35 years on, the romance stays fragrant!

True companionship is about loving someone continuously – no matter what the circumstances are.

7-min read

I make good coffee these days.

This is a new skill that I learnt from my soulmate Vaani just a couple of years ago. The coffee I make does not taste as great as the one Vaani makes though. But on some days, I am pretty close to getting the flavor, the temperature, the aeration and the rich frothy presentation just right!

Interestingly, I met Vaani for the first time on October 27, 1987; that was at the college we both attended. So, later this month, we will complete 35 years of knowing each other.

And beautifully, magically, our romance has stayed fragrant over all these years.

No, it’s not only making good coffee that has helped keep our romance fragrant. Actually, to tell you the truth, for the longest time, I did not quite get into our kitchen at all. I was not even always around to be involved with many things on the home front. I was busy building a career and was later obsessed with growing our business. 

Yet, over the years, as Vaani and I know it, we have stayed loving. Which is, we did not just fall in love in end-1987; we have stayed loving – in the present continuous – ever since.

Now, we have been married for close to 34 years. But it is also not the marriage that keeps us together. It is our companionship. It is our choice to stay loving that has helped us remain soulmates.

In this time, we have faced three major crises. Of these three, we are still enduring two: A crippling bankruptcy, for the last 16 years; and another, a serious situation that we wish to keep private, for a few years now.  

Even so, despite all the upheavals in our Life, our companionship has only grown stronger. And that is because we continue to relate to each other.

Blending as soulmates

In the initial years of our companionship, when Vaani and I were much younger, our physical presence with each other surely mattered. We have kissed on public transport and have waited long spells for the other to join in at meal times. I remember, on my first overseas trip, to Tokyo in 1992, in an era when there was no WhatsApp or Facebook, I wept like a baby while calling Vaani over phone. I was missing her a lot. We have done a lot of interesting stuff together too – from celebrating atop the Eiffel Tower, to exploring New Delhi on foot, to curating memorable vacation experiences for ourselves as a family.

Over the years, we have transcended the physicality of our relationship. Also, for a long time now, we have been out of cash to gift each other things for wedding anniversaries and birthdays. But the intensity of longing and belonging between us has not diminished even a wee bit. We have blended as soulmates.

A celebratory spirit defines our companionship

These days, on some mornings, I wake Vaani up with hot, steaming, filter coffee. I help her with the dishes and with housekeeping chores. I enjoy removing the paint off her nails as much as she loves trimming my hair to give my near-bald pate a refined look. Importantly, we enjoy being with each other. We listen to old Bollywood songs together, exploring each composition and the lyrics, and sharing notes on them. We do the linen and laundry together. We shop for our weekly supply of groceries together too.

Our spirit of companionship, we realize, is celebratory. From the smallest of mundane tasks to the infrequent wins that come our way, everything gets celebrated. And, non-complainingly, we accept – and celebrate – our pain too.

This spirit of companionship has helped us beyond just surviving the enduring, tumultuous, bankruptcy that we continue to deal with. In fact, we are thriving. As the happynesswalas^TM, we are living a Life of purpose: Inspiring ‘Happyness’^TM! As a couple, our relationship transcends the personal space. We complement each other as business partners too. We are dogged in our collective effort to turn around our business and financial fortunes. Our running between the wickets is remarkable; it is the principal reason why, against the odds, we are still in the game! Clearly, our romance is fragrant despite the circumstances.

Because of the bankruptcy, everything material has been taken away from us – work, business, money, cars, gold jewelry, investments…every thing has gone away. We haven’t even been able to buy each other birthday or anniversary gifts during the last 16 years. Yet, despite the excruciating circumstances, between spells of pennilessness and those few times of finding some work and money, we have learnt to count on each other for strength.

Importantly, we accept whatever comes our way. Whatever we can do, to cope with the challenges that we are faced with, is done well, to the best of our abilities. We give everything our 100% – together! We both have learnt the fine art of flowing with Life.

