To all the drama queens... and kings...

Calm Down. If your heart was really broken, you’d be dead

Please, for God’s sake now, don’t start sending me mails saying I’m cynical or anti love etc. I’m as romantic as they come, but also try to be as practical. Mind you - both can co-exist. There’s a good reason why I keep telling you to not obsess about four letter words, especially this one - love. Because it is overrated, overused and you just don’t get over it.

If I get 700 mails in a week from you, at least 500 are about a broken heart. And no, not of the medical kinds. Had that been the case, I could have tied up with a hospital and made some money by referring you to them. You write about the emotional heartbreak. Can’t blame you, I too, was like this as a teenager, but uff, I’m seeing more and more drama queens these days. People just like to overdramatise everything - I will die without her, I don’t want to live anymore because he hasn’t replied to my text for six hours now. Arrey chhodo. Ab yehi reason reh gaya marne ke liye?

Please take the trouble of asking a senior... someone who managed to get his/her love and have lived with that person for 10-15 years. They’ll tell you how they clamour to get some peaceful moments, without the ‘love of their life’ lurking around, looking for a new reason to fight. Of course love exists in their case too, but the expression and intensity assume some semblance of maturity and sanity. Khair that’s not the point of discussion here. The topic today is that it is perfectly possible to be young, in love, go through heartbreak - and still not behave like a walking hormonal mess. Look here, into my eyes, and answer one question honestly and very seriously. “Kya aapke toothpaste mein namak hai?” Sorry, bad joke... and I even cracked it once earlier. Maarna mat, don’t answer any question. Just try to pay attention to these, if you’ve ever suffered from heartbreak, be it due to rejection of love or a nasty breakup.

1-No obsessive thoughts, please: Thinking about a person 24x7 is not healthy. Period. Be it a celebrity, the hottest one in the neighbourhood or a highly desirable colleague or classmate. An obsession with anyone never leads to a happy outcome. If you ever start to feel that you would die if a certain person wasn’t with you, slap yourself on the left cheek from my side and then think about this - Even when you did not know that person, you had a life. It involved your parents, your friends, and also a routine of going out, watching movies, reading books etc. To suddenly consider all of this inferior to thoughts about another person is so unfair. Because even if that person doesn’t exist in your life anymore, all of these still do. If a relationship has not worked out, it only means one thing. That someday, another will. Thoughts of cutting yourself from the whole world, killing yourself for someone etc are frankly, very uncool. While you are in love, live it as the most beautiful and healthy feeling, and give it your best. When you are out of love, look at all the other beautiful and healthy things in your life. Leave the obsession - and its expression to Hindi films.

2-Don’t seek too much advice: As a race, we love and specialise in advising others. When it comes to matters of heart, then toh we go overboard telling people what to do. May I please request you something... give your heartbreak the dignity of healing without making it the subject of someone else’s water cooler gossip. Don’t ask for advice from the whole world. Also don’t move around with Devdaas written all over you so that people start advising you even when you’ve not asked. Frankly, no one else lives your life for you. And its very easy for your friends to tell you how to get over grief and for people like me to write columns on what you should do. But it’s another thing for you to live through the experience of pain. Go through it quietly, and give it time. Do just what your mind tells you too. I would have said heart but woh toh toot gaya nah! Oops, bad joke again.

3-Everything ends: This will sound very weird (as though the rest of the writeup doesn’t), but the universal truth is that every relationship in this world ends. I’d once read somewhere that whether it comes through an untimely breakup, or a detachment of the mind, or ultimately death... but the end of any relationship is inevitable. And people still have to go on with their lives. Why not then, go on with it happily, till it lasts. Treat heartbreaks as temporary setbacks and signals that things didn’t work out only because something better is in store for you, or the other person. In both cases, the pain is worth it.

4-You are not alone: If it helps, do know that scientists who have nothing better to do have come up with studies that reveal that over 70% of people in this world experience heartbreak at some point or the other, in life. Over 40% are toota-dil veterans who undergo it more than once in life. That’s massive company you have. And still look at how the world’s population is bursting at its seams. The lesson: People may die of heart failure but no one dies of heartbreak. It just heals. No more drama. Just get over it and get yourself a life.

