Pati Patni aur Woe

There is nothing new under the Sun, they say. And in the realm of affairs, illicit (and dangerous) liaisons, eternal triangles and heartache, there really seems to be little that hasn’t been done already.

Yet everyone who comes along thinks that theirs is a unique situation that needs a one-of-its-kind solution. And that somehow it will come out different. Agony Aunt (and Uncle) columns, shrink’s couches and counsellor’s rooms have for decades echoed with questions like the one below:

I am a 22-year-old girl in love with a 30-year-old married man for the past 3 years. He says that he has a very bad marriage and I too have been witness to tiffs between him and his wife. However, recently I found out that his wife is pregnant for the second time. When I asked him about it he said that it was a mistake. He has promised to marry me within a year. I don't know what to believe. What should I do?

Amazing. Questions like this used to be asked in long-gone magazines like Eve’s Weekly, decades ago. And there are people still asking them. Of course the pain for each person going through stuff like this is real, palpable, and unique. But somehow one can’t help wonder why, while the human race spends millions of dollars on avoiding pain and inconvenience, on some counts we simply will not develop and modify. You’d think people would learn that certain things are such cliché, well-established no-nos, guaranteed to cause hideous self-harm and are best avoided. But no. We all got to make our own mistakes. (And worse, write soppy prose, bad poetry and awful film scripts about it, even).

Get this: This young woman who asks this question, has got her whole life in front of her, and yet she thinks she has only two choices: a) getting tied down to a guy who ditches a wife and baby that was conceived when he was supposed to be having a bad marriage and investing in a new relationship, or b) getting strung along by this chap while he makes more ‘mistakes’ and these mistakes grow up, go through school, college and marriage, while this side-show girl waits around being told that he’ll marry her ‘next year’.

And this girl actually believes she should wait around holding her breath to see the outcome of this scenario, and where she fits in.
It’s Waiting for Godot without even the humour and sophistication of absurd theatre and any of the soul-searching of existential angst.

As for this ustaad guy, this bad-marriage boyfriend and his ilk. Where’s he coming from? His idea of a bad marriage is to get his wife pregnant and then tell this girl it was a ‘mistake’. There’s nothing new under the Sun there too. Sounds like your everyday or garden variety of confused and/or callous guy down the ages.

He’s usually armed with lots of rationalizations in place for the dishonesty and for inflicting loads of hurt all round in his ‘confusion’. Plenty of ploys, premises and philosophical constructs about why he’s doing this. Also, he’s equipped with Neanderthal theories about how men need to march to some ancient and primal drum-beat that involves spreading sperm farthest and widest in furthering the interests of the species, and hence the wandering detours from the marriage. He’s also got a neat hierarchy in the head: “my wife is the mother of my children so I will do nothing to rock that boat”. Public figures, great showmen, corporate biggies, and ordinary guys have all done it. The promises, the double life, the “I’m finding myself; the I can’t desert my wife, but it’s you I love”. Nothing new under the Sun.

And then there’s the third player in this well-worn drama too. Takes three to tango here. The wife who abuse accommodates. (For those who came in late: abuse doesn’t simply mean being slapped around, yelled at and such like; it comes in the form of being disrespected, neglected, and being lied to too). This person writes her own script and dialogues, believing, again, that hers is a unique situation, and she has no real choices. We’ve all heard the lines before: “but he’s good to the children”; “he can’t help it”; “where can I go”; “I’m staying for the kids”; “I know he really loves and respects me.”

It’s all been scripted and enacted before. Several times over. And yet there are new players – one born every minute, looks like.

And the play will go on, as long as there are a combination of these three protagonists: Pati, with an elastic and patchy sense of commitment; Patni, who decides that the bottomline is that at least she gets to be main squaw; and Woh, who settles for being main squeeze.


Gouri Dange