Seven Shades of Grey

by Vivek Mehra

  In fact when I come home from a long drive she has a tub of hot water ready for me. I have a problem with my left foot. If I drive or jog then the foot hurts at the ankle. She bathes the foot and wraps it up to soothe the pain. Does she need to do it? NO. Do I demand that she do this? NO.

  So why does she do it? U figure it out.

  One of her most endearing qualities is that she knows how to get her way with me by never confronting an issue. She loves me from the bottom of her heart but also knows that when I am firm on a situation I stay that way. That in no way means I am a tyrant. I am not. So what is the moral of this story?

  Instead of arguing with your hubby try this with him. If you are upset about something count to 10 and if that does not help count to 100. I know you love him, you have told me this a thousand times. If he cannot show it to you (he is the shy type, unlike me ... lol) why don’t you? The man loves you too and I will give you proof of it later. Give him a break, please. If he wants to chat on the Net let him. If you don’t want to, you stop chatting but let him. AND DON’T YOU EVER RUB HIS NOSE by saying ‘you chat on the Net but I have stopped.’ Discover the pleasure of giving pleasure to people instead of asking them to change for you. Let’s face it ‘MEN MARRY WOMEN, HOPING THEY WILL NOT CHANGE (they do). BUT WOMEN MARRY MEN HOPING THEY WILL CHANGE (they don’t).’

  No matter how loud you scream that this is not true, face it dear, it is. Your hubby is not any different I am sure. He is not abusive to you and he is a good father to his kids. He is also a really (and I mean this from the bottom of my heart) great husband. He works his butt off (I am sure) to provide for the family and you do more than your bit too. So why do you two have this Internet thing coming between you? The nicest thing you can do to a man is to let him have his space and let him do his thing. Overbearing women will not get the love and affection from the heart that those who really sacrifice for their husbands do. Let me tell you, husbands are not blind at all. They know when their wives are really bending backwards for them, like you do. He will make it up to you in his own way. Every man is a hopeless romantic at heart. Some like me have discovered it early in life and have had their hearts torn open and crushed by women. Others like your hubby would like to play it safe. Sometimes the woman misunderstands this ‘play safe’ attitude and she complains that the man is not romantic at all. NOT TRUE.

  I’m not trying to give you a sermon. Hey you are older than I am (lol). But what I am trying to say here is, love that man, I know you do. But love him for all his flaws and all of him. If he is not a romantic, you be the one. If he does not spend time with you, you spend time with him in whatever he does. If he wants to watch television, sit next to him and hold his hand. If he wants to make love, do it with all your heart. If you want him to be the same to you, first you be the way you want him to be. He will get the message and in time will tune himself to you. Men are weird in this respect.

  They are emotional but won’t shed tears. They may be romantics but would show it to a girlfriend and may ignore the wife. But in their heart of hearts, they love the woman who bore them children. They love the women who tenderly embrace them and comfort them every night.

  Let me tell you, Reshma, I don’t think you could have found a better man even if you would have scoured the earth hunting for one. I got the measure of the man when I called up. After he was through talking to me, he could have put down the phone and said goodbye to me. But NO, he called you and handed the phone over to you. That little gesture may have escaped you but it did not escape me. That man loves you. There are no two ways about that. I don’t think anything in the world, the Internet, the chatting or even Marilyn Monroe could take that away from him. And you have to be one of the lucky few women in the world to have found it.

  So give him his little elbow space. In fact if you think you can rise above all of this, connect to the Internet this Saturday night and ask your hubby to chat. Don’t get angry if he taunts you because the ‘new you’ may not be understood by him so soon. Smile at him and tell him that it is OK to chat as long as he wants to and that you would wait for him in bed till he got back. DON’T FALL ASLEEP; wait for him till he gets back, no matter how long it takes. When he does get back, hug him and sleep in his arms. If you think you can do that then I will know that you are truly the person you say you are.

  One other thing. If you don’t feel I am right, DON’T DO IT. Be yourself but I will say this much, there will not be a soul on this earth more sorry than I because you would not have understood love at all. Love is not about sharing, it is all about giving. You say you love him, so give him even your peace of mind. Are you up to doing that?

  If this letter of mine has touched a chord somewhere, tonight make the wildest love to that man. You are really lucky. You are my friend and that is why I am not here to tell you how wonderful you are. That is for you to know and others to find out. Be like the SUN, when it rises the whole world knows. The sun does not care what the world thinks about it. It just does its duty: it shines all day. Some worship the sun others think it is a curse because it gets too hot. But does it make any difference to the SUN? No it does not.

  I am sorry if I have bored you. If you don’t agree with me here, read the letter again, from the beginning. It might sink in a little later.

  Only my best wishes for you,

  And a whole lot of love,

  Vikram

  The answer to the email came two days later to demonstrate the trust, love and affection that Reshma had for me. I did spend two anxious days waiting for it but knew that I had to give them time to resolve the problem in their own way. And they sure did it in style!