Via- Sonal Kalra
Hindustan Times.
Date- 7 sep 2014

Sex, lies and the threat of 'rape'

All of last week, we have been entranced by the TV appearances of a model/actress (face dutifully blacked out to preserve her anonymity) who claims that she was raped by BJP minister Sadananda Gowda’s son, Karthik. Her story is as follows.

She met Karthik in May 2014 and the two of them became close. He began courting her, and soon tied a mangalsutra around her neck with his driver acting as witness.

When she discovered she was pregnant and told Karthik, he told her not to blame him and stopped taking her calls. Then one day, she woke up to the news that Karthik had become engaged to another woman.

At this point in the narration, the model/actress breaks down and insists that all that she wants is to be accepted by Karthik as his wife, and by his parents as their daughter-in-law because she “cannot live without him”.

But this touching display is rather ruined by the TV ticker running underneath it, which informs us that she has filed a case of rape against Karthik, and that the police have registered a case against him.

As of this writing, Karthik has not been arrested, but by the time you read this, I would not be at all surprised if he was, indeed, behind bars, facing a charge of rape.

Rape? Seriously? By what definition is this rape? By her own account, the lady concedes that she was in a consensual sexual relationship and that she hoped to marry Karthik (or had married him in some sort of symbolic ceremony) and that even now, she would like to be accepted into the Gowda family as a daughter-in-law. So how does a consensual sexual relationship miraculously turn into rape just because the man in question has dumped her for another woman?

It can’t be sex when you think the guy will marry you; and rape when it becomes clear that he won’t. If, like many women, you equate sex with marriage, then for God’s sake, keep it off the table until you are married (and in a legally-binding ceremony, not some faux exchange of garlands or rings, or by the tying of a mangalsutra). And if you can’t do that, then take some responsibility for your decision instead of playing the victim and crying rape.

Not just because this is something we expect of grown-up women with minds, hearts and brains of their own but also because this propensity to cry rape when no rape has occurred is a slap in the face of every woman who has ever had to face real sexual violence in her life. Every time a woman levels such a frivolous charge of rape, it makes it that much more difficult for actual rape victims to be taken seriously.

And what of the men who have been falsely accused and besmirched in the court of public opinion in the process?

Remember the case of Hindi film director, Madhur Bhandarkar? A little-known actress lodged a complaint with the Versova police in 2004, alleging that the director had ‘raped’ her 16 times between 1999 and 2004 on the pretext of giving her a role in one of his forthcoming movies. There is a word (or words) that could describe the behaviour of an actress who sleeps with a film director in the hope of getting a role (hint: it does not begin with ‘r’).

But if you are sleeping with someone in the hope of profiting from the act, then the fact that you don’t actually profit doesn’t turn you into a victim, let alone a rape victim.

If you choose sex as a transactional tool to get ahead in the world then you have to be prepared for both good and bad outcomes. And if you end up with a bad case of ‘seller’s remorse’, that doesn’t mean that all your previous consensual sexual encounters must be re-categorised as ‘rape’. It simply does not work like that.

But even though this may seem self-evident which, looked at through the prism of common sense, it took Bhandarkar nine years to have the case closed.

The trial continued in the High Court even after the Mumbai Police filed a report that the case against Bhandarkar was ‘maliciously false’. It took a bench of the Supreme Court to quash the proceedings, noting that the actress no longer wanted to pursue the case and that the Mumbai Police report had exonerated him.

No doubt, the case against Karthik Gowda will also drag on in a similar manner, unless some sort of out-of-court compromise is affected. But these are just two high profile cases. There must be thousands of others in which men have been falsely accused of rape and have no option but to struggle through our complex and slow legal system to prove their innocence.

Which is why I feel that this is as good a time as any to codify all those instances when a rape is not a rape. Breaking up with a long-time boyfriend? No, your sex life cannot be re-categorised as rape. Sleeping with someone with a view to profit in some way? If you don’t succeed, the sex doesn’t turn into rape. The man you slept with refuses to marry you? Still not rape.

Each time we cry ‘rape’ when a relationship goes wrong, we insult the real victims of sexual violence. And in recasting our sexual experiences as something they are not, we let down our own sex.

Via- Seema Goswami

Hindustan Times
Date- 7-9-2014

http://www.hindustantimes.com/brunch/brunch-stories/sex-lies-and-the-threat-of-rape/article1-1260527.aspx