It's 1989 Again

I look around me at the multiple permutations and combinations of happiness and unhappiness in women and men. And I think they can’t be happy so long as they come together as men and women, two separate entities, locked into relationships of inequality.  

I imagine it’s 1989 again. This young woman and man are sitting on the rocks near the sea. The wind is blowing, the evening is settling, they have lost sense of time. They don’t see the tide rise. When they look up from each other’s eyes, they are sitting in a pool of seawater. They look at each other and laugh. They must jump their way through the rocks still peeking above the tidal pool. She is wearing a chappal that keeps slipping off her feet. So, he carries her back to the beach. As he puts her down, she laughs, her dupatta billowing in the wind. He watches her hair trying to break free in wisps around her face and smiles shyly. They were so in love. Thirty years later they would hate each other’s guts.

If only they hadn’t been forced to be together under that roof as wife and husband, as the dependant and the independent. You see, he wanted to be her comfort, the man she came to for relief from the cuts and bruises of her mother’s proliferating wounds. And she wanted to be his adventure, the woman who showed him how to make the world their joy ride. But under that roof, the rules of their love were upturned. The house was of her mother’s wealth and the locks were of his mother’s resentment. Although neither of the mothers lived there, they laid the foundational brick of their married home �" a home, they were taunted by the world for not having, a home led by a man.

He was now the man of the house, who comes home, slighted and wounded by the world and she was now the comforting woman, who cushioned the house with her steady patience and giving love. They were both now confined to spaces and roles not meant for them. He wanted to give love and receive life; she wanted to give life and receive love. Neither could give or take what they wanted. Over thirty years, they were lifeless and loveless. He stopped coming home and she stopped going out.

I imagine it’s 1989 again. I imagine they don’t go to her mother or his. I imagine they run away to another city. I imagine they have it hard, starting over again in a new city. They miss the sea, their mothers, perhaps also their brothers. They must both work to make ends meet. But they get to raise their children without interference from the porous walls of social perfection. They only have their own love and life to raise them. They teach their son of gentle love and their daughter of fearless life.

He gives love, she receives it with grace and she gives life and he receives it with grace. Over time, their love and life merge, seeming the one and the same. The food they cook tastes the same. The works they do turns into a business they run. There’s no separation of love from life, of life from love. They are equal. They fester equality, not power in their little house.

She asks him if he wants to go out with her. Some days he says yes, some days he says no. She kisses him nonetheless before she leaves. He asks her if she’d like to try the new dish he wants to make. Some days she says yes, some days she says no. He loves her nonetheless before he goes into the kitchen.

But you know even if she was the one who liked cooking and he was the one who was had the business acumen, their home would have still been the sanctuary it was. Because, neither did he feel entitled to her love, labour and body, nor she felt hopelessly bound to him for her survival or her liberation. He would provide love and income, whether she said yes or no to his wishes and desires. He wouldn’t coerce, he wouldn’t persuade, he wouldn’t be angry, he wouldn’t withdraw and sulk, he wouldn’t be insecure about his own capabilities to keep a woman happy. He would ask her how was she, was she tired? Was she upset? He would listen to her vent about the phone call from her mother. He would take her in his arms. He would soothe her to sleep. And the next day, she’d have a surprise for him, the way he liked it, in quiet privacy of their own home. She would make the house, an adventure, tailored for him.

And when he says no to accompany her outside, she wouldn’t resent him because she did not need a chaperone to go outside. He wasn’t a tool for her freedom to move. She didn’t feel like a wave, being tossed at the sea’s will. He wasn’t the sea. He was her lover. So, when she comes back home, beaming from the joyride of the world, her body tired, he would have a hot meal ready for her. Even if he didn’t know how to cook or didn’t like cooking, he would make one little thing she liked. He would learn it, he would perfect the recipe, a profound little gift for her.

They wouldn’t be bound by duty, which fades as rationale over thirty years and is replaced by habits of resentment and wounds of injustice. They would stay in love. They might visit that sea again. They will be mindful of the tide this time, or not perhaps. They might be still be in love, who knows?

I imagine it’s 1989 again. They don’t go to their mothers. They don’t run away. They decide to forget each other. Love no longer interests them. He puts his heart into his cooking, she puts her brain into the business. His mother might force him to go find a real job. Her mother might force her to yield to the decisions her brothers make. Perhaps they don’t care to listen anymore. They don’t have much to lose after all.

He goes to another city, finds a mundane job that allows him to be home, to cook, to experiment. Maybe he writes a book about his experiments with flavours. Maybe it’s slow to sell at first. But eventually, it catches up. He is fulfilled.

Maybe she starts her own little business, away from her mother. Maybe it does well, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe she finds a job and learns the ropes of a new industry. Maybe she sets up another business or stays in that firm, but she doesn’t have to marry anymore. She has a house of her own. She is fulfilled.

I imagine it’s 1989 again. She loves a woman. He loves a man. They meet each other by the sea to understand how do people like them make homes. They support each other in separating from their families. They support each other to be with people they love. Maybe their lovers must leave them to have ‘normal’ lives. They decide to live with each other, two friends under a roof, a strange but married couple to the world.

It’s 1989 again. She is a woman and he is a child. She takes him in. She fosters him, she is the mother he couldn’t have, a fatherless mother. He becomes her life. All the men who come to see her refuse to take the child in. So, she doesn’t marry. She adopts him. It’s not easy. She is an unmarried woman. But she fights it out. He becomes the man that families don’t create, a fully human man raised by a fully human mother.

It’s 1989 again. He is a man and she is a street cat. He takes her in and loves her until the end. He loves her kittens after her. He grows into the strange old cat man.

It’s 1989 again and I guess I can keep going. She is a bird and he is a tree. He is a flower and she is a bee. But you get the point. So long as a man feels entitled and a woman bound, there can be no love between them, there can be no relationships of equality and happiness in their house.