  Dear Vikram,

  I have received a precious gift from my friend. I will preserve this gift with me till the end of my life. This gift is nothing else but a beautiful mail from my friend Vik. I don’t find appropriate enough words to thank you for this Vik.

  Fortunately (smiles!) I have understood each word of your mail and so without jumping to conclusions send this reply to you.

  This letter of yours is in a way an eye-opener for me and I agree to almost all that you have said to me except one thing, which I will brief you in the last para of my mail. I will try to improve myself in every manner, I promise. I will try my best to be like the SUN. How successful can I be and in how much time – I can’t say. But I will keep going on the path, anyway!

  Now here are my views where I differ with you due to circumstances - I refer to a para in your mail that begins ‘I am not negating the role of a woman...’

  Had it been us living in a city like Bombay where traveling time is too much, I would have preferred to remain as a housewife. Till I met Sanjay, I also had the usual dream about my life as all girls of that age do - to get married, have family and live happily. When I met Sanjay, and we decided to marry, his first and last condition for his wife was that she should be a working woman. That time I didn’t know what problems being a working woman would entail. He knew that very well even at that age because his mother was a principal of a university and his sister was also working in the teaching line. With this condition, he was willing to give any kind of support to his wife to be a successful working woman. So I agreed to his condition. My mother was also a housewife as my father never wanted her to be working outside but he gave his daughters the freedom to decide about that on their own. Even then I only started working after 6 years of our marriage when our 2nd son was a year old.

  Sanjay did give all kind of support to me for going ahead in my line. He has his own established business that he has built all by himself. So money was not the criteria behind this condition. (His view about this I will tell you some other time.) I started as an assistant to the chairman of this company 7 years ago. Gradually I was given an additional responsibility of overseas marketing and was promoted as a manager. Today I am working as an employee to my company and also have a deal with the Co working as an independent exporter. This was just impossible for me without Sanjay’s support.
He does the traveling part for our exports and I do the entire follow up of it. This has become an expansion of his business and a milestone in my career. We had never thought we would be doing this kind of a deal with our Co but things were going smoothly and happening without any problems. So to quit for any reason from this would have not been a wise decision for us and the company as well.

  Sanjay has helped me in every aspect to get me going ahead. In fact, he was happier than I was when I was promoted as a manager!

  Though you have not commented about my being a working woman, this is just to brief you about our different views in this matter - yours are your own views and mine are due to circumstances as I have mentioned earlier.

  Handling all these fronts, I have become a strong believer that THE QUALITY OF TIME IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE QUANTITY OF TIME you spend at home. And you have given me a perfect idea how to go about it as far as Sanjay is concerned. Thanx.

  Just to tell you ... you said when I am upset start counting numbers ... well we already have adopted one method. Our argument started with the Internet and will now only get resolved through the Internet. Yes, when we are upset we write mails to each other and get a reply by the evening, resolve it and then go to bed ... LOL ... Isn’t this also a better way?

  I always felt I am one of the fortunate women who have a caring husband, a loving family and good friends around me. Today I can say I am one of the MOST fortunate ones to have got a friend and that is the one and the only one MY Vikram!

  Love

  Reshma

  I read the email thrilled that things had worked out for them, happier still that their faith in each other had helped them resolve a silly dispute. But most of all I was happy that they believed in the love they possessed.

  *

  Even today, in this waiting room, alone, I can’t help but contrast the two, and yet how similar are Marilyn and Reshma: one from the West who fits into an Eastern mold and one from the East molded like the West. Appearances are consistently deceptive, perception trying hard to fit all and sundry into definable molds - East and West, rich and poor, happy and sad, black and white - forgetting that in reality we are like the colors of a rainbow viewed in black and white; just Seven Shades of Grey.

  8. Insanity - Dark Grey

  To understand the definition of white, one has to understand that which is black; to know what light is, darkness has to be fathomed. A blind man knows just one color, black, knows nothing about light because he lives only in darkness.

  My temporary prison sentence has yet to be completed. Try as I may, my mind still wanders to that part of my life when I had gained it all and then lost it all. I have tried desperately to block it out of my mind, unsuccessful at times. The news of Dolly’s pregnancy, the astonishment, the subsequent doctor visits and her growing stomach had ensured that my mind was gainfully employed, but this solitude brings it all back. It is MAA’s will I guess; everything that ever happened is her will. I have to confront insanity just one last time, to exorcise the spirit that lingers in the back of my mind. To understand the insanity that engulfed me I must comprehend that which my mind understands as sanity.

  *

  The entire tryst with the Internet and subsequently the friends I made there brought down tension levels inside me. My mind lost a lot of its anxiety and tranquility enveloped me. Dolly too was more relaxed than she had been for the last couple of years. When I played Solitary Man last year when Dolly was away, there were changes taking place at home and at work, two changes defining Sanity.

