WHY RELATIONSHIPS?

Amongst many things that happen in a life, relationships are the most involving. Relationship invokes and involves all the five senses. It relieves or results in pain. It grows and sometimes grows out. It demands as much as it commands. It involves tears of joy & jolt and fears of loss & loath. Some are made to look good, while others are good but are not looked into. Let us look in.

One off my childhood learning still stays with me. “Bone broken, don’t walk, heart broken, don’t talk”. This advisory was from my cricket coach in class VI, with reference to what to do when one is hurt (physical hurt or ego hurt) while playing. But on second thought, do you think this works? I don’t. The ‘relationship web’ that we weave around ourselves is getting more and more dependent on five triggers: trust, time, talk, taste, and tribe. I call them triggers because they are the cause as well as the clause (part) of a relationship. And any relationship that manages to survive in absence of any of these is living as dangerously as the camp near a volcano.

The first set of relationship that we get inherited with at birth is our immediate family and relatives. Let us name them TRIBE relationships. “Family comes first” has been an old adage is still followed by most of the Indians. In this exponentially changing era it is becoming more and more difficult to keep this ‘tribal web’ intact. There are too many troubled father-son, brother-brother/sister, father-mother, uncle-nephew, cousin-cousin, father-son-in-law etc set of relationships that are either getting suffocating or are on the verge of destruction. Some are being carried off because they carry other relationships, while others are being carried for mutually selfish & ulterior motives. And there are still others that exist because living with them is little less harmful than leaving them. In the times when (phone) call rates are almost equal to zero, the rate at which you call up your family and say “kya haal hai” is also alarmingly close to zero. I can give you reams of examples of relationships that have not spoken a word in the last few years, even as they continue sharing their bathrooms, bedrooms and drawing rooms. But there’s no room for a TALK.

“Best relationship is when the silence between the individuals is comfortable.”

This brings me to the other trigger called TALK. While they say feelings are expressed more through eyes and emotions, what is of paramount need is, to keep exchanging more than a few words. I agree that there are times when you better shut-up and get on with it, but at the end of the life you better have regrets of what unnecessary you spoke than what necessary you didn’t. Ideally speaking the relationship should reach such a stage where the communication happens without a word being spoken or there’s no need to communicate as you develop absolute tacit mutual understanding & compassion. Just look at a new born baby and the mother. To me that’s the ultimate relationship. Because the only communication that they have is the baby’s cry and they both are comfortable only when there’s absolute silence. If ever you want to test your relationship, test it on this parameter, I promise you will never be disappointed. But let me re-emphasize again, talking is must to cultivate any relationship, while your eventual aim should be develop a comfortable silence.

TIME & TRUST are the two axis of relationship graph. You might need time to develop trust, but once the trust is there the relationship becomes timeless. There are people with whom you spent just a few moments (in a journey or at a function) and you trust them for a lifetime. And then there are people you have spent a life with but don’t trust them even for a moment. Like that maid of yours, who has been at your service for more than half of her age but you still reassure her each time that she is still just a maid. Or for that matter a friend of yours with whom you spent all your school life, but you told him of your ‘bigger’ problem, when he asked your help in a ’big’ problem. Alas! I know how rational the world and its ways are and it makes us so rational that even a movie that you know is your true story, you shrug it off saying, it is just an emotional melodrama, and “aisa real life mein nahi hota hai”. Stop cheating yourself. You are as emotional a person as the hero of that movie. You cried and realized, but never took an action by letting the other person (read: parents, cousins, friends or ex-boyfriend/girlfriend) how soft you are at heart, still. And how much you regret not giving your best to them. Wake up, what are you waiting for. TIME is running out, TRUST me!

And lastly, relationships are also made out of your personal choices, likes interests etc, say TASTE. Most of the relationship troubles are because you are concentrating on what’s missing in the other person, whereas however good or bad you feel about your relationship, the person you are with at this moment is the "right" person, because he or she is the mirror of who you are inside.

Finally to sign it off;

“Kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nahin milta, kahin zameen toh kahin aasmaan nahi milta.

Tere jahan mein aisa nahin ke pyar na ho, jahan umeed ho iski wahan nahi milta”