner, I walked back home alone, only to realize that I had promised her that I would clean the bathroom. I did not want to stress after a relaxing conversation over tea, so I finished the bathroom cleaning, before my tea. When I was excited to tell her about everything that had happened in the last 15 hours, I saw a message saying that she had waited long enough. 

I didn't want to stop her from falling asleep, so I replied with a smile and said, "Go to sleep." I still did not know that I had lost my Valentine, to the one thing that can kill any relationship -- assumption was the devil . I was a bad Valentine. 

When I woke up, I saw her in the kitchen. In her eyes, I saw anger frustration and mistrust. She compared me to someone I never wanted to be -- the schoolmate who stood me up many times over. I despised myself, but I also felt sad. I wished I could do something to make it up. I continued to sip my morning tea, hoping that this was not the end. An end to a beautiful relationship and a loving friend. I realized that when my boyfriends fought with me, I left them to writhe in pain, but to this one woman, I could do nothing like that. 

I started writing this post, so I could think clearly about what I should do. She made me change last week, and after that I've kept my room clean. I knew I would do anything in my power -- to keep her happy and to win her over.

But, all I needed to do was to wait a little longer. 

I got a message that said she was angry but that was last night, not now, and that the clean bathroom compensated for part of it. I think my face reminded her about how hurt she was, which was why she compared me to a wretch I knew. I was hurt, but I would still do everything I could, to keep this relationship, alive, happy and good. 

Valentine's Day was gone, but my Valentine wasn't! 

The Gynosadist

Last year, I was single, clueless about my life, going through a rough breakup, and waiting for my Mr. Perfect. Today I have everything I ever wanted right in front of me, but still I cannot comprehend how the other person has moved on.

Is this just one of the seven sins, greed, or is it something more? Sadism.

When he called me, I was nervous, and didn’t know how to tell him that I was ready to get married and settle down, but it turned out that his voice was so excited, that with my 6 years’ experience with him I noticed was something big.

I said, “What’s up. You sound excited!”

He said, “I am so crazy about someone, that I can’t get her out of my head.”

I smiled sarcastically, finding the line cheesy and familiar from our previous conversations, and said, “ Hmmm and?”

He said, “She has a boyfriend! God why do I always get myself in this mess?”

This is where my smile vanished from my lips. I knew that this was not one more ‘I-cannot-get-over-you’ kind of conversation. I felt bad. A mixture of surprise, possessiveness and disbelief came over me. Exactly in that order.

I had heard of ex boyfriends fall in love, get married, have kids too, but this one was just not the ordinary ex boyfriend. He was someone I had spent many years –a significantly large chunk of my life—with.

After a long silence, which he obviously deciphered, I said, “Wow! I will be getting married soon too. Nice. Both of us have moved on after all.” I knew it was the sadism that drove those words out of my mouth. I felt disgusting. I was happy in my world, but I was still uncomfortable with someone, who I threw out of my life, moving on.

Are all women this greedy? I hope not. The problem was in me. I was so hurt in the previous relationship that I think I wanted him to writhe in pain, regretting the fact that he let me go. I had accomplished that a long time ago.

“I might meet a million women, but I wake up everyday cursing myself for being a jerk and letting the most precious thing in my life go,” he said. But what made me even happier – and sadistically gratified – was when he said, “Whoever the b****d [obscenity] is, I know he is one lucky m****f***er [obscenity] and I would kill to have what he has.”

I knew it was time to put the phone down, and I did. Except, this time with hopes that he found that special someone, and lived happily with her. 

If You Can’t Give Her Wings, At Least Don’t Seal Her Lips

The much hyped about “Girl child Day’ was celebrated on January 24th but what is the nuance of such a day? So much is being done to prevent incidents of female infanticides, child marriages and woman child education, but what about women who enter the world, get education and parry the blow of getting married before 18?

The inevitable happens. People start making decisions for her. From her mere identity at birth, school she goes to, clothes she wears, friends she makes, levels of education she can be morally supported through, to her surname. What else is left of a woman who is born? In a country where marriages are believed to last forever, no choice is given to the woman who lives.

