I have often cribbed on my blog in recent times that there is too much outrage out there, and there is too heightened a sense of political correctness nowadays. If you were to say something even remotely politically incorrect, the social media hordes will be upon you. This has implications in terms of public policy, in that a lot of people don’t say what they’re going to do, and they act (in terms of voting for Trump, for example) the whole world is surprised.
Anyway, leaving the larger world aside, I sometimes delight in the fact that Pinky and I first made our connection in the realms of political incorrectness. She has told me that when she first stumbled upon this blog (its predecessor, rather) in 2006, there were two posts that she liked.
The first one was a two-liner. I’m reproducing it in its entirety here.
noticed a funny thing at the loo in office today. a number of people tie their janavaaras (sacred thread) around their ears while peeing or crapping!!
The second was about what one looked for in a wife. It has all the ingredients to raise the heckles of politically correct social media hecklers nowadays.
It was a year and a half later that we reconnected (we’d initially connected after I’d written the above two posts). This time, a challenge that Pinky set me resulted in me reaching her blog. This is the post that I landed up at. Again has all the ingredients of generating outrage. Also check the comment that I’ve left there (that was my way of telling Pinky I’d “won” a challenge she’d set for me).
Anyway, a decade has gone by and we’re both older and wiser, so we wouldn’t talk about outright politically incorrect things. Yet, given the way we started off, I guess the sense we got is that nothing is taboo between us, and we can talk about just about anything. And that’s an awesome feeling to have because there is now no reason for us to hide anything from each other.
One thing marriage does to you is that you become each other’s closest confidantes. So if there is something that you think you cannot talk to your partner about, then it automatically means that you either keep that thing to yourself or look elsewhere to talk about it. Either way, it is a problem, and in attempts to cover up, the part of your lives that you don’t share with each other simply grows.
If nothing is taboo, on the other hand, it means that you can talk your way out of every disagreement, discuss about everything, and basically find a graceful solution to any fights. And life this way is so much better than a situation where you have to constantly be wary of offending the person you are closest to!
So in this sense again, I’m damn happy to have found Pinky, whom I can tell just about anything to. She might get occasionally pissed off (in case I’m cribbing about her, or someone else close to her), but we always end up having a conversation. And that makes both of us feel better, and each time we have this kind of a conversation, we come a little bit closer!
One downside of this approach, of course, is that if there are times when I put NED to some conversation, she thinks I’m being evasive, and the fact that I’m not being open ends up bringing friction! But then we know very well how to gracefully resolve fights!
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