My Theory of Spaces

Its a lazy Saturday morning today..... the maids have left, having done their jobs & wifey is not around - gone to Mumbai and only returning tomorrow.....

Its one of those rare "spaces" I get in my crowded life..... and I am feeling good :-)...... the cell phone has not rung since morning (if it has a life of its own, I am sure the poor guy looks forward to weekends too..... or perhaps if it has a paranoid personality, must be feeling ditched & neglected ?..... personally i think hes an over pampered guy - always hand carried, kept close to heart (in my shirt pocket)..... and never out of sight for the rest of the day)..... whenever it is that i retire (i hope by 40).... i make a promise to myself not to carry a cell around. Is that possible ?.... Dad says YES...:-)

Coming back to "spaces"..... back in college, the days i was wooing my wife - i still held onto my concept of needing my own space - until the day i got a sermon on what it means to being a couple from madam wife. I was not too convinced, but since there were bigger priorities at that time, i decided to lose that argument. Sometime back, I felt so vindicated when I was reading Kahlil Gibran who said :

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

I bookmarked it - and went back to my wife with it. Now, my wife & I - we are as different from each other as chalk and cheese. She went berserk laughing at the "winds of heaven" dancing between us - and the "moving sea" ...... the rest of that week, i had to hear out a lot about the different kinds of winds calling out to me. Bad idea. But good learning : When you are trying to convince someone, speak the language the person appreciates.

And then there was this other time when I got into one of my compulsive moods to change the layout of everything at home. After a few hours work - as we looked at the final product again, I said : "Now, thats so cool, I love these spaces".... slightly stressing on the last word. I got a patented "look" reserved for our maids during bad-behaviour time. And then I heard a sermon on how I had conned her into not buying anything for the house under the guise of minimalism. (For the record - I genuinely love minimalism). Thank God we were not in Jaipur that day I thought - else half our house would have had Rajasthani folk items hanging around everywhere - and perhaps even our sofa would have made way for a more ethnic (read RED, full of beads & glasses) pillows & bedding arrangement on the floor. Again, bad idea. Big mouth. But good learning : Don't try to be smart - around sensitive topics.

One of my traits - that has helped me in my professional life i think, is that I am tenacious. I don't give up so easily. So, it was one of those days when both of us were in a really really good mood, we were driving up to Almora - and I thought I should try again. But this time instead of tongue-in-cheek smartness or philosophy, I thought I will use logic. "You know the difference between India & Singapore ?" I asked rhetorically. "Too many people here". "Too much density". "Just look while we are driving - how nice it is to have so much of a gap between the vehicle in front". "You know - even in music, its the gaps, the silence between two strings - that makes the difference"....."Yep" she said - "Good progress" I thought. "Even in language - just imagine what would have happened if there were no commas or full stops"..... just then my experienced eye thought I caught the beginning or hint of a smile curving up her lips. "So", she said, "Should we turn off the music, so that we have some..... spaces ?"..... my early warning systems went off : the ruse had been detected. "If the enemy detects your advance - chances of winning low" says old chinese saying. I was far too experienced a husband to fall for this one. This time, bad luck. Topic change. But good learning : There are some arguments that you can never win. And there are some people you can never convince over a particular issue.

There is this anecdote about a Chinese Master that comes to mind. As he was walking up a path, there was a raging bull in his way. Everyone around thought he would use his mastery to tame the bull. The Master however walked around the bull - and went on. The point is, I think : Very often, its not really important to win an argument or get our point of view accepted.

Today I have my "space".... and I will enjoy it & live it when I have it. I will update my blogs, I will pamper myself at the saloon, I will get a Shiatsu done, I will go for a long walk in the evening. I will enjoy the silence.

Just a disclaimer - and something I have learnt from experience : Spaces are critical to have - but too much of spaces, makes a wall look bare, makes music into one of those foreign orchestras (where you are not sure when to begin clapping), makes a city look like Dubai (empty & desolate at times), makes for bad sentences - and makes relationships unbearably lonely.