Just a few years ago, when I told Vaani that I was feeling bad that I had never gifted her a ring, she said, playfully: “Okay, gift me a pumpkin!” So I went over to the street market around the Mylapore tank in Chennai and got her a pumpkin. Just where the street hawker sat, there was a small store that sold fancy, fake, ornaments. I bought Vaani a rather cute imitation ring for ₹100. When I got home, I stuck the ring into the pumpkin. I then went down on one knee and presented my “gift” to Vaani! We both laughed, hugged and kissed each other. In another year, again, unable to find money to gift ourselves something for an anniversary, we leveraged an innovative offering, My Stamp, from India Post. We had stamps issued with our pictures on them for a small fee! It was a low-budget idea. But it was a very memorable way to celebrate!

The pumpkin-ring gift!

The AVIS-Vaani ‘My Stamp’ from India Post!

And there have been instances when all we have done is to sit quietly; processing all the pain that has been heaped on us by Life. I have often felt Gulzar’s lyrics from Aandhi (1975) come alive in those moments: “Jee mein aata hai, tere daaman mein, sar chupa ke hum, rotey rahein, rotey rahein…!” (I feel like crying endlessly, burying my head in your bosom!”) Even so, those tender moments have always been a quiet celebration – of our being there for each other!

Disagree, differ; but never say: “I told you so!”

Surely, Vaani and I sometimes disagree with each other. On what we must do with a situation we are dealing with. Or over an opinion we may have. But we have always followed a simple, unstated, principle between us: We never tell each other, “I told you so!” Which is, we may differ on approaches and views, but when we move forward, we are together in it. When a decision that one of us has taken misfires, we don’t display any one-upmanship or indulge in blame games. Now, that is a unique quality that we share as a couple. That’s how we have been able to face what Life has thrown at us. That’s how we have hung on to each other on this incredible roller-coaster ride that we are on.

A marriage often places an unnecessary full stop in a relationship

Vaani and I have both discovered that true companionship is about loving someone continuously. It goes beyond just providing and protecting. It is about being there, no matter what happens. It is about being non-judgmental. Therefore, to build and sustain a great, happy relationship, you don’t actually need a marriage as a social contract, you need companionship.

When people struggle in a relationship or in a marriage, I believe that they are essentially missing the companionship, that once was, between them. They may be in a relationship between them. But are they still relating to each other? When the relating is not there anymore, the relationship too is not relevant. It has perhaps been dead a long time ago!

That’s why people drift apart after falling in love and getting married because they have subconsciously compartmentalized their lives – one part that was before the marriage and the other part that is after the marriage. So, in essence, the event of a marriage places a full stop in a relationship. It pronounces the end of one phase of the relationship and begins another. This full stop is totally unnecessary.

Being happy being with each other

The truth about Life is that everything new, over time, will start seeming and feeling old. Also, how people look and how they – and others – feel about their physical appearance surely changes with age. With the passage of time, and thanks to the upheavals of everyday Life, romance does end up receiving lower priority. Every couple has to face this brutal reality. You see, the courtship is now over, and the marriage is done and dusted. That’s why people who fall in love, fall out of love too.

But what if you were to imagine that the marriage never took place? Won’t the loving be continuous then?

Life’s beauty lies in staying loving…in the present continuous, irrespective of the circumstances.

That’s the way Vaani and I treat our Life. We married to fulfil societal norms that were more pronounced back then. Period. But we haven’t settled for having fallen in love and married. In fact, we never see our marriage as a defining, epochal, event. Instead, we have let our companionship thrive. Our loving remains ongoing. And we both continue to rise in love. This is why we are happy being with each other!

Vaani and AVIS, December 2018.

The key to Happiness is to never let marriage place a full stop in your relating, your loving. Treat marriage as just another date in your courtship calendar. Then the journey together, no matter what the circumstances you both are faced with, will be a continuous, never-ending, celebration!

And the romance, well, will always remain fragrant!

