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THE BATTLE FOR MODeRN 1923


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kiss & tell

I re­mem­ber vis­it­ing a fam­i­ly friend back in Kolkata and squirm­ing in my seat when he start­ed show­ing signs of sweet af­fec­tion to­wards his would-be “for­eign­er” wife in the pres­ence of his par­ents. None of us knew how to re­act or where to look. The worst part? I was well in my 30s, had shot a baby out of my vagi­na, and was still re­act­ing that way.

So, why did a gen­tle, sweet, warm, and re­as­sur­ing show of love make me uncomfortable?

Grow­ing up, I had nev­er wit­nessed real adults hug or kiss. My grand­par­ents were bare­ly ever in the same room to­geth­er. The only time I would see them in prox­im­i­ty was when my grand­ma would serve my grand­fa­ther his meals. Maybe that is why they were known for fam­i­ly plan­ning back in the day. They had only five chil­dren com­pared to my ma­ter­nal grand­par­ents who had nine. Not that I ever saw any PDA from them ei­ther. Now that I think of it, I’m not sure if I ever wit­nessed the lat­ter even speak to each oth­er. My par­ents, my rel­a­tives, par­ents of friends, neigh­bors, not a sin­gle mar­ried cou­ple around me ever showed ANY signs of phys­i­cal af­fec­tion to­wards each other.

To many of us, this equates to de­cen­cy and “san­skar” (good val­ues). Love does not need to be dis­played. We don’t want to be sub­ject­ed to wit­ness­ing oth­er people’s af­fec­tion. This gives chil­dren the wrong kind of mes­sage. Some things should al­ways re­main pri­vate (read be­hind closed bed­room doors). So on and so forth. The cul­ture that gave the world Ka­ma­su­tra some­how thinks kiss­ing or hold­ing your loved ones in pub­lic is ob­scene. This gets so in­grained in us that when we trav­el to for­eign coun­tries or move there, we try to pro­tect our­selves and even­tu­al­ly our kids from what we think is a lack of val­ue system.

So, how do we go from a com­plete lack of phys­i­cal af­fec­tion in our day-to-day life to full-on baby-mak­ing mode be­hind closed doors?

We don’t.

Well, I mean … we do. But in do­ing so we cre­ate a cul­ture ad­verse to what a lov­ing re­la­tion­ship should be like.

Think about it this way. Above any­thing, as par­ents we want our kids to ex­cel in school be­cause we think that will help them ex­cel in life. We ex­pose them to ad­vanced lev­els of math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence through­out their child­hood. We even have them in pi­ano lessons to im­prove their math brain. We do so by show­ing and set­ting ex­am­ples of how we be­came doc­tors and en­gi­neers and hope they will fol­low suit.

And what do we ex­pect from our kids af­ter school and ca­reer? To “set­tle” down aka Marriage.

Then why aren’t we ex­pos­ing our kids to love and set­ting ex­am­ples there?

Be­cause for many of us, love and mar­riage are not the same.

Let that sink in for a while.

Big fat wed­dings come with big fat val­ue sys­tems. For many, mar­riage is a big com­pro­mise. Ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ships and sex be­fore mar­riage is bad. Bad or forced sex af­ter mar­riage is well … mar­riage. Mar­riage means ba­bies, beat­ings, and some­times both. It comes with stereo­typ­i­cal roles and many many skele­tons in one’s closet.

Grant­ed this does not de­scribe ALL our mar­riages. But have we ever thought that if our par­ents or their par­ents had shown phys­i­cal signs of af­fec­tion and sup­port for each oth­er, our idea of ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ships or mar­riages might have been dif­fer­ent? That our men would have learned how to treat their women with love and re­spect and our women would have learned what to tru­ly ex­pect from a lov­ing re­la­tion­ship? Af­ter all, we hu­mans do as we see.

I of­ten won­der if my grand­par­ents ever kissed or hugged, even be­hind closed doors. I clear­ly know they had sex (five chil­dren!!!), but did my grand­moth­er ever have a choice in that? Did my grand­fa­ther re­al­ly love my grand­moth­er and vice ver­sa? I nev­er saw or heard any signs of it. I wit­nessed my grand­moth­er ded­i­cate her en­tire life to serve this one man even when he was rude and of­fen­sive to her. I nev­er saw my grand­fa­ther even re­mote­ly re­turn the fa­vor. In our cul­ture that is the true mea­sure of a suc­cess­ful mar­riage. Whether they tru­ly loved each oth­er, no one will ever re­al­ly know. That ded­i­ca­tion will be rec­og­nized as love and this will set stan­dards for re­la­tion­ships in years to come.

My par­ents had a failed mar­riage, but I some­times won­der if there were any mo­ments of real af­fec­tion shared be­tween them ei­ther. Mak­ing ba­bies do not equate to love in our mar­i­tal re­la­tions. Ba­bies most of­ten are bi-prod­ucts of mar­riage. We bring them into the world from love­less mar­riages be­cause we hope to find love in our hearts for them instead.

So, what I’m try­ing to say is, if you are that lucky cou­ple who stay to­geth­er out of love, don’t hes­i­tate to show your love and af­fec­tion for each oth­er open­ly. Hold each oth­er, give each oth­er hugs and kiss­es, pass along a com­pli­ment, put your love in words, all in front of your kids, your friends, your fam­i­ly, and even ab­solute strangers. Let your kids wit­ness your love for math and the oth­er par­ent. Be­cause see­ing love is a beau­ti­ful thing and most im­por­tant­ly, feel­ing loved open­ly is em­pow­er­ing as hell.

 

—mala paul

Flom­mist Mala Paul is a pro­tégé of the god­dess of ten hands. Form to form­less all in a day’s job. A moth­er, de­sign­er, dancer, food­ie, fash­ion­ista, blog­ger, who is al­ways ready to be the change. Copy­right © 2020 Mala P. Mullins. Pic­tured up top: Munch, The Kiss IV, 18971902.

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Der Tung
Posted
Fri 14 Feb 2020

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