Relationship of convenience.

Times have changed as far as relationships are concerned. It is now more of convenience than passion, commitment and care.  The relationships are just something that works for some time. Since there are no commitments you don’t have to worry about permanence. The key to start or end a relationship is with you; once the needs end you can lock it.

One is not worried about the trauma the other person goes through as the relationship was not derived out of passion and emotional connection.

To move around, have some company and fun, to have a “status”, or just for some “experience”, that is the purpose of such relations, nothing more than that I suppose.

This is what I think about majority of the relationship of current times. Am I correct? Looking around this is what I see. Of course there may be few exceptions.

The belief of such people is “it is ok to love someone but not be in love”.

It is perturbing to see that opening up of education and opportunities have accelerated such relationships these days. This may be a good example of education not paving way for cultural augmentation and wisdom. Accumulating university degrees does not help such people to manage their emotions and inferiority.

The young generation needs to be really cautioned about getting into such kind of bond. As this is just a waste of time, energy and resources.

How to know such relations in advance for remediation is a matter of debate. Some knows it with their wisdom, and some unfortunate ones learn out of experience.

Understanding the partner altogether in the earlier stages is the key to success. Rather than being doomed to a bland, mediocre existence, understand whether the partner endorsed their positive feelings with hearty (dare I say) enthusiasm. 

If one find the relationship is that of the “convenience” one then the ideal way out is to bite the bullet. End the "convenient" relationship and forget about it. It's better to fight being a little lonely than to miss the right person at the apt time. More over it is not worth thinking and wasting any more vigor on it.

For those who are into committed relationship obviously there is encouraging news from the study by the O’Leary team.  According to them there are evidences to show that not only can long-term couples get along with each other, but they can maintain their passion for many decades in spite of differences.  Close relationships are the centerpiece of our sense of identity and are fundamental to our feelings of fulfillment. By changing your thoughts and your behavior about these relationships, you can keep them fresh and vital for years.

Those who walked ahead of me.

I salute the Divinities, the Fathers–i.e., the Fathers and Mothers–the great Yogis; I salute Pushti and Svaha; may we have such auspicious occasions over and over again.

When we do “Shradha” we always do offerings to our unknown ancestors and recite the mantra as explained above in the beginning. We do not take names as most of us do not know our ancestors two generations old.

We then invoke the Vishva-Devas, the fathers, the mothers, the grandfathers, and the grandmothers. Having so invoked them, the Vishva-Devas should first be worshipped; and then the three fathers, the three mothers, the three grandfathers, and the three grandmothers should be worshipped, with offers of Padya, Arghya, Achamaniya, incense, lights, cloths.

I always used to think about our ancestors, those who walked ahead of us. How deep our roots are, where our ancestors lived and died? Where we belong to? When and why we came here and settled down? These questions have no answers and therefore it is often haunting.

In one of our ancestral house, I have seen ancestors in the form of stone idols. We worship these idols, and do pooja once a year. The pooja is an interesting one, what we offer to them is egg burji, fish fry chicken curry and liquor. This is a practice continued since generations, so probably our ancestors liked chicken, fish, egg and liquor. Although we offer them very humanly matters still we consider them above us. If something untoward happens we fear our ancestors are not happy.

Logically these rituals teach us that we should never forget ancestors whether known or unknown. We should respect them and remember them at least once a year. This indirectly teaches us to be obliged to our roots. We are connected with them through an invisible series of life cycles.

Due to my restlessness I tried to explore my roots and the findings were startling.
Our ancestors were wiser than the new generation. They amassed wealth in the form of land and the next generations lost most of these. The new generations went to schools and opted for white collar jobs. They did not have time or inclination to look after the land and in due course we lost most of it. To my utmost surprise I learned that the land I purchased for constructing my house was once belonged to our own ancestors. The women in the family were courageous enough even in selecting their partners. I doubt the new generations in my clan have any such courage.
While most of us are glorified servants in one way or the other, our ancestors were masters of their own destiny.

I bow down in the memory of those who walked ahead of me.