Found Home but Lost the World

At times, even with the fertile mind to write, cultivation of writing is narrowly possible in a place where the network receptivity is eccentrically sterile. In such circumstances, to keep that same wick of thirst constantly burning is undeniably gruelling.

I had a basketful of wish lists to accomplish at home before I returned from my studies. But my place of posting has painfully strangulated all those sprouts of my plans. Some limbs of the dreams had to be either removed or made to wither and shrink of its own, while a large part of it had to horribly sustain with the hailstorm of incessant miscarriages and failures.

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Most agonizingly, that momentum of keeping in touch with my colleagues, students, kith and kin, fellow bloggers in and around the world and some close readers, dissolved without a trace. A friend of mine has humorously inboxed me, “Which part of the world are you in?” Another wrote, “The Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has warned to remove those dormant accounts. You are on the list”.

This seems funny but if truth be told, I was strangely forced to hibernate inside the cocoon of dormancy. The feelings I engrave and the sentiments I endure, which are generally expressed in the form of words could not be shared and communicated due to the sterile technological exit ticket- the internet. 

No matter how much I wish and think positive, that same amount of frustrations engulf me. When the flames of my passion get blown off, though forcefully, that’s the time, when I don’t attempt to fuel it or regrow it, ultimately distancing from my social rings. That’s the time when I feel that when I found my home, I have lost the world.

“Keeping in touch with the people that matter is important” – G Eazy   

Is Virginity, Male or Female?

In the 1950s, 60% of women lost their virginity to the man they were engaged to or married. Today, that figure is just 1% (Allan & Pease, 2009).

The authors of the international bestseller ‘Why men want sex and women need love’ answers myriad of questions ranging from why men want sex while women need love to what men and women really want and, why people engage in casual sex to the mysterious truths men don’t know about women and vice versa.

In its most humorously captivating pattern of language expression, this book is a transparent bible for people longing to start a ‘perfect relationship’. There is nothing such as ideal chemistry or flawless marriage it claims but there is certainly a list of recipes that can help fix our relationships suffering from bruises or loose screws.

The most intriguing experience on reading this book was that whatsoever messages it has composed are erected on the pillar of evidence imbibed from countless standard empirical scientific researches. And as a man, I couldn’t agree more with the male instincts and masculine physiognomies they described. Or else, I might end up with a risk to fall into a column of being androgynous. Seriously.

There are so many seeds of the message I want to sow in fallow me and to my circles suffering from an irregular drought of ignorance. As much as that inspiration train moved inside me, I wanted to gift this book (and other series by the same authors) to my friends and siblings, and let that same train travel through their veins of understanding. In all, my appetite for reading only non-fiction books was never feasting and treasurable than ever. 

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So, as I unthread each message from every page I flipped, I related to how the same things are generally viewed in the face of our society. One of them was about sex – the matter we often shrink back (at least during day hours) and regard as nighttime or non-family stories.

As elaborated in this book, somewhere at some point, our society is driven by that typical set of thinking about sex. As much as men practice infidelity, the number is often graphed as a matter of pride or achievement or to reveal sexual masculinity (at least amongst men). For women surrendering to such practices – either casually or due to emotional upsets, sex with each man becomes a thermometer to measure the temperature of their character, loyalty and devotion. This means, higher the frequency - more the recitation of her name on every male tongue, and the greater risk of cataloguing as a lady with a loose character.

(Similarly), though there wasn’t any mention about virginity (in this book), I extended the circuit of sex to connect with it, after all, virginity is the first introductory question of any sex – asked either openly or secretly.   

Virginity in my narrowest sense - meaning amongst the limited circle of friends I intermingled, is largely interpreted with more inclination towards the females. I rarely heard of my male associates initiating to chat or speak of losing their virginity. Whenever we talk of sex and the related stories – the fairly common backbone of male talk in most of the get-together occasions, we clothe virginity with feminine characteristics. Men rarely regard or remember when and where they murdered their virginity. The way men talks, strangely picture how they are only concerned about the ‘reproductive purity’ of the women. Perhaps, we boys are brainwashed with the ‘Defloration’ pornography where they expose only young girls ending their virginity by men who have already lost theirs a long time ago.

Virginity in its broadest explanation should not be gender-biased. After all, once we trade off and unpack our reproductive organs into a sexual market either for reproduction or passing our genes, in both the genders, it loses its glamour of rigidity, tarnishes its first-time appearance and distorts the geography of its general outlook, if truth be told.  

There is nothing to feel aghast. Neither should a reader assume me going crazy or transforming into a sexual expert. Nor am I claiming that I know everything about something. I am none of these. But as Allan and Barbara explain so succinctly why men and women see many of the same things differently, we really need to school our thinking.

