Of Human Bondage

The formative stage in one’s life, experts say, is during the period of one’s adolescence. Some even go farther behind and state character and one’s idiosyncrasies are formed during the life period ensconced in the womb. 

I have known a couple of brats (formerly) in their toddler days and would be horrified at the thought of them coming home with their parents on their evening strolls. They were enfant terrible while awake and in sleep. Two score years have elapsed since and they are now perfect gentlemen; two charming young men and both in respectable positions in life certainly capable of enchanting any potential bride. And loving grateful sons to their parents!

I look back at myself and wonder if there has been any change in me as a person. The temperament and character I have possessed score and five years ago and what it is now. Being wed locked to a woman changed me, my foibles -my outlook, my temperament, my fear, my fads, my obsessions, my hypocrite shadow? Honestly a self-assessment is possible. But I fear that may be understood as conceited and infelicitous.

I feel that one cannot deny that a person with whom one has been associated in life day and night will not have extended his/her influence .Can we deny? The proportion and the depth of the tentacles of influence and ensnaring as we can call it vary from person. From trivial mundane matters to subjective things with deeper resonance, spouse can influence and again it varies from person to person.

The bloke who relished mutton and beef steak or hot spicy veal in Kerala masala suddenly confessed to his greener and vegetarian ways of gastronomic shift. He claimed that his physiological propensity to retain flab around the midriff and the fear of losing battle of the bulge made him forsake the most relished of all viand. The amusing fact was that his physical appearance had not changed an iota horizontally since the teen age while in college. The fact understandably was that after having married a Telugu Brahmin lady he found the going unpleasant with his gastronomic indulgence. He later said in passing his abstinence helped as his spouse was Brahmin. Call it sacrifice, relinquishing, pliability, adaptability and so on. Perhaps to some the latter is the way to extricate from the quagmire.

In a yet male dominated society, I guess that women are far more influenced or forced to adhere to changed ways and habits to suit the fantasies, fallacies and habits of their spouses- their idiosyncrasies in general. But men are pliable and do so to suit to the whims of their spouses. Survival, adaptability, ingenuity and sometimes helplessness ending with biting the bullet to avoid a bitter home! A bondage and bondage is – “subjection to external influences and internal negative thoughts and attitudes”.

Though there may be visible shifts in one’s character, attitude and other characteristics after the alter ego’s influence post wedlock, I guess no one is impervious to change ipso facto. There may be subtle change in one’s self, which may be conscious or otherwise. Some hit the bottle in worse case scenarios. Difficult to pity them but one can be amused.

I wonder what will be the general take on this matter. The cliched argument and supposed platonic statements such as, “give and take or quid pro quo is petty and doses not retain heart and soul.

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Le Philanderer

I often reminisces Ian Fleming’s fictional spy James Bond when I hear his fantastic experiences. But the contradiction is so glaring that except for the guile and prowess James Bond exhibited over beautiful women this man has nothing that will even palely compare him with the “Spy who loved me”!

He has a falsetto voice. And that is quite annoying. He sounds very churlish, seemingly too, but he is not rude or a moron. Still his knowledge and practice of social etiquette are abysmal. It often offends me and gives me a feeling of shame and stupid. His habits at the meal table are, be it in the office pantry or in a restaurant, devoid of customary decency. He chews like a bovine masticating and produces the grunt and chuckle of a hog hogging. People around turn and stare at him in disgust and irritation. He seems to be oblivious of the attention that he has gathered. Ignorant of the stares he goes on and then occasionally expels on to the table the chewed remains of a vegetable, a fish bone or meat. While then stares turn to frowns, but the man is unaware and unmoved.  

He has receding hairline and occasionally sports a wig, which in fact presents him with a more respectable appearance. His jowls are wide and his cheeks are puffed. He sports a moustache and is not forgetful of shaving the stubble each day. A five feet 8’ frame is liberally decorated with a prominent belly .The battle of the bulge seems to be a one sided affair. He looks about in the mid-forties and with the life style he follows it is a wonder why he does not appear older than he looks. He is just into the forty.

What is sometimes amusing and equally ragging is his penchant and obsession with sex. He has had countless one night stands. Sometimes the analysis and rewinding of his exploits are entertaining but again infelicitous and exasperating. Anything in excess is irritating! He throws quite a sum on women. The oddity is that he takes awful lot of care in spending on his telephone calls but has no restraint in spending tidy sum buying sex. His dictum is that at the end of his days those wonderful moments he spent with women is what would stay enlivening.

It is not polished ways or a distinct panache that he displays that often entices women, be it the ones who sell pleasure for money and the ones who like a flirt. But then, what else could be the juggernaut I do not understand. I’m astonished by a woman from Pakistan who is so obsessed with him. She is perhaps one of the most beautiful, charming and elegant looking I have ever seen. One day it was when I was sitting with him in his office and chatting, that she walked in like a prima donna. I was stunned by her debonair elegance. Tall at five feet and about eight, with wheat-ish complexion, slim and immensely attractive, she was dressed in stylish skirt and blouse. She spoke chaste Urdu, Hindi and accented English. She may be in her late twenties or very early thirties. A mother of two little children she displayed no signs of that. She was the wife of a very rich man and lived in opulence. 