Additional, relevant, links:

• Rise In Love  – a 2015-documentary, made by a young filmmaker Shalu C. While focusing on the journey of Vaani and AVIS, the film explores how love thrives in the face of adversity. Viewing time: 30.18 minutes.
• Fall Like A Rose Petal  – AVIS’ first book. It is the true story of AVIS’ and Vaani’s Life. It captures learnings from the excruciating, fascinating, Life-changing, experience – a crippling bankruptcy – that they are still going through.
• Click here to know more about the happynesswalas^TM, Vaani and AVIS.
• If you wish to seek Vaani’s and AVIS’ perspectives on a Life challenge you are faced with, please reach out here – Let’s Talk Happyness^TM!

Live-in, be BFFs, make lots of love, have children – do you really need to marry for doing all this?

Marriage is a hollow, irrelevant institution – it is perhaps the singular cause of gender inequality.

Last night, over dinner, Vaani and I had an interesting conversation with a friend’s daughter. We talked about marriage – and its increasing irrelevance.

This young lady is in a long-distance relationship. Her boyfriend comes from an affluent, conservative family. The boy’s parents are keen to have the engagement done now and the wedding sometime next summer. The young lady is not sure what she must do. She is wary of walking into a family which does not believe in the bahu, the daughter-in-law, following her own bliss and career. The girl’s brother is advising the couple not to rush into a marriage. His view: “Understanding each other is very critical before you end up in a marriage.”

I agree with him. In fact, although Vaani and I are married, I have come to see marriage as a totally avoidable practice. Here’s why I feel so – and this is what I shared with the young lady too last night.

In the garb of according societal approval and fulfilling religious norms, marriage actually, unnecessarily, limits Life between two people. Clearly, the reason why two people relate to each other for long periods of time is not because they are married. It is because there’s a friendship between them, they understand each other and are willing to be non-judgmental about each other despite the circumstances. This relating is continuous, and is never limited by gender, class, religion, nationality or language. Of course, to build and sustain this companionship, two people need not be necessarily married. On the other side of this view, people can stop relating to each other after being together for a considerable amount of time. It is very natural. But as we see all around us, it is only marriage that makes any divorce painful and messy. So, if you place societal requirements aside, marriage is irrelevant. What people do today while they are still in a marriage they can and will do even otherwise. They will either relate to each other and be great friends or they will grow out of liking each other and move on or they will stay together and have other relationships that will make them feel complete and fulfilled. But when they do all this without being married, they will do so while being a lot, lot more, happier.  Simply, they will experience total freedom and zero guilt in doing what they really want to do! If you examine society around you, there’s isn’t unputdownable evidence that supports the utility of marriage as a social contract – it has neither aided the building of great companionships nor has it prevented people from exploring Life outside of its framework. This is why, I believe, marriage is irrelevant.

The other problem that marriage has created is that it has, again unnecessarily, made a very basic human need, sex, appear illicit and salacious whenever it is indulged in outside of a marriage. This is outright ridiculous. As Osho, the Master, says, the bees, the birds, the fish, and every other species don’t find the act of having sex illicit. They do it freely. They don’t have any rules that promote monogamy and condemn polygamy. So, why are we humans outrageously supportive of this regressive framework called marriage that restricts free access to a basic human need, to a beautiful spiritual expression – sex?

Also, it is the imposition of the draconian code of conduct of marriage that has singularly led to gender inequality. This is particularly true in Indian society even though it is evident in several other cultures world-wide. Consider this: the moment she marries, a woman must serve the interests of the family, often at the cost of her career, her passion, her bliss. She must rear children. She must not step outside of the marriage, the relationship, even if she finds someone that she can relate to. But the man she married can do what he pleases, with whomever he chooses. And because she agreed to be subservient, and often just a doormat, if at all she dares to seek a divorce, she has to be at the mercy of her estranged husband and seek alimony for survival through an inert legal process, that’s always messy and emotionally draining! Doesn’t all this sound so stupid, so repulsive?