Our country talks about sorting problems on a larger scale, problems that seem much graver than the trivial matters that involve a woman. There is an obvious link between the problems in society and the women who live here are seen. Blind are those who see her dreams shatter in the effort of making her parents’ come true, deaf are those who fail to hear her cries for true independence and dumb are those who see and hear but fail to talk about it.

I am not qualified enough to take such a sensitive subject and make open judgments, but what I have felt is what I will write. I am a journalist and I believe in using my freedom of speech.

Aaliya Nathan (name changed to protect identity) was a happy go lucky child, who went to the best of girls’ schools in the city. When she was eight, she was sexually abused by a distant relative, the act that continued for years. Her inability to understand what was happening, the taboo around topics related to men and women as a couple and her lack of knowledge pertaining to the opposite sex prevented her from talking about it to her parents. She grew withdrawn from her family and starting showing an unpalatable hatred towards men in the family and the mother to whom the abuser was related.

Aaliya spoke to nobody because of the fear of being judged as the trouble maker. To her, the family was the cause of her pain and constant guilt, but her parents failed to see it behind those innocent smiles. At 19, her parents started pushing her to get married, fearing that the withdrawn girl would commit crimes more serious than just aloofness.

Today Aaliya is just another wild woman in town, she rebelled against marriage, went dancing with her friends, loved drinking and driving, but also someone who constantly kept her eye open for someone to love her. Nobody could deny that were many more Aaliyas in India, women who were never heard but who were always told.

Why was it so difficult to listen to children without wearing a judge’s hat? This was a question that many parents forgot to ask themselves, before slowly pushing adolescent daughters into suicides and homicides. A home must be a place where any subject could be discussed to any intensity without harsh impulsive implications attached to it. When the home was a place where there was trust and unconditional love sans judgments, no child ventured out into the dark alleys of premarital sex and substance abuse. If parents put in a small effort to change this trend, bigger problems like HIV, murders, alcoholism, accidents and rapes in the country would also plummet a great deal. In short, if you can’t give her wings, at least don’t seal her lips.

New Era Gandhian

I always thought that a person who runs away from a confrontation or an argument was a coward, but I am reconsidering my brash judgment. In the last two months, I lost a best friend, an ex fiancé and today I lost another best friend. It is easier to think that a natural calamity took their lives away, but the bitterness that oozes out of a broken relationship is non existent in the case of the irreversible finality.

Why is the human mind built in a way that to push a person out of their mind, the umbrella of hate is sheltered under? Some people spread bitterness and some accept defeat. I am the one who accepts bitterness as though it has always been my forte. My parents shed a few tears and suddenly the girl who spent her entire lifetime cover up for her shit has become the bad one? I don’t understand how the mind functions. I am in the search of finding how people react to various situations in life. The amount of tears I have shed through a love relationship goes unnumbered, but the tears shed by others become invaluable?

How can people who call themselves ‘friends’ be so biased against their own friends? I have always asked so many questions, but the answers come so much later in life that the discovery/epiphany hardly matters. Today the ‘friend’ continues talking about my broken engagement thousands of miles away from me, why? I presume that talking about me was a decent enough conversation starter. Whether I am good or bad does not matter now – I must rejoice that I am an interesting piece of flesh.

The most important questions in a friendship at three different stages are “How is the person with other people?” which is a question that rules pre-friendship stages, “What does the person do for you?” which is asked when the person is your friend and is in close proximity and “What does the person say behind your back about you when far away?” which is the ultimate test of friendship.

I am a person who believes that a person cannot question the moral liability of another person – be it if the person decides to end an engagement or walk out of a marriage. What I would do in a situation like this is to weigh out the pros and cons of the various cases and let the final call be a conscious decision of the respective person. My personal life has become a joke to everybody – some people think I gave it up for another man and some people think I became overly ambitious overnight – but at the end of the day, the word spreads.