He had told me about this lady whom he met and gotten friendly with. And that she was hounding him for a date. It left me wondering and unable to comprehend how a woman such as she can fall for a very unattractive looking man like he and who has no charm in manner or spoken language.

It was Oscar Wilde who said, “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” But then our contender is neither.

Dandelion

Gods have been pretty unhelpful to me. Well, I cannot blame them either, for why must they come to the aid of an atheist, a sceptical fellow? So always my opportunistic supplications and gentle enquiries if Gods would care to help were not heeded. 

But, yet I did not lose hope while boarding a train, a long distance bus or a plane, and then while waiting for a passenger to occupy the adjacent seat. 

So the journeys were always braved with a miserable co- passenger next to me in the form of a sweat reeking middle aged woman, or a grumpy old man, or an insipid middle aged stranger who probably thought that my sitting next to him was a nuisance. I would then weather the journey with an equally grumpy face, and often mostly feigning sleep or fighting with a book.

Once the Gods smiled upon me or even erred in their resolution thence far. I saw a very attractive woman in the attire of a flight stewardess joining me in the queue at the arrival hall immigration clearance in New Delhi airport. She was wearing a Lufthansa cabin crew uniform. She was extremely beautiful, tall, wheat complexioned and elegant that it was quite difficult to often not glance admiringly at her. The jet lag and sleepy eyelids after the long haul flight was overcome in no time. I discreetly (I thought) watched her throwing occasional glances through the corner of my eye. But alas, once outside the terminal, I lost her and I made my way to check in for the night at a hotel. 

The next morning on the flight to Coimbatore, I was seated in the seat 1-C, which was an aisle seat.  I preferred aisle seats, as they are comfortable - one can move about at will! As usual I tried to implore the Gods, gently reminding them there were two vacant seats next to me and perhaps they can let by indifferences towards them as simply matter of delinquency and dispense some favour? For once , as I mentioned they seemed to have relented and a very beautiful  young woman walked in and smiled before she asked in sweet lark voice if I would mind her occupying the seat 1-A? I was bewildered and like someone somnambulating, took her bag from her and kept in the overhead loft before making way for her to be seated. The three hour journey down south saw me in close conversation with her. It was she who let the ball rolling by opening herself. She told me that she was an airhostess with Lufthansa. I told her I did meet a girl who was on the flight from Amsterdam and she was a passenger but in the Lufthansa attire. She laughed and told me it was she who was the one. I had failed to recognise her in jeans and tee!

As it turned out she was the daughter of a business man from Kothagiri and she was going home to her father’s Tea estate on a short vacation. When we alighted at Coimbatore, I suggested that she meet my spouse, who would be there to pick me. The elation of the fantasy flight was rather blunted a wee bit when I sensed that my spouse was not too keen to appreciate my new found jet-setting friendship and rather indifferent and noncommittal when the girl invited us to her estate. I let the piece of paper on which I noted her telephone number fly out like a dandelion through the car window while we drove home.

It was once on a KLM flight out of Delhi to Amsterdam. With the flying miles I acquired, I could upgrade to the Business class. As I took my seat in the two abreast business class, I wondered who would be joining me in the seat next. Thence upon came a lady who looked most likely to be in her mid-forties, dressed in elegant sari and a pashmina shawl lazily thrown on her shoulder. She was to be my co- passenger. She looked sophisticated and classy. And indeed she was. She was an undersecretary in the ministry of commerce and she was going to the European parliament in Brussels for a meeting. We spoke about issues in Textiles that were vital to India and she narrated how vested lobbies were derailing every effort by the government; how the EU and the US saw with some apprehension the rise of the BRIC nations.

We chatted late into the night and I noticed that she was quite a person with liberal indulgence in matters of exquisite spirits and she may have washed down more wine and champagne than I.  When she knew that I was from Kerala, she told me that she was often in Kerala. I asked her if she hailed from there. She did not reply to that, but her knowledge of even some cities and their roads gave me a feeling that she was a Keralite, but was rather not keen to neither admit to me nor reveal her surname which would have told more. I felt some reticence in her.

It was sometime well into the flight when I woke up to find that someone was holding tight around my arms and cosy up against me. Through sleepy eyes I got startled a bit as it was this lady who had coiled up in her seat and leaned on my shoulders, her head resting on my chest, with her arms holding around mine, blankets thrown over our torsos and limbs. She was in deep sleep. My senses were awakened and to me the startling transformed to awkwardness and later to amusement. I let her sleep undisturbed. 

When the stewardess woke me up for the early mor