And one way to do so is by flirting with this book. It really provides orgasm on the outlook of sexual education and relationship issues so perfectly, that we understand human relations from a very new set of vantage points.

“Virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower” – Karl Kraus

Welcome to the Hormonal Industry

When one of my childhood friends who was planning to tie the knot with his recently met girlfriend asked me to prescribe him an ideal marital prescription, that popular Hindi saying flashed on the screen of my mind. 

This is what I texted to him: 

Shaadiwoh ladoo. Jo khayee bachtai. Jo Nakhayeewohbe bachtai.

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“Don’t you remember that I am deaf to Hindi language? Please elaborate” he wrote.

“Why do you ask me? I am neither a matrimonial pundit nor a conjugal guru”.  

A vacuum of correspondence ensued. A few minutes later, I wrote:

Marriage is like ladoo. Those who eat, they regret it. Even those who don’t, regret. 

Hope you will now not ask for any subtitles to understand it. I responded.

But before he replied, I texted again: “Welcome to the Hormonal Industry”

“Ha-ha. What is this now? This phrase surely demands a Dzongkha subtitle”, he retorted.

And this is how I vindicated my statement:

Research has revealed that the level of oxytocin is very high when people fall in love. In men, their testosterone level reduces while the amount of oxytocin increases. This flux in the number of sexual hormones ensures faster bonding.

Marriage guarantees a legal and social covenant between two people in love to be together, and that’s the reason why many feel anodyne to travel this road. Marriage is the result of these hormones secreted in our bodies. Marriage is thus, a hormonal industry!

Once we sign a contract with this industry, the whole template of our habits, perceptions, and management patterns, transform completely. Those old unpleasant habits that we're unable to let die young during bachelorhood either receives renovation or get refurbished or fixed with the gentle breeze of so-called love. But to fix these square pegged habits into the round hole of marriage is always regulated by the buttons of understanding, compromises, sacrifices, devotion, and convictions. In some essence, marriage is rather like a literary journey. The winds of unprecedented euphoria of love that exists can transform us into a poet to write touching poetry or an artist to craft haunting lyrics of melodies.

While even on brief separations, that aching pain enables us to understand the gravity of emotional torments suffered by John Keats, P B Shelly, and John Milton as expressed through their poetic limbs. We can feel exactly the way they did due to the madness of love. One intriguing thing about marriage is that it is a journey of two amalgamated souls with a single dream, sailing to survive the unexpected storms of life together. 

We learn to divide responsibilities and multiply devotion and sentience. As time mellows and as we grow old together, the love also matures into a form of a child - which then becomes the fountain of happiness, a lifeline and purpose of our life.

More importantly, as we marry, we are promising the child to bestow a set of parents (a father and a mother), a commodity that is rarely found in pairs, in the market of our society today. 

On a scientific note, studies have revealed that married people live longer than single, separated, divorced or widowed people, and that, the mortality rate is low for almost every disease. In the words of Allan and Barbara (2009), ‘marriage has its good side. It teaches you loyalty, forbearance, tolerance, self-restraint and other valuable qualities you wouldn’t need if you had stayed single.

However, marriage is the easiest subject in the world to have an unlimited opinion about, but perhaps the bravest thing to do. Bravest because we have to ensure it functions throughout the span of one’s lifetime. It is not proportional to the number of years. Sometimes, even the concrete ship of a marriage that journeyed 50 years suffers a cruel fate of wreckage within a fraction of a second. When it is on a rough note, which is a result of a screw gone loose, that fury has the ability to transform that once-upon-a-time-heaven into a living hell.

Basically, the voyage of marriage is surprisingly full of ups and downs which is the consequence of some hormones which make us fall in love. It is not a default mode of human living that always produce the hymn of ‘happily-ever-after’ stuff.

As I say it, you must understand that there is no single thread of thought to dampen your love. If you don’t marry, people might doubt your sexual orientation 😃 or those with a biological education might even doubt a hormonal disorder.

Socially, marriage is generally considered proof of true love. Embrace it to sail on the cruise ship of your life with your love. Experience, the hard teacher as many say, would teach you on the way of your life.

Good luck, buddy.

“Thank you. As you said, let me start the engine of my marital ship and live every moment of it. Buddy, please note that you are included in the important guest list among those local leaders and business honchos during my wedding ceremony”.

But days folded to weeks and weeks aged to months. I called my friend to ask if he has forgotten to invite me for being his marital therapist some time ago.

But what can the world expect, when he has already experienced those marital hiccups even before he got married to his beloved. 

His so-called beloved has become the kept woman to one of the local business tycoons.

And now the question is, how did he lose his beloved to be somebody’s kept woman?

“You have two choices in life: you can stay single and be miserable or get married and wish you were dead” – Bob Hope.