There is no question who is to blame. It is the Ananda Bazar group of Kolkata, and I don’t mean their matrimonial columns. It happened like this. For some time from the launch of the Telegraph, friend Shekhar and I spent most of our waking hours in the office and bemoaned the fact that we were men of good character due to no fault of our own. You see, there was no time to even chat up anybody, not to speak of getting into a relationship.
Then it happened. The group went through a strike-induced shutdown when, for a couple of months or so, I had absolutely nothing to do. That’s also when I met this person who passed the first test that I laid down for a companion. She must not have the traditional Indian female’s aversion towards imbibing the hard stuff, and it would be an added qualification if she herself enjoyed a drink or two.
And so it came about that there, in the pleasant surroundings of Astor on old Theatre Road, where the bay windows then used to overlook a lawn, after we had got thoroughly sozzled god knows for how long how many times, we decided to end the ambiguity and formalise our equal partnership. Thus, but for the grace of Bacchus, would have gone an irascible, intolerant single, replaced instead by an irascible tolerant long suffering half of a double.
All this came back when we argued endlessly where we should go to celebrate the interregnum of a quarter century. Eventually we decided to fall off the map, not consult it at all, just take to the road and see where it got us, with or without an address, so long as it had pleasant surroundings in which we could do justice to the stuff we had picked up even as we filled up the tank.
Looking back, about the best lesson I have learnt is to surrender with dignity. I realised soon enough that she was always, or almost always, right. And when on the oddest occasions we did what I wanted and it turned out to be the wrong choice, she was unfailing in intoning: “I told you, look what happens when you don’t listen to me.” Things didn’t improve when after a couple of times of this I said, you decide. She, of course, didn’t, couldn’t. (You know how god has made the female of the species.) The only difference was that when things still went wrong, she only rephrased herself to say, “I knew this would happen.”
The big lesson I learnt fairly early is, having an intellectual belief in gender equality is only the beginning. You have to learn it the hard way by practicing it day in and day out, through endless contest, uprooting from within the most deeply embedded male chauvinist instincts. No question this makes you a socially better person in every way, but what a tough learning process.
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As I look back, I have to admit that eventually we did right by our children. My view that sending them to a well-known good school was not so important and it’s home education that mattered, lost out. I was goaded to use my journalistic influence to get the children into a top school, not once but twice, in Delhi and then again in Bangalore.
Of course, home education mattered. You couldn’t turn off the tap at home just because you had lost the argument and the children would be able to go through life sporting good labels. Of all the good things they were able to grow up with, there are two I can single out. Because of our love of travel, they were forced to do long car journeys in holiday after holiday, to the forests and hills, to the point where they had forests coming out of their ears. But, today they agree that it created in them a love for nature and the environment which is so central in these times.
The other is a love of books. I really did spoil them with books. Even today, they know that money is on tap if they say, saw that great book at Crossword or Landmark; and the bill is footed, in addition to the regular pocket money. Their grouse then, which they have now withdrawn, is that too often I bought them the boring classics instead of the glam stuff that caught their eye. It is a great happiness in retirement to have great classics strewn around the house, which you had missed out on earlier but can now catch up with, courtesy the children’s own collections.
As my wife and I fought over where to go, our son who was on vacation laughed and regretted our daughter was not there so that the two of them could form a strong team to rib the two of us over our long-fighting way of life. As our son talked with us and kept consulting his sister over the cellphone and ribbed us through and through, I realised that they both had developed a fine sense of humour.
This I have to say. Stay single if you like. But if there are going to be children, tie the knot and fight like hell to keep it tied. There is no better world in which to bring up the next generation.