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Questions Around Couples ...

“Palaces have a strange virus. They echo, quite maliciously, the unspoken word.”

The author of a book that recounts a unique relationship in an ancient tale in poetry format, that is highly evocative and passionate, questing and loving, acknowledged his wife in the writing of the long, long poem during long winter evenings.

Twenty years down the line, the same author lives up to his bureaucratic biases to bring out learned tomes, dry as dust on assorted suggestions for policy change.   There is no mention of the wife any more.  What does that hint of the relationship two decades on?

Couples, especially long lived ones, do evoke unspoken queries in our times with its rising sensitivity to man-woman relationships at all levels.  Question marks often surround senior couples seen in public parks and gatherings:

Is that eternally smiling grandma faking it?

Or that smirking hubbie?  That quick hug, was it for external consumption only?

An old couple raises the thought: Which face is more lined?  Is the old woman’s smooth cheek symptom of her never having held any reins in her hands or made any decisions of her own?    

See that Aunty there, she’s wife of a retired big wig, may be an IAS babu … that official style of dressing, everything matches. Her earrings not only match her purse but also husband’s pipe!

There’s her opposite.  Bindaas Buddhi with loud prints, skirt and horribly unfeminine but comfortable slippers, positively dressing down.  That one couldn’t care less how she looks. Why? There  can be many valid reasons …..

She may be beyond marriageable age and actually relieved that the hunt is over and the family off her back finally -- dress to please herself and her comfort, rather than prospective in laws.   Showing off the wrinkles and smiles with her eyes.
 
She may be genuinely bindaas, loves the freedom.  Or it could be a form of rebellion from the pressure of conform, to look good. For What ? to attract a male ? but she doesn’t want to attract any male. Can’t stand them? Or to spite?  That pressure from her man to “ look good, don’t make me ashamed in front of the others”… Few men want their women to stand out in the crowd.  They want that their women should look good. Bas. Other guys should envy but not pant after their women.   

Don’t  Women ever dress to please women and themselves?
 

More By  :  Kusum Choppra

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