Advice To A Friend On His Wedding

Advice To A Friend On His Wedding

Prologue: I found this gem of a letter hidden in the pages of a old and mildewed book, a copy of Dickens Pickwick Papers, shoved with neglect in the back shelf of a forgotten library. Intrigued by the old handwritten pages oozing of an age long gone by, I took this home and spent a few weeks deciphering the contents. The below is an adequate reproduction, of my understanding of the writers original handwriting. Errors if any can be blamed on me. By the language used by the original author I deduce that this letter must have been written 100-120 years ago but the principles it expounds on still sounds true. Read and enjoy the lost pleasure of a hidden letter.

My dear M,

       I write this to you in reply to your own letter lamenting your sorry single state on Valentines Day. Rather than commiserating in your misery I would rather advice you to rejoice. I would not tell this to anyone or everyone except such a dear friend like you for fear i may be misunderstood by the bra burning brigades. But as i have confidence in your discretion and can count on your silence, I would speak the truth to you about this most preventable of disasters called marriage. This is my own opinion and I leave it your discretion to take my advice or not on this most unnecessary of evils to befall a happy single man- the institution of marriage. This is a tough world, a competitive world, a dog eat dog world where the slightest misfortune and a single slip can lead a man to disaster and calamity. But of all the disasters to fell a man, of all the natural calamities to descend on his head, a wedding takes precedence over all the rest. You can recover from a stock market crash, you can recover from a cancer of the prostate but you cannot recover from marriage. Once you say "I do" that’s the end, you are done to death. So I say that whatever other disasters fall to a man’s lot, what mistakes and errors he does and whatever pickles he finds himself in, if he does not commit that ultimate mistake of leaving his sense behind for a wife, he can recover from those mistakes and he can still end up being happy. So i would advise you not to refer to yourself as unhappy, as you have done in your letter, for your happiness still exists without a shadow on it.

       

Believe me when i tell you that all the troubles which fall on a man during the normal course of life are always of small consequences and can be conquered with strength of will, courage and confidence in oneself. But a wedding is so big a burden on a man’s head, that I never saw any man howsoever clever and brave he may be to survive one unscathed and not be brought under the tyranny of a wife, to be rolled along on her little finger and made to dance to her will. Marry a woman and see for yourself that every single day for the rest of your life, you shall have a thousand little troubles, a thousand responsibilities, a thousand things to do immediately on that day itself and you will end up with a profound dissatisfaction and a repentance that you ever married which will speedily take you to an early grave. You may, as you mention in your letter, choose whatever type of wife as you are looking for, but in the end she will make you repent doing so every single day for the rest of your life, not out of any malice towards you but simply because it is in her nature and disposition to tyrannize a husband, any man fool enough to marry her. All day long, from the dawn of light your brain will be filled with cares, your body will be tired with work, your purse will be empty with spending and your mind will pine for some rest instead of always worrying about the cares of maintaining your family. And these cares will always be there even in the most happiest of marriages and the sweetest of wives. Till you yourself will proclaim to all your unmarried friends that the happiest man is an unwed man and that any woman is an angel till she turns into a wife.

Now don’t take this the wrong way and believe me to be a misogynist or against marriage. Marriage is a fine institution, a holy cause ordained by the gods to multiply the population of our earth. Marriage in itself is fine, that which makes it bad is woman. So if inspite of my advice you decide to marry, then this is the time to make up your mind. You must decide that once you marry, you will never think about anything by yourself again, that you will listen to your wife and follow her advice to the letter, never show your displeasure if she makes you turn to the east even if she had you walking all day to the west, you will subject yourself with a happy disposition to the least of her wishes, bypass all her deficiencies which suddenly you notice, satisfy all her wishes however insatiable they seem to you, approve all her plans for pleasure and laugh at all her jokes however unfunny they may be. Do this and you have slight chance of leading a tolerably comfortable married life.

If after reading this letter you decide not to marry, rejoice you happy man, for you can have more happiness in a single day as a bachelor than as a married man all your life. A single man may freely and instantly do all that his heart desires, he can travel, he can spend to the end and live luxuriously according to his own whims and delights and even do risky and dangerous things if he so desires, instead of worrying about leaving behind a beautiful widow and fatherless kids.

So, I leave you with this and commend you to make your own decision. For if you decide to marry, congratulations are in order and if you decide not to marry, then double congratulations are in order. And I will be always,

                                                        Your friend,

                                                                        G.

The Attack on the Parliament and Hanging Afzal Guru.

 This is a transcript of a recent conversation with my friend Oldtimer Otee – based on a questionnaire he provided- on the most recent burning issue- Afzal Guru’s hanging..

Otee : any thoughts on the legality of the issue? Fairness of trial and adherence of procedure?

GP : Well, Otee I am not by any stretch of imagination a Legal expert. So I can only comment on it from a layman's point of view. But due process of law? In India we do Due process of law...to death (pun intended of course).  We follow a leisurely trial process and adherence to procedure till the accused sometimes dies before the judgment is delivered. Remember Rajan of Brittania industries? He fled to India from Singapore fearing the swift Singapore justice dispersal and trusting to the Indian legal systems adherence to the letter of the procedure and he died before he could be convicted. There is no hurry in the Indian judiciary, even our fast track courts take their own sweet time to deliver. 

           Which is not a bad thing at all, as it gives us the confidence that like the british system before it, we allow the accused to take their time to mount the best possible defense as their guilt can permit. All the accused in the parliament attack case had more than adequate legal representation and legal defence courtesy various human rights organizations and fringe political elements and hence some of the other conspirators like Sar Geelani were able to get the benefit of doubt and hence acquitted. In gurus case, his guilt was proven beyond doubt in all the various courts of law and the only factor which delayed his punishment were political complications and not legal considerations.

          That said I would also like to talk about an important aspect often overlooked. If there is one lacunae of Indian legal system it is not in the prosecution but in the investigation. The police are often the ones who cut corners in their eagerness to achieve results. Even in this case the prevailing opinion is that they arrested guru earlier than they said in the report and based on his confession they had arrested Geelani. But due to the shoddy paperwork and fudging the arrest time of guru, they invalidated the authenticity of his confession implicating Geelani - which in turn allowed the other conspirators to walk free citing alibis. The police failed to realize that in high profile cases the adherence to proper investigation and paper filing should be meticulous to a fault -to prevent a clever defense attorney from picking holes. We should hope that in future, the police who are often the first ones on the scene should be more careful in their approach to investigation and abandon their laissez faire attitude- at least in high profile cases of national importance.

Otee: what do you feel about the legality of the death sentence?

GP : ah, there you have me Otee. I know that the modern trend in democratic countries is to move away from the death sentence not only for human rights considerations but also because it has been proven to have no deterrence value. Historically a death sentence in public was used to strike fear in the hearts of the watching populace and to dissuade them from planning crimes. But terrorism has made that argument specious. Be it the JUD terrorists who attacked parliament or the LTTE terrorists who killed Rajiv Gandhi, they were prepared to face death when they signed up for the mission. Hence death sentence for them has no fear as it has for any ordinary criminal. But the value of death sentence as a retributive punishment still remains. The law is supreme in India. If you break the law, you should suffer punishment – that alone restores confidence in the impartiality of law. So, I would reluctantly agree with the contention that in the rarest of rare cases, as decreed by our supreme court, we need to hang the convicted criminals.

            I would also like to remind you here that these terrorists like kasab, guru and perivalan cannot plead mitigating circumstances as a defense. Guru cannot say he killed in self-defense- the Indian parliament never went and attacked him with a knife. Guru cannot plead a sudden and grave provocation- the Indian parliament was not caught red-handed sleeping with his wife. As this is a clear cut case of a well-planned criminal conspiracy, indeed planned outside the country's borders according to reports, the hanging of guru reinforces the prestige of the law as in “the long arm of the law will catch up with you, however clever your crime is”

Otee : And what about the political considerations? Did they dictate the action?

GP: hmm....should I even answer this one. The whole country knows the reason that the sentence was delayed beyond a reasonable time frame because it was politically inconvenient to carry it out expeditiously. What I don’t understand is why our political masters disregard the sentiments of the silent majority in favor of a vocal minority of fringe elements. As you know I am a big fan of history and a war-buff in particular. Every single treatise of war from the commentaries of Caesar to McArthur's pacific campaign stress on not being boxed into a corner and allowing events to dictate action. The government could have woken up a bit earlier to the prevailing public sentiment and   not waited till the Gujarat elections showed them the mood of the country in matters of national defense. This was after all an attack on parliament- the seat of the highest authority of the land- our elected representatives, who represent “We, the people” as defined by our Constitution and hence a direct attack on all of us. A few vote banks here and there should not have been allowed to dictate terms to this affront to the whole country. When it comes to national defence, the overall national identity supersedes all regional identities. We are just Indians, not Kashmiris, Gujaratis or Tamils.

           Plus, think about this- our MP's are public servants- a fact which they conveniently forget after election- but still they are our(peoples) servants and shouldn't we safeguard our servants from attack? As good masters are obligated to?

Otee: What’s your own take on this GP?

GP: I am tempted to quote to you from Conan Doyle’s story Silver blaze where his detective Sherlock Holmes expostulates to Watson on the “curious incident of the dog in the night time”. When Watson astonished says “but the dog did nothing” Holmes replies “precisely”. Which is exactly my take on this issue. Its not who talked of this, but who didn’t which interests me so much.  Of course, we have had the mandatory leftist rant of Arundhati Roy and the rejoinder of the establishment via Praveen Swami. But it’s the silence of the usual suspects which amuses me. Do they sense this is a dead issue? Or is it something which should be best preserved till election time? I am still awaiting our highest constitutional functionaries, our opinionated TV anchors, television fame political personalities and the recently minted self-appointed guardians of the country's conscience to jump in and offer their perspectives on an issue of such national importance. My take- in a nutshell- Good Riddance.

Dark Endings Vs. Happy Endings?

Dark Endings Vs. Happy Endings?

I had a very interesting discussion last night with an online friend and a regular reader of this blog (and is he still sane, I hear you ask). Anyway the topic of our discussion was my previous blog post -(here) which was absolutely trashed by my friend. The post is a contest between a man and the devil with a single throw of dice determining the fate of the world. Rather fanciful I agree, but I didn’t expect that it would provoke so strong a reaction. To quote my friend the first Para was brilliant, it started well and it went all the way downhill from there. The first Para my friend loved was about setting the atmosphere, a mood of gloom and doom hanging over the world as the dice game starts with the fate of the world in balance. I thought it was an atmosphere of despair tinged with hope, but my friend thought otherwise (different people/different perspectives). Anyway my friend offered me the advice that I should have gone with the natural flow of the plot – of death and destruction rather than end it with the game of dice being won by mankind and the devil being defeated. In short an ending with hope and happiness, especially such an easy ending was not what he wanted, he wanted an authentic ending.

I confess I was intrigued by what he said. I had gone with the most natural time tested ending of all- a triumph of good over evil- a cliché if ever there was one. It’s the way of all bestsellers and hit films- from Tolkiens the Lord of the Rings, to Rowlings Harry Potter to Vijayakanths Ramanna and Vishals SandaKoli....introduce the villain first- the badder the better- show that people everywhere are in despair and at their wits end with a dark and dominating evil threatening peace and happiness and then the lone hero, an ordinary man, one of us and nothing special, he comes forward to save the world and all is peace and joy by the end. It’s THE success formula for all authors. The only way most of us prefer to end- with hope rather than despair. Oh throw in endless strife and trouble and almost insurmountable odds, but in the end the hero should scrape through, shouldn’t he? Even if just to restore the status quo instead of achieving anything outstanding. There is a comfort in a familiar happy ending rather than a grotesque climax which shocks just for the sake of it or in a heart-wrenching, tear-rending tragedy of an ending.

Off hand, I can count with my fingers (in single digits) the number of books I have read which end in total and complete tragedy and the destruction of all hope at the end. Of all such authors I have read, I would rate Shakespeare the highest in writing such doom and gloom books. Who else but Shakespeare would write a book starting with the death by assassination of the main character (after whom the book is named) in the first chapter and then goes on to show all the various and myriad ways in which complete destruction conquers the conspirators- all honorable men till the foul deed is done- a must read book, Julius Caesar. He does not show us Caesars triumphs, his battle field victories, his crowning even, but only his death and Caesar is the hero even though he disappears off the story in the first fifteen pages. Or let’s talk about King Lear. When the book begins Shakespeare shows us King Lear reigns happily on his throne. By the end of the book he is driven mad, penniless, and friendless and his favorite daughter is dead. How’s that for a tragedy? Still not convinced about my point? Then how about Coriolanus? The hero is as good as they come- a complete hero in the beginning, but because he is quite unable to make up his mind as to what he is, he is turned into a villain and then a quasi-comedian and by the end he is just a pathetic loser. All for the lack of a firm mind and sticking to ones decisions. A lesson if there is ever one. Anyway Coriolanus and Titus Andronicus are never popular compared to the more lighthearted Twelfth night or a Midsummer’s night’s books. And that’s a lesson we all can learn from Shakespeare- more Falstaff and Prince Hal type of characters, rogues though them may be than the stately Henry fifth or gloomy Prospero.

As an ardent reader of books I would prefer to not read tragedies, given a choice. The last one I read was Bridges of Madison County and after drying my tears I decided not to touch the genre again. Even if they made a movie of it- as they later made with Clint Eastwood. And as a writer or author I can vouch for the fact that most of us can’t or won’t write tragedies. I personally prefer to leave my readers with at least the faintest glimmer of hope by the end, rather than total and complete despair. Even if the villain is the badass of them all, even the grim reaper himself, he should be somehow defeated and the hero prevail in the end. Nine/tenths of the book can be dark and forbidding but the last part should be pure sunlight dispelling the storm laden clouds and everyone should walk away from my book with the satisfaction that goodness prevails, hope triumphs and all is right with the world in the end. Just like Frodo survives to come to the shire, just like Harry Potter survives death to marry Ginny, just like Arnold Schwarzenegger kills a ten feet tall Extra-terrestrial hunter all by himself and Bruce Willis never dies in the Die Hard movies. That’s the kind of hero I want, that’s the kind of stuff I will write, even if no one likes it or how clichéd it is. Hope wins- always in my book. Happy endings everyone.