On Dating

Three things torment people who are otherwise not tormented - 1. Boredom, 2. Loneliness, and 3. Memories.

If we take care of the first two, the last one takes care of itself. You forget nothing, but you learn to live with it.

Boredom is a petty emotion. It is a sign of sloth, mental as well as physical. And sloth is a sickness that can not be cured by bed rest. It is cured only by activity, which is followed by an interest (in that activity) and enthusiasm, the antithesis of boredom.

A bored person is an empty person who craves for something to fill his emptiness, someone to entertain him. He lacks imagination. A bored person feels lonely (as long as he is alone*) and desperate. So 'something' could be anything, and 'someone' could be anyone. Boredom is promiscuous; it lacks character.

On the other hand, a lonely person feels lonely, but not bored. He sometimes gets bored only in company of boring people, but not in isolation, not in his own company. Loneliness is not empty; on the contrary, loneliness is a longing to share. It is a longing to share all that have been earned in long lonely nights - the stuff poetry is made of. It is a longing to share bright thoughts and stupid dreams with someone who can understand. It is a painful longing to express, to be understood, to love, and to be loved.

Loneliness is the stinging tail of solitude. It is painful, but it has passion, it has patience, and it has character. It is a choice that few deserve and fewer make.

But, after all, being lonely hurts. And there is nothing noble in it.

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Loneliness is a congenital problem, but it has been further aggravated by modern lifestyle. How?

With the number of channels on TV, and the types of personalities have multiplied manifold in recent times. We are what we see. We are what we choose. Among so many options kept on shelves, we choose some at the cost of many others, knowingly or otherwise. And we know little about the options we don't choose, and we know little about the people who choose them. In case we do know, we look down on them. And in case we look up to them, we hold a grudge against them because we have to look up to them. They are either strangers to us, or adversaries.

It sounds complicated, because it is complicated. We are living in complicated times. The profusion of options in market has brought the finer elements of our personalities on fore. And we link our ego with the things we consume. We have bar-coded ourselves. We talk about Identity. We talk about Taste. And these things matter to us like never before.

I have already talked about Identity in my earlier posts. The pursuit of identity ends in a frozen isolation. And taste takes a toll on our tolerance. Taste comes in pair, the other being distaste. Taste means judgment, and discrimination. I have a taste for old Hindi film melodies, and I can not stand rock at all. My hatred to noise is uncompromising, and unconditional. Worse, I am helpless in my hatred. And that hardly makes me very friendly to my friends.

I mean to say that no matter how cosmopolitan we may be, our personalities are more defined, and more confined, than those of our parents. And that makes us lonelier than they were. This situation is not helped by other things, like cut-throat competition, aggression, ambition, and our all-consuming working hours. We stay away from our family, we never see our neighbors except in morning (in the parking lot), and our interaction with our colleagues is strained by professional discretion.

And then nights come with a darkness stretched all over. Never mind the networking, but when we want to talk, we hardly find anyone in our entire contacts list. I have seen myself browsing through my list and then tossing the phone on bed in frustration. I have realized that cell phone is useless when we really feel like talking.

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Since modernity is inescapable, the antithesis of loneliness can only be found within the same set of premises.

I will come directly to the point. It's late and I've to sleep to wake up to go to office.

A few days back the topic of dating popped up, and it was met with disapproval. I wondered what's wrong in it?

Dating is a western concept, isn't?

True, it is. But then so many things are. So much so that it is hard to say what is ours and what is not. In a mixed (and messed-up) culture like ours, what is ours anyway? Considering our work-style, fun-style, and the whole lifestyle, the argument against foreign doesn't hold too much of a relevance.

At the same time that does not mean that we should run after everything exotic. That would be equally idiotic. The point is - that is not relevant here.

The point is - things change with time, and values that are incompatible with lifestyle will be idealized, and idolized, but will not be adopted. Suppressed by society, individuals will resort to corruption, deceit, hypocrisy, and perversion. Don't we see this happening everywhere?

Dating - hunting women, isn't?

That's not the right word. It can not be denied that there is some youthful playfulness in dating, but youth can be playful without being disgusting and malicious. Besides, youthful playfulness is better than middle-age perversion. It is better than post-marriage regret and breaking-up of family. And for us Indians, nothing can be more disastrous than that.

Dating just means meeting a person of opposite sex to see if it can work out. Since we are different people, with different values, taste, and aspirations, it is not easy for us to bump into equally different person, especially in our busy everyday life. And so it is not easy for us to step into a committed relationship, which requires certain compatibility to keep two people together in this crazy age of liberation. Result -- loneliness.

It's time dating is taken seriously by young urban India, and by their parents. It's time it is not just tolerated, but understood. It's time it is allowed, encouraged, and institutionalized by our society. Let's not be sneaky about our most compelling desire - the desire for a human touch. Dating can solve some of our problems if it is carried out properly. I think its time has arrived.



* which means he does not feel lonely. A bored person confuses boredom with loneliness.