Of James Bond, Gandhigiri and an anniversary…

To a committed, working relation with my love (Read wife) of 10 years, I raise a toast to two incidents that happened this past weekend, both telling examples of how consummation of a relationship into “I Do” is a challenge for many men till date.

The first was James giving up everything to Bond with a girl. Hadn’t guessed Daniel Craig’s retirement would come at the expense of staying committed to one. But it was his horribly insipid chemistry with the stone-dead Léa Seydoux that actually undermined the whole shedding of his commitment-phobic-self climax. I seriously wished Eva Green could have swapped places with Léa and the dead Vesper Lynd could have been raised to run away with Craig. Remember that sparkling conversation between the two on the train in Craig’s first – Casino Royale – where Green as Vesper tells Bond: I’m the money. And he responds: Every penny of it. Alas!

Why bring in Bond? For those who didn’t get the drift, check out the price a man who has the license to kill pays in the climax of Spectre

.

The other was a casual stepping in of a former colleague in my office, all by chance, to hand over an invitation to a wedding. Her brother’s.

Here’s how the conversation went:

‘He is getting married after all,’ she blurted it out. Just like that.

‘After all?’ I asked. Just like that.

‘Oh yes! It’s a love marriage. He has been into Gandhigiri and stuff to pull it off,’ she settled my curiosity.

For those alien to Gandhigiri, it’s a verb that lobs Gandhi’s non-violent means of protest into the most mundane of chores to help register the pain with a self-consuming environment (Read: Family/colleagues/Nation/Hell/Whatever). Put in context, it could be receding into a shell (Like slamming the door loud for everyone to hear and engaging oneself in a good game of Lost Planet on the XBox); expressing oneself through extreme acts of self-abnegation (Like renouncing the dinner so that the poor dog with its salivating tongue can satiate its uncontrollable greed). In most cases, it could be the distancing of self from the family while staying with them (Which is actually a much better way of meditating than looking for healing with tantric massage or ritualistic fasting on select weekdays).

I suspected my colleague’s brother must have mind-twisted his family into admitting a girl who’s not of the same caste into their family.

So, what’s the deal? I ask.

“Hope he helps me out as well”, she said. Just like that.

After the 20-somethig lady left me in my uneasy company, I pondered long and hard over love marriage – an inconvenient truth in India where in most families it tends to trespass on the conventional, almost ritualistic, unwritten code of family getting to choose the companion of its own. I was drawn into my own world of un-sureties that haggled me almost 15 years back when we first started dating – My wife and I. We were in the University, final year. She was preparing to be a management graduate working up the corporate ladder. I was trying to come to terms that I, unlike most my friends, didn’t have a business to take over and kept convincing myself that I wouldn’t need to enroll into a 9-5 job.

She had stopped me, in a fit of rare temper, from joining a call centre as an executive, which was the first job that landed with me. I returned the favour by brainwashing her into entering the teaching profession (She was a gold medalist in economics) instead of a job that glosses over her exceptional credits. Over a decade into our career, she has ended up on the better side of the bargain, heading one of the best colleges as principal, while I find myself nitpicking over other people’s errors with the designation of an editor thrust on me.

So, how does it feel to disclose to your parents at this end of the world, that you have made THE choice!

My wife, who is the younger of two sisters, is the more gregarious of the two of us. She is the spunk and I am the sulk, as one of my closest pals likes to pinch it in every time I junk a get-together invite. Even for her, a darling of her parents, it wasn’t to be until her elder sister – married some ten years before her – broke the news to them when she was visiting Jaipur.

Now, what do you want me to do? I remember asking her. “Tell them,” she spoke of my parents. It was one of those times that I wished there was Maya (Not Magic as the word connotes), but the meteorite from Author C Clarke’s Hammer of God that would end the world without remorse!   

Now, dating is one thing and telling parents that she is the One and shall be moving in with you is just another. 

On my end, three of my school friends, came to my rescue. They turned the three musketeers’ fable on its head and officially stepped in as family proposing to my father-in-law, a retired government servant, that I wish to seek his daughter’s hand for marriage. I never accompanied them, wholly unsure which was worse – not telling my parents about it or facing my in-laws with the mocking proposition that I had stolen their daughter five years back and have only come to seek a formal handover now. 

The fortunate part for both me and Mahua was that while her 75-yr-old dad accepted the proposition from three lads 50 years his junior, my mother, who I later broke the news in confidence, casually said “I knew it all the while”.  

I don’t consider dates and days milestones for celebration, particularly when they are condescending on your graying hair, an afflicted spine and a beer belly. But this 10^th year of living together was just made sweeter by a carefree Bond infected by the commitment bug and also perhaps in the knowledge there are more like me committed to keep their promises made in infancy to their love even if it requires a prolonged emotional blackmailing of the family into deciding for self.  

I envy a suited-up Bond’s cockiness and sympathise with those indulging in mind-twisting their dear ones into allowing their free-will, but in the context of my matrimonial milestone, I find the Bond in my sister-in-law who for the sheer incredulity of it or plain excitement brought her parents to the table to break the news. Just like that.