Disposable relationships

Disposable relationships

Suddenly the 7th commandment is the most discussed topic in India today - thanks to karan Johar and his Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna. You switch on the television and Tarot card reader Sunita declares "everyone cheats" and Shahrukh Khan takes on a relationship expert on the intricacies of love and marriage. You go to a party and before you know people are taking sides on whether extra marital relationships are justified or not. Every 5th Indian blog you read has a take on this or at least touches on the issue in passing.

Men have been cheating on their wives from time immemorial and in India they have done it openly and come back and looked their family straight in the eye as if it is no big deal.So why this sudden urgency and panic like the outbreak of a fatal infection? Aha....a married WOMAN is involved here - what will happen to our morals and social fabric and family structure if women start indulging in such things?After all the onus of holding up the family has been on the woman notwithstanding whatever the men have done. And this indoctrination of their need to preserve the society has been a way to ensure that they forgive their erring husbands all their misbehaviour and still fast and pray for their logevity and treat them as devta. They were not supposed to say 'enough is enough" and say "Alvida" but hang on and on and on stupidly and hope for a better husband in the next birth.

Now here is Big B himself telling a woman to go and find her happiness with another man - God sanctioning Sin! So people are wringing their hands worried about women quoting the Big B and going in search of happiness or better men. That marriage is no longer the end of one's search and fatalistic acceptance of one's partner can no longer be taken for granted. Marriage is no longer a commitment but a convenient arrangement until the next best thing arrives in your life.

I guess until now, adultery by women has not been an issue as opportunities for discreet indulgence in it have been limited. That is no longer the case with so many distant marriages and women spending longer hours at workplace with colleagues. Lifestyles of people have changed, attitude to issues like marriage and commitment are changing and the extent of influence that the norms of society can have on the upwardly mobile sections of young people is reducing.

I think ultimately you cannot prevent adultery by social sanction or even by law. It can only be prevented from within, through exercise of free will. If people are committed to their partners, to their family, they will refrain from indulgence in the face of any temptation. If the commitment is not there, any slight reason is enough.
Do today's young have a problem of commitment? (I am excluding the older generation here because in any case they still worry about societal acceptance which acts as a great deterrent against such temptation.)
or is it the feeling that everyone has one life and hence should make the most of it - so you go running from one thing to the other in an eternal search for what is better as your status in life improves? I suppose even the latter boils down again to a lack of commitment. Are we becoming less inclined to invest our energies in staying together and weathering problems and prefer opting out as the easier and more convenient solution?

Are we also on the way to becoming "disposing" - inclined to dispose of anything that no longer serves our purpose because we have found a newer, better model? Has this tendency towards possessions seeped slowly into the way we manage our relationships too?