In Search Of Paradise

In Search Of Paradise

Happiness, joy and mirth were some of the ingredients of a happily married life that were missing from our lives. We were already a couple of years down the annals of conjugal life and yet se looked out of the windows of our lives at happiness like young children do when someone with a bag full of  toys passes by.

I found it hard to believe and accept that my conscience was the most responsible for the mess. I tried to evaluate if I held a lot of expectations from the alliance. The truth was that I did want to be loved and cared for in the most selfish manner. I wanted her disinterested attention more than anything else in the world.  I wanted to be loved to the extent of madness.

She seemed to be the ideal entity I had been looking for all these years. She seemed to be the most important ingredient of my dreams. Then one day, she stepped out of them to occupy the center-stage before me. But the one in my life is quite different from the one in my dreams.

My dreams are practically shattered. She was certainly not the one I had dreamt of as a celibate. My prolonged celibacy had brought forth several truths and realities of life that would not have been clear had I bid adieu to my life as a bachelor at an earlier point of time. But I’d certainly not bargained for anything of the kind I had got.

I needed her love and attention more than anything else in the world. I’d been dealt with some odd cards in the game of life, and I badly wanted someone who could turn up things on a bright note for me. I wanted someone who    would be able to see the world through the glasses I wear, and yet use her senses and precise vision to formulate an opinion.

She could never have loved me the way I wanted her to. She couldn’t love anyone with the devotion Hindus render to the deities they worship. I wanted such devotion from her. There was an utter mismatch between my expectations and what I had got.

Time seemed to have outrun my fate in the race to the finishing-line. I needed someone who could synchronise their pace over the running-track. Time and fate should always run in the same direction at an equal pace: they are supposed to touch the finishing line at the same time. In my  case, there was a stiff competition between  the two. I wanted someone who could explain things to Time and persuade it to give up the competition. My life had been riddled with instances of either of the two running ahead of each other.

The game of life had certainly been made all the more tough for me by a couple of physical handicaps. They have been a part of me for quite some time, and their insistence on dominating my life has been quite loud and strong. They have practically ruined my life. She does not accept them as a part of her life. I had made it very clear at the very outset of the drawbacks associated with me and the toughness that life with me was going to entail when we met for the first time, but either she had not comprehended the importance of my words or had not heard them altogether.  

I reminded myself when a relationship goes wrong, both parties are to be blamed. She had been dreaming of a life on a bed of roses. Instead, she had to walk on a path     strewn with pebbles and thorns. Although there had been several joyful and happy moments in our lives, she seemed to view them in a negative light.

There seems to be no end to the tension and turmoil in my life. We had had an arranged marriage, I’m sure our parents did evaluate our compatibility, but I’m sure they had never imagined such a great mismatch between expectations and results. The bag of a thousand wishes I held in my hand can never be filled, but at least I can hope for some of my wishes to be fulfilled. We live with considerable happiness today, hoping for the problems in our lives to be solved amicably one day; my expectations will have to scaled down to a tolerable level for this; may the young children get the toys they saw out of the window their lives.