In recent days I hear statements like ‘Friendship is independent of likes and dislikes’, ‘Love is independent of compatibility’, ‘Physical relationship is independent of marriage’, ‘Intelligence is independent of worldly wisdom’, ‘Art is independent of aesthetics’, ‘Politics is independent of character’ to cite a few. But none says ‘success is independent of talents’ because we have many in the public who keep enjoying success by sheer luck.

Well, but, all these statements make me only more confused about life and relationships; please note that here I mean ‘relationship’ not with respect to sex. I mean just any relationship per se.

But, the word ‘independent’ has become so strong in the arguments as every individual wants to be independent because India is the largest democracy in the whole world.

I first try to analyze myself and my interactions with people around me. Unfortunately, the more I do the analysis, the more I become wary about my interactions. It is true that no two opinions are the same and they need not be also. First let me take friendship. How two persons who have no common interest become friends? I look into the lists of friends from different age groups. To  my surprise, it is a mixed group. We don’t share not many things in common. It is strange but true because there were changes in the likes and dislikes in the course of time but somehow the friendship is sustained on some flimsy threads. I know it will break in the coming days. ‘Compatibility’ is a stronger deciding factor in love, in my opinion. In the absence of compatibility in the name of ‘love’ what one does is compromise of sacrifice. That is the bitter truth. Again, Indian marriages endured to a great extent in the past and present because several social and financial reasons but a section of newgen folk just snapping it nowadays.

Premarital sex has become a very common thing in the present milieu. So marriages carry more of business value and security issues than anything else. It cannot be blamed as everyone is becoming more practical, independent and materialistic. Intelligence? Yes. It is true that worldly wisdom is something different from intelligence. If someone has it in their cerebrum they are fortunate. Nevertheless, in my opinion, life is a game; one should know how to play fair enough; not that you can be successful and happy. That is different, sorry, independent of all these.

To be honest, everything is invisibly interdependent. What we do are lots of compromises, adjustments, practices, lies and pretensions.

If not anything, hypocrisy is definitely a major quality of Indian culture! Perhaps, every culture.