Duty vs Love?

I had shelved this topic to be written for when I have time. And I do have time now.

In "The Affair" there is a powerful dialogue Helen tells her mother - "all my life, I have listened to you. And you have spoken and spoken till all that you say was drilled inside and your voice was all that I heard while the rest drowned."



The line reverberated in my head like a cranial echo - it brought back all memories that lie dormant. Sometimes, pushed away - locked into deep recesses of the brain where even I cannot recall. But that forced me to.

Looking back I would not call my childhood particularly happy. It was a very functional childhood with functional parents. The term fun in functional seems quite a rhetoric.


If you ask my parents they'll tell they've given me everything. That in itself is a statement that places the parent child relationship on the pedestal of a barter exchange. It was a comfortable life - devoid of meaning.

Its true we do remember or see reality as we wish too. Our narratives of the past seems lacquered with assumptions, own emotional filters of judgment and our own sensory evaluation of what had happened vs how we felt about it.


I have always found both my parents out of sync with each other and thereby me. My mother has always struck me as high-strung - I found her faltering me for any thing I did or felt. Every opinion I expressed was seen as "boka boka" - Bengali for dumb. It led to 2 things - it dumbed me down to mute where I preferred silence as my friend and it also dumbed me down to stupid.  It killed my self confidence - I started seeking validation from others. Many a times, she had let known her latent or innate need for a son. She may have been wanting to secure her future with a son whom she felt would stand by her. Instead I was a storm.


I am everything my father never wanted in his daughter - by design, choice and voice. My hair was rarely oiled and tied back, I spoke English as my mother tongue that seemed alienating to him, I did not like singing or dancing the way Bengali kids do or basically intrinsically never liked anything about my origin led identity. An ego blow for sure.


I don't ever remember a time when he and I spent together - no walks, no talks, no memorable moments. Instead everytime we were together, my mother decided to pounce in on our space - probably dying of FOMO. Or, my father never had the time.


I found a deep negativity in my house - seeped into the walls. Most moments, I found uneven war of words going back and forth with my mother spewing out  venomous  language at every opportunity. I tried reasoning - was it age, flagging energy, helplessness of her fate or simply the powerless insecurity of someone who could not change her own narrative. I found me and my father mostly shut away in our rooms - which served as fish bowls or islands.


It suffocated and made breathing difficult. It extinguished the meaning of a "home". I remember in college  (with a little more freedom compared to school) I started coming back home later and later - had no wish to return back to a somber place. I was an innately happy child - needed a happy place full of sunshine. Instead the drapes were grey.


I started entering into relationships with boys back then - to only get a sense of a "home" or a family. I started planting myself as an unwanted seed in their houses - absorbing their dynamics with their parents and insinuating myself for such similar simulated rapports. I literally tried adopting families.


The only thing I dreamt of was to escape and how to escape. I made no definite route for a career - my only goal was to leave. Which thereby affected my career. Today I realize my own folly in handling my life - but there was a reason. I had to run.


A child needs emotional support. Different children have different needs - its upto parents to understand the child. Children are born with old souls or new souls. Mine perhaps was an old one - that needed a deep emotional connect. Instead I was shown dilution.


I had realized early on I was different - not from where I was born at. I had known the presence of a Higher Self - unaware of the existence of the term - and it always make me feel an anomaly.


Today, I realize, being an anomaly is no crime. My parents always made me feel otherwise and them victimized.


As kids, good and able parentage was defined by the child's obedience. Child's success at school always equaled a parent's hard labor. Set rules to be followed, set practice codes to be rigidly adhered to and preset expectations always acting as the fulcrum of life and its many shades.


Parents lived by a performance. Parentage a theatrical role lived, conversations recited across generations and the gaps mainly blamed on the emergence of deviance.


Parents of earlier generation  - my own parents' generation - focused on the trophies a child would bring home. Their social currency was equal to the respect a child bestowed on them in society via their own achievements. Pride was mainly materialistic - setting in motion the materialistic parlance of the give and take relative to love.


In "The Affair" Vik's parents are apathetic to him being a man with his own mind. They are regardless of his choices in life and lived in denial. Vik, an Indian immigrant in USA, is shown to have lived his life with the mission of making his parents happy - in the end, all he got was no word of love or affection instead a duty led responsibility on either side.




What I have realized sans empathy in the formative years and later on, the basic foundation of adulthood is shallow and shaky. Parents have an enormous task of creating a good human being - not just a "nice person". A nice person may just follow social prescriptions - a good person may be led by intentions but may also choose to decide on his own.


Is it a collaborative society like ours that merely teaches submission and obedience as pillars of love? Is love not about candid expressions, free spirit and passion - where did that go amiss. Is a collaborative society too controlling as a corollary?


Going back to Vik's story, there were uncanny parallels to mine.I come from an abusive household where domestic abuse was rampant. My childhood is marred by screams, shouts and fights between family members. The trauma still lives on - today if anyone shouts or even strikes out, it immediately leads to a "fight or flight response"


It impacted my academics. I remember freezing for an hour almost during my class 10 boards as I could not get past the horrifics of the night before.


It impacted my own relations. Maybe bred in too deep an insecurity and a fear of being too close to anyone - I don't want the same outcome.


It made me question definition of a man. And a father. Till date I have found none.


What irked me was my family's unique ability to brush it all under the carpet and carry on unfettered. I tried seeking justice - instead was ostracized.

Even today, the objectification carries over to future mile stones. Talks of marriage is mainly equated with a social stamp - feeding the faceless and formless relatives who pop in the picture as levers of social sanction. Its as if parents seek permission from them to celebrate or simply be happy. Which brings me to my other question - is happiness society led for them? How are they happy? What are the constituents of happiness for them? How is it that the very definition of happiness has evolved for me to only be individualistic or privacy dominated?

Templation runs in our society - its footprints in all households. There is no celebration of fairness, love and ownership of one's actions. Instead Indians (most of them) may choose an Ostrich akin lifestyle - head burrowed, eyes blinkered.


As I introspect, I find my inability to love my parents, not my fault. I do care - mainly duty led. But I do not love them. There is no positive memory structure to inspire the softer emotions. We are always taught that not to love our parents is a sin. Maybe its time to rethink. Maybe its time to really tell the true feelings. There can be co-existence without love. Maybe its also time to absolve ourselves of the wrong notions of bond - we must learn to differentiate between love, duty, responsibility and care - and distill actions to emotions.


A sensitive child like me needed strong hands to hold - not wrong hands to lead astray.

The grown up in  me now celebrated the child that I was and am - perhaps now trying to retrace back to the childhood memories and be the parent that I never had.

Right or Wrong? Left or Right?

I write a lot many reviews and I strongly feel Netflix should pay me my dues. Jokes apart, Netflix content does spark up my imagination and thought buds. Recently, is the series called "The Affair"

I started watching relapsing back to my Experiencing Self with the purpose of binge-watching through yet another series. I treat seasons as pop-corn.



 Instead I came across a very intense series that was extremely thought provocative. Initially I felt it could be another plan Jane series - The nomenclature was quite denotative. Ironically, while it did lay out the foundation of the plot premise, it did open my eyes to layers of emotions, reasons, treason and basically human behavior.

Let's hit the bull's eye first when we discuss the core plot - The Affair.
Man meets Woman - both realize their latent loneliness, fall in love, leave their partners and start their own chapter. There are falls, follies and firsts - each with its multiple versions and metaphors.

However, what struck me was the core need to "stray". In our society we condemn any man or woman being an infidel. We brand, we label and we discriminate. We charge, rant and discharge - venom spewing forth hotly and brightly in its ugly green shade. 

But do we ever stop to wonder why this may happen or look in the mirror at our own selves? We all have been through relationships - some broken, some mended and some pushed to Neverland. Yet through the  scars and smiles do we remember the lesson of the miles walked - solitary or hand in hand? 

We may enter marriage - a binary contract - never to fade. Never to break the bond or walk away - no-one starts out with the intent of having to end it. While every end is bitter, it also is a passage to a new story that one must open the chapter to. However, purpose of a strong relationship is never to walk on broken glass pieces or pay the price for it either.