Higher beings say that one must not care two hoots about the society and that is the way of life and spiritual freedom, but what can be done if the social reputation builds a firmer ground for tomorrow’s bread and butter? In my case, I was going to stay with a friend of mine in NYC, before he broke to me that he was upset that I misrepresented something he had said about the ‘friend’ under speculation.

The truth about my story is that I introduced the NYC friend to my ‘friend’ because they had a lot of things common – this is not the worst part of the story. Today, I felt like nothing less than one of those prostitutes on the leery streets of New York City. My friend, for half a decade, told me that he did not want me to stay over at his place even if it was a for a few days because he was scared of the ripples of rumors that would travel through many ears in his friends circle. Though uncontrollable tears rolled down my cheeks, I realized that I was happier to ‘unfriend’ such negative factors in my life from thousands of miles away, rather than get closer in proximity and pull the plug eventually. What a learning experience, and in the process what a revelation – I am the new era Gandhian.

Theory of Rebound:

The only truth behind a rebound is that nothing is real. It is like the rickety bridge that serves as the only path from Broken Heart Land to Firm Ground Land. People with broken hearts or breaking relationships turn to the first person they find interesting or to the first person who shares a similar story of life. Obviously the attraction is so high that something has to be done real fast about it.

I am going to call the one with the broken relationship, a reboundee and the one in the rebound trap, the rebounded. Everything that the rebounded says seems perfectly right and every theory of theirs seems like the truth of the universe. The places they love are suddenly the only places on the map of the world, the food that they like is the only palatable food right now and suddenly the ex becomes the bad one.

The alarm bells have to start ringing when everything the ex did not do is right in front and is offered on a silver platter. Money becomes a cheap commodity and meeting the rebounded seems like the only priority ever. The world sees the reboundee as the broken one who can’t focus on work but in reality they are just too occupied with the new development in their love life.

Rose tinted glasses are exactly what the reboundee wears to see through this phase. Long chats, longer phone calls and the longest nights in life are characteristic of a rebound relationship. Plans for the future and the thought of meeting the parents seem less perturbing. It is almost suicidal to do any of those two things because those are the things that cement relationships. Naming kids, deciding marriage venues and making out like animals are all legally allowed elements of rebounds, but making love is not…especially if it’s the first time for either one of the two or both.

A typical rebound lasts around 3-6 months on an average unless the chemistry is just so fantastic that the dead love matters no more. At the end of the rebound relationship the rebounded feels used, cheap and wronged, while the reboundee is down trodden destroyed because of lack of confidence in relationships and guilt for losing track of the values and principles that were very well defined before the rebound.

On the brighter side, there is no moving on without this bad rebound phase! It is always better to rebound and get done with the sulking phase than linger in limbo and not let love take its course.

Knocking doors:

Somebody from my past walked back right into my life. I knocked his doors. No ego, no fear, no venom spewed in the first conversation that we had, though it has been 3.5 years since we even exchanged salutations! It ended years back because of someone who was very very important to me then. Life is weird. I regret some choices that I have made in the past!

I never realized that I had options around me. Options that I eliminated on practical grounds. How far has my self proclaimed practicality brought me? Nowhere! I am just a wounded, crippled and quietened soul. I let people trample all over me in the name of love and I let them choose my life for me. Today I know how wrong I was! I should have let love take it own course, irrespective of religion, age and practicality.

What was in front of me then I looked away from and today what I look up to has turned its back on me. I am still trying to pick up my pieces and make my life what I always wanted it to be. In the process I am also making myself who I always wanted to be.

The beautiful conversation that I had now left me speechless. Somethings just don't change. We picked up from where we had left it years back. A refreshing feeling indeed!! I am knocking doors around me,frantically trying to find things that comfort me...eternal peace is all want! Why is it so difficult? Bubbles keep breaking all around me. Are my dreams so unreal or is this the "destiny" I once befriended? Is this why people drink, smoke or smoke up? Do I want to know the answer?!!!