  Normally when I was at home alone I would spend aggrandized time gawking at the idiot box, reading and meditation pushed onto the back burner. But last year this had dramatically changed. The brief brush with occult forces triggered by the discovery of powers that lay inside me and by the faith demonstrated by Dolly found me steering towards reading and meditation once again. And it was a chain reaction; suddenly a sea of tranquility gently swirled around me - more than ever before. The tensions of day-to-day living did not leave me all together but definitely became more bearable.

  The knowledge I acquired brought a deeper appreciation of meditation, the peacefulness helping me focus on the one that I loved and worshipped, MAA Kali, affectionately known as MAA. There were times I would spend an hour or more deep in meditation, lost in her glory. To understand my meditation I had to understand MAA. It was a book in English acquired a while ago that made me understand the symbolic representation of the picture that I worshipped.

  MAA is always depicted as a naked woman, black skinned. Kala means darkness and Kali the one that takes this darkness away. Just as all colors of the spectrum mix into black and yet black remains unchanged, so too Kali, who is pictured as a dark woman, takes away all the darkness and yet remains unchanged.

  She removes mental conflict, egotistical attachment making a garland of man’s perplexity, symbolized by the garland of heads she wears around her neck. Though naked as all humans are at birth, she is also shown to wear all karmas as her ornaments, stopping chattering voices of an active mind, allowing her devotees to experience the purity of inner peace in the absorption of solitude. The most striking feature is a long red tongue protruding from her mouth, limply hanging in mid air. The tongue is smeared in blood. Her eyes too are large and blaze with an ethereal fire. Similarly all other physical depictions are symbolic of Mother Nature and those that I understood as I delved deeper into her form. She is worshipped with many names each having a symbolic representation of human desire and She the remover of each one of them.

  It is known that humans have a similar genetic code and in India it is believed that each is born with an individual and distinct karmic code. It is this karma that determines the type of birth we take – rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief - free-will determining the kind of life we eventually lead. Similarly it is believed that diverse karma determines what kind of religious or spiritual path one follows.

  The more I read the more I understood the path that was destined for me. It was up to my freewill to decide to tread on it or shun it. And tread I did.

  With serenity that enveloped me at home change took place at work too. The target of cracking and recreating the formula in my lab seemed closer than it had been before. I worked at it diligently and every step brought me closer to the mother lode.

  My friends on the net ensured that I had someone to talk to, someone to flirt with and someone who made me feel wanted, every day. It was but natural that communication with Dolly was restricted as she had no access to the Net and phone calls were expensive.

  This contentment and tranquility at home and work could be the closest my mind could come to defining sanity.

  There was another positive fall out, the return of poetry in my life. When in school I had been fascinated by the way words flowed in a poem and by college I was making attempts at creating some of my own. It was never to win awards nor to appreciate the language, the impetus always a pretty lass. I had discovered how weak-kneed women got every time a poem was written to woo them. And my feeble attempts were always better than the lack of any from competing males.

  But my poetry was jinxed; every woman that I ever wooed with my poems left me. It was never crass words or dumb thoughts making a reader take flight. In fact the reverse was always true, the poems having their desired effect leading to romantic evenings, moonlight walks and droopy love-filled eyes. Then some obscure event or a series of events would change all of this and a breakup would ensue. The long and short of it was that I would lose the woman I thought I loved, the one who loved my poetry.

  In Dolly I had the perfect mate and one who had amply demonstrated a lack of sufficient will to ever leave me. And in one of those quiet evenings, body far from her, my heart pining, tranquility encompassing me, when sanity gave life to my soul, words flowed. The next day it was on its way to the one who deserved it, the one I did not need to woo, the one who lived in my heart, the one who was a part of me.

  Her phone call
came immediately after she received it, voice quivering, thanking me, astonished that I had kept this talent hidden from her. I still remember it verbatim…

  Ode to My Wife

  When you are not here with me,

  I realize how much I miss you.

  The more I think about it,

  The more I want to kiss you.

  When you are not here with me,

  I miss your warm body next to mine

  Every night when

  The moon and the stars shine.

  When you are not here with me,

  I miss your smile,

  The special one you reserve for me

  After I have traveled many a mile.

  When you are not here with me,

  I miss your hug,

  The one you give me

  Every time my tired shoulders shrug.

  When you are not here with me,

  I miss making love;

  The warmth, the passion, the tender words

  Caress me gently as a dove.

  When you are not here with me,

  Your words in my ears do fly;

  The way you say ‘I love you’

  Makes my twinkling eyes cry.

  When you are not here with me,

  I miss you so much.

  But then I know that you are in my heart

  Where I hope to keep you: till death us do part.

  Nature itself provides ample proof that for a major event to take place critical mass has to be achieved, be it a nuclear plant going online, be it rain falling from the skies, or be it achieving Nirvana. There has to be an event or a series of events that act as a trigger or a series of triggers to achieve the ultimate. And at the same time when critical mass is achieved a hundred things could go wrong - a nuclear plant could become a nuclear disaster, rainfall could become a storm and on the path to Nirvana a brain could short-circuit. This was exactly what was destined to happen to me.