The partners we chose, whom we loved once, we fell out of it. Maybe, it was a wrong choice - you fell in love with an image in your head. After all, love is about projection - you project the desired "buttons" and you got your prey. You may have fallen in love with a dimension of self within that passage of life - the partner portraying the self you would have liked to become then - the dreams you had behind your mind's eye, your partner may have lived them and hence it was a borrowed presence.


When we fall out of love, is it really falling out of or simply waking up to realizing what you don't need in your life anymore. Maybe that sense of self has passed replaced by an evolved dream and hence an evolved need? Maybe, the imagery has been shattered by the shackles the partner's person-hood imposed? Maybe its about realizing what drags your drivers - what deters your evolution.


Contrary to many agape, at the sound of a breaking relationship, I am not averse to those who choose to walk away. After all, life is about multiple experiences and realizations and each has its own time.  I am not averse to another who has "strayed" - behind every action point is an ocean of reflections, of latent needs, feelings unexpressed and cravings unsaid. Your mind or conscience decides much ahead your body demands the action point. Your Higher Self knows the inevitable.


There is an intrinsic need for all to feel pampered and special in a relationship. Many a times the initial fire mellows down to a more caring phase.


As I thought about it deeply, drawing patterns and parallels to my own life, I realized the paradigm of relationships is much in line with our own inherent biological natures that have long remain unchanged. Our untamed emotions soon get the better of us - become our Higher Selves. Emotions may have roots in collective consciousness.


Biologically speaking women are nurturers and men are producers. That carries on to the gendered roles and expectations at household too. Coupled with modern life stress, women seem to balance multiple dimensions of success, lust, love, sexiness and nurturance. Many a times, all roles boil down to a pulpy mess of "care and nurturance" which is intrinsic. I say this for most women - not all. There are many of us who can balance all roles evenly and I salute such fabulous ladies. However, nurturance as a role, is a comfort zone - care deemed to be emotional becomes quite functional - a chore , task and a job to do.


Therein starts the fault lines of a relationship. When passion is replaced by care.


Of course, it is not only women's faults. Men remain the human pups they were born to be - many a times, men shackled by the societal dogmatic roles forced on them crave for one space to be treated as puppies. Women on the other hand, may want men to act like men - however, men want that woman, who treats them with the love, devotion and pamper - as how a dog mother would with her own pup.


What I realized is that men are good at compartmentalizing emotions + roles - for his mom he has a set of practices to follow and a self to be - likewise at office, with friends and with kids etc. With his partner maybe, he just wants to be - not a man, maybe a boy. Its when the partner starts expecting the man instead of a boy that the pressure cooker starts boiling. Men cannot reconcile that difference and slowly slip into duty mode. For the woman, care is not a duty. Care engulfs all their emotions at a centrifugal force which leaves them feeling spent. But for men, care is a duty - their need from partner is different.

Sarah Tree, EP of the series says - "One of the lines in the book that I put on the top of our white board in the writers' room [was] something like, 'Oftentimes people don't have affairs because they're unhappy with their spouses, they have affairs because they're unhappy with themselves. That's kind of the operating principle that we were using to rationalize the affair. It was never supposed to be anybody's fault. It was supposed to be about a man who just wasn't where he thought he was going to be at this point in his life."

I have known of women leaving their very macho and uber masculine men to be with men who are sensitive and deep. Women may crave for connect at a very deep emotional level to completely open up - blossom. Many a times, unknowing of alternatives, women succumb to a "dad's version of a man in their lives" - maybe later they realize their own independent need for the type of partner who'll "feel" them.


It is this feeling to feel special, craving for attention and synchronicity of maturity levels that finally leads one to "stray" - man or woman. Now, there is no difference as core need maybe the same. It is also a need to reinstate one's identity in one's eyes - be a success in one's own eyes that necessitates the change of partner : as you no longer feel appreciated by him /her. You look for your value in another's eyes.


This post is not a celebration of celibacy / infidelity/ commitment - its a highlighter of a new normal where walking out of a suffocating relationship that does not bring you up to your best version. After all every end is a new beginning. And in The Affair - there are always 2 stories flowing in tandem : everyone has their own version. Blame game is never the solution - its acceptance and understanding of the transient need states of every evolving human in any relationship. Question is - can your relationship keep pace with you?

The Rewarding Self

I had read somewhere of an interesting theory that struck a chord with me. In fact even aligned with a discussion I had a peer soon after. Our observations were in the line of how humans were constantly becoming dumber. It is true, when you think about it.



One of my personal hypothesis is that the Phone definitely makes you dumber. So, you might be using a smart phone but with its you are getting dumber. One coerced pathway your phone is making you dumber is by rooting you to the present moment - the Now.

Living the Now by your Phone is a double edged sword :

1) The most obvious is the positive side of it : living in the moment. With YOLO being a narrative of life today and the multiple videos of quitting jobs and traveling the world floating about - we make ourselves believe that planning for tomorrow or future proofing a life strategy is an old man's game. The young live now. And life should be made as experential and memorable as it can be. Hence the greater push for an "EMI" lifestyle.


2) You're constantly fame hungry. The photos you upload on Insta / FB / SC, the videos you shoot to tell your tale or the comments you make / statuses you write : you are hungry and searching for acknowledgements. You wonder if you are a recall factor - what others think about you NOW, how you appear NOW, are you cool / hot NOW - the NOW factor is a constant fight - a friction point that robs you of an action point with a positive outcome of living in the moment or simply feeling the life in a moment.

Being forced to live in the now makes you less imaginative, less creative, less focused and less proactive. In fact you may become less reactive to situations around you. Maybe less empathetic to others and play multiple roles which earlier you could, because you no longer are capable of finding that moment for yourself - that space of time to think for self and for others. To feel and to be at one with the events pertaining to that moment. Instead, you're glued to the screen - looking out for a sign of life in the digital albeit faceless world, where you en-cash all your needs of connect, affiliation and esteem.

The less time we spend to think, the lesser are the times, do we feel intelligent. We mayhaps become thick skinned too, along the way.


It makes sense when you now link it to the theory I started telling you about - its called "The Experiencing Self vs Remembering Self vs Rewarding Self" by Linda Graham, who had taken it from Kahneman's theory earlier (Thinking Fast Thinking Slow)



 The 3 sides of self - 

Experiencing self - mainly in leisure space. For instance, watching movies / playing on PS4 or chatting on phone. In many ways this space of self is termed as "spare time" - rather it is a time marked with minimal  thought level or the capacity of reasoning and even degree of enjoyment is passive, The self is mainly in an absorbing mode - more like a sponge.

Remembering self - living in memories or rationalizing current circumstances / events via positive or negative memory structures. This earmarks higher cognitive activity linked strongly to emotions and their roots in behavior science. The self functions mainly as a machine - a data processor, a memory shredder / sifter and an experience filer.

Rewarding self - being proactive and involved in any productive pursuit. For instance writing, making a film, running or gyming. The cognitive function is at its peak with a "feel good" hormone about self coursing through blood streams. Its called Rewarding self mainly because of the degree of respect that shoots up for self, where the self is able to achieve goals set. Could I call this space of a Refracted self too - where the self is the maker, believer, doer and the re-inforcer all at once?


Going back to the earlier discussion I had started out with, why we feel dumber is that we mainly use our "Experiencing Self" over the other 2 and therefore have no concrete results to show for the span of time passed. For instance writing this article in 10 minutes vs watching a show or a video for 10 mins - entertainment has no currency, no denomination and no value to attribute to boost / loss of intelligence. Instead this write up done in 10 mins serves to push my "Rewarding self" to its altitude led attitude, and also ladder to a self appreciation. Which, by the way, is mainly a lost emotion now, as we keep seeking acceptance from others. The so many faceless others.


In sum, the purpose of this write up is to draw attention to be aware of "which" self you are playing at the moment - question its relevance and impact on you and decide your own narrative. Being dumber or smarter is a controlled action point - it depends on definition of one's compassion, empathy, self respect and lastly self acceptance.