I would any day champion that people just develop great friendships while living together. If they grow out of liking each other, they can, and must, move on. And if they want to procreate and have children, let it be a mutual choice, not a necessity. Yes, for reasons like securing passports or buying material assets, if there must be a piece of legal documentation, let there be. But don’t get wedded to the legalese. The real contract is in the spirit of togetherness – of a friendship, of relating to each other, of enjoying each other, of giving and receiving, of always being there for each other, no matter what the circumstances are. As I share in my Book Fall Like A Rose Petal  and in the film Rise In Love  (that a young film-maker made to understand how the companionship between Vaani and me thrived in the face of adversity), Vaani and I are friends first and then a married couple. In fact, if I was meeting Vaani now, I would not have chosen to have a marriage. We would have lived-in together and would still be loving each other as much as we do now. Our marriage has not helped us stay together. Our friendship has.

So, my (unsolicited) advice to my children, Aashirwad and Aanchal, and to anyone wanting some perspective is this – marry only if you want to; please don’t marry because society or family wants you to. It is a meaningless, irrelevant, practice. Between being stuck in a relationship and being able to relate to each other no matter what, relating to each other is more valuable. Between your marriage and your happiness, obviously, happiness wins hands down any day, doesn’t it?!

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An inspiration in loving Life from ‘Anarkali’ – ‘…zindagi hai bewafaa, loot pyaar ka mazaa…’!

Go beyond the predictable and celebrate Life, love Life!

The other day, while addressing a bunch of students at a Medical College in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, I asked them: “How many of you are in love? How many of you have been in love?” Interestingly, no hands went up. It’s possible that they students were too shy to share openly or it’s also possible that they have not been in love yet. Whatever it was, I felt our social conditioning makes us look at love as something that is governed by age, gender and, sadly, also by economic criteria.

I feel if you are not in love you are not living. You may be existing. But you are not living, you are not alive. I am eternally in love. So, in the context of a romantic liaison, and companionship, I am in love with Vaani for over 29 years. But I am also in love with Life. I just find its inscrutability, its mystique, its challenges, its highs, its lows, it magic and its beauty irresistible. So, to me, love goes beyond the physical surely, it also goes beyond the love I feel for a soul-mate, or for my children, or a friend; love, as I have, is the ability to immerse yourself in the moment and celebrate it!

So I was delighted that the day after my Talk in Chittoor, at a friend’s Navarathri Golu party, another guest, the well-known singer Janani Madan, chose to sing Yeh Zindagi Usi Ki Hai  from Anarkali (1953, Nandlal Jaswantlal, Lata Mangeshkar, C.Ramachandra, Rajendra Krishan). Janani brought her own to this classic. She was simply brilliant. When she sang, “…zindagi hai bewafaa, loot pyaar ka mazaa…”, I was reminded of my questions to the students and of my own perspective on love. Rajendra Krishan was one of Hindi cinema’s most talented lyricists and writers. That one line sums up the attitude that we must bring to Life every single day –  “…zindagi hai bewafaa, loot pyaar ka mazaa…” meaning (loosely) “….Life is a traitor, it will let you down or end abruptly, so, steal the joy of love, make time to love, when you still have Life and are alive…”!

This is what I have come to believe in and live by. There is no better time than now to live fully. Immerse in the moment, love what is. Do only what you love and that will make you happy no matter what circumstances you are placed in. And of course, if you can love someone, be in love and rise in love, continuously, you can really, really celebrate Life!

Someone once told me that to be expressing love appeared to be phony and impractical. And I laughed off that observation. What is the point in being born human if you cannot live the Life you love, and love the Life you live, if you cannot love and be loved, if you cannot be loving whatever is? To me, this is what living means. If you are not living this way, loving, you are merely existing!

Un-label yourself and experience inner peace

Don’t attach importance to what others think of you. It never really matters.

A couple of days ago I got an email from someone who lives in Plano, Texas. This gentleman was prompted by YouTube to watch the film Rise In Love  that was made, on the companionship that Vaani and I have, by a younger film-maker Shalu who, after reading my Book Fall Like A Rose Petal (Westland) was inspired to explore how love thrives in the face of adversity. The gentleman wrote to ask how is it that I dared, with Vaani, to share our story of ‘failures’ so openly in a conservative socio-cultural environment like India, particularly in South-India? He wondered if we weren’t scared of the social stigma as a fall out of our being so open and sharing – of being bankrupt and of being seen as people who are losers in Life.

I totally appreciate the question and understand where it comes from. But, thanks to this experience, of our bankruptcy and failures (per the worldly definition), both Vaani and I have come to realize that what other people think of you has no bearing on your Life. It can’t and doesn’t make your Life tick. There is only one judge in the world and that is the one that looks back at you from the mirror. If you can be true to that one person that you see in the mirror daily, you seriously do not need to validate yourself anywhere else. I see Life only from what is. Yes, we made mistakes with the way we ran our business and our Life. Yes, we went bankrupt. Yes, we struggle without money. And work. These are indisputable facts. But just because all this is real, I am not going to let social labels of ‘failure’ or ‘loser’ stick to us. I treat everything now, praise or criticism, or worldly definitions of success and failure, whatever, as something that comes scribbled on a Post-It note, which the world tries to stick on me. And I simply peel it off me and chuck it away. That’s how I shed the grief, guilt and trauma, associated with my mother calling me a cheat (over our inability to repay loans taken from the family), and learned to move on. Vaani and I are very clear about our intention – we remain accountable and responsible for what we owe our 179 creditors. I don’t really care what people think our intention as long as we hold it sacrosanct between us. We have also discovered that when you wear your Life on your sleeve, a majority of the people who come into your Life are actually compassionate. It is only a minority that judges you and pins labels on you. Intelligence lies in choosing to ignore that judgmental minority, to un-label yourself, peel off and chuck away labels that have been stuck on you, and carry on living.

So, my learning is that it doesn’t matter what others think of you. Let them have their perceptions and let them form their opinions. You focus on living your Life the way you want to, being true to yourself and to the God within you.  

 

Reflections on Life, love and loving on a 27th Anniversary!

Companionship makes this short journey called Life beautiful!

Faqt Char Din Ki Zindagi Hai Yeh, Mere Humdum

Kisi Ko Saath Le Lena, Kisi Ke Saath Chal Dena

      –  Nida Fazli, Urdu Poet, 1938 ~ 2016

Today is my wedding anniversary with Vaani! 27 years may seem like a long time. But for Vaani and me, it is not.

Vaani & AVIS: 1988

For us, since we met in October 1987, these 28+ years of knowing each other and 27 years of living together, have always been a ‘happening’ time. It is always in the present continuous. The first meeting, the first date, the first gift, the first touch…none of these is an event of the past or a distant memory…everything seems like it is still happening to us. And that, I believe, is an incredible blessing!

Indeed, finding love in Life is a blessing. Loving someone is not about marrying that person. It is not about providing and protecting. It is about a special friendship. It is about being there, no matter what happens. In the initial years of knowing each other, when Vaani and I were much younger, our physical presence with each other surely mattered a lot. We have kissed each other on public transport and have waited long spells for the other to join at meal times. I remember on my first overseas trip, to Tokyo in 1991, in an era when there was no WhatsApp or Facebook, I wept like a baby while calling Vaani over phone; I was missing her a lot. With the years going by, I am delighted to share, that intensity of longing and belonging has not diminished even a wee bit. Yet, we seem to have transcended the physicality of our relationship. We have blended, and remain, as soul-mates.

Vaani & AVIS: 2008

To be sure, the past decade has been tumultuous for us as a family and as a couple. Everything material has been taken away from us – work, business, money, gadgets, cars, gold jewelery, investments, insurance….everything that we once owned has gone away. We haven’t even been able to buy each other anniversary gifts – something that’s considered normal and customary – these past few years, and this year too, because we can’t afford them! Yet, despite the excruciating circumstances of a painful bankruptcy, between spells of pennilessness and those few times of finding some work, or money, to keep our nose above water, we have learnt to count on each other’s strength. That strength, to me, is the key to our special friendship, to our companionship.

Labels such as spouse are restrictive – there’s an unnecessary social and legal context that they bring along. Companionship requires no approval or consent. To me Vaani is my best friend. Someone who, I know, will be there no matter what I do or how I look. And I am sure Vaani feels for me the same way too. Even so, it is not as if we don’t disagree or critique each other. We do. I have taken liberties with her – thrown stuff around the house in bouts of frustration or have sulked at times when I have not been able to solve or address the problems that we are faced with. But Vaani’s style of leadership has been very empowering. She has always given me the time and space to sort myself out. I am a year+ younger than she is, but she treats me like an equal. And that’s what good friendship is all about, isn’t it? We have followed a simple, unstated, principle all these years: we never tell each other ‘I told you so!’Which is, we may differ on approaches and views, but when we move forward, we are together in it. We don’t display any one-upmanship or indulge in blame games. That’s how we have been able to face what Life has thrown at us, that’s how we have hung on to each other on this incredible roller-coaster that we are on (much of it is chronicled in my Book ‘Fall Like A Rose Petal’/Westland, 2014; and in this film ‘Rise In Love’).

Vaani & AVIS: 2011

When I see so many relationships struggling around us, I feel that people are missing the companionship, that once was, between them. People drift apart from each other after falling in love and getting married because they have this tendency to subconsciously compartmentalize their lives – one part that was before the marriage and the other part that is after the marriage. So, in essence, the event of a marriage places a full stop; it pronounces the end of one phase of the relationship and begins another. This full stop is totally unnecessary. The truth about Life is that everything new, over time, will start seeming and feeling old. In the upheavals of everyday Life, therefore, romance does receive lower priority because the courtship is over, the marriage is done, dusted – and in some cases, sadly, dead too. That’s precisely why people who fall in love, fall out of love too. But what if you were to imagine that the marriage never took place? Won’t the loving be continuous then? That’s the way Vaani and I treat our Life – we married to fulfil social requirements, period. But we never see our marriage as a defining, epochal event. So, our companionship thrives; so, our loving is ongoing, it is flowing.

The key to great companionship is to never let marriage take the center stage. Treat marriage, if at all you must marry, like just another date in your courtship calendar. Then the journey together, no matter what the circumstances you both are faced with, will be a continuous, never-ending celebration!

"Rise In Love" – A film inspired by "Fall Like A Rose Petal"

In early 2008, AVIS Viswanathan and Vaani Anand – soul-mates, friends, husband-wife, business partners – were staring at a bankruptcy of their Firm. A series of business decisions had brought them to the brink of penury. AVIS wrote a Book “Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money” which was published by Westland in August 2014. The Book shares, through letters AVIS wrote to their two children, Aashirwad and Aanchal, the spiritual lessons that the family learnt through their Life-changing experience – of hopelessness, of fear, of court cases, of police complaints, of insolvency, of pennilessness. Also of faith, patience, love, companionship, abundance and soul. 

‘Rise In Love’ is a film made by a young film-making student Shalu C. She was inspired by AVIS’ Book and was keen to explore how “true love thrives in the face of adversity”. In a world ridden with dysfunctional relationships, Shalu discovers that a rare magic and chemistry between Vaani and AVIS has helped them both deal with their complex, numbing Life situation strongly, even as it has kept this small family of four together, despite a storm ravaging their material lives.

The film is based on a series of conversations Shalu had with Vaani and AVIS and with people who know them very well. It’s a film that teaches you to appreciate the beauty of companionship, that inspires you to be happy despite the circumstances, that tells why relating between people is more important than the relationship itself, that motivates you to face Life squarely and that shows you how you too can ‘rise in love’!

PS: This film is not a complete re-adaptation of AVIS’ Book nor does it attempt to portray all the challenges that Vaani and AVIS are faced with.