I was in conversation earlier today with a dear friend—one whose husband, incidentally, is my companion at the gymnasium, though geography has conspired to keep us apart more than we would like. I divide my time between London and Bangalore; he between Dubai and Bangalore. Our paths, once more regular, have become transitory.
Now, he is a man of formidable resolve—a Christian by faith, and a self-made gentleman who rose to affluence not by inheritance but by sheer vigour of will and mind. She, by contrast, was born into a lineage steeped in the old world’s quiet opulence—Muslim by heritage, and raised amid the grace of generational wealth. Their union, born of youthful affection in the days of school uniforms and forbidden notes, had the makings of poetry—two souls who defied familial resistance and wove a life together across two decades, raising two daughters under what once seemed a canopy of enduring love.
But time, that subtle thief of certainties, has other ways. I was dismayed to learn that they have now filed for divorce. The unravelling, I gather, did not arrive as a storm but as a slow disintegration—a dissolution more tectonic than tempestuous. For over ten years, they have inhabited a house where love had long ceased to sing. Now, as often follows when affection dies quietly, what remains is the debris—ashes of intimacy, and the impending tedium of legal partitions: estates, entitlements, and the melancholy arithmetic of endings.
Let us be clear—this is not a tale of material pressure. Both are fortified by sufficient wealth to render financial constraint irrelevant. Nor is this a saga of acrimony. She bears no grievance, and he, it seems, simply finds himself dulled by the repetition of her presence. She understands, almost with philosophical resignation, that love, like any human construct, can suffer erosion, and even extinction.
What pains her is not the loss of romance but the collateral damage—the children. She never desired motherhood, and expressed so from the start. Yet life, with its inscrutable humour, led them to bring two beautiful souls into the world. And now she fears, rightly so, that if this rupture is not handled with maturity and care, it might leave scars on those young hearts that could outlast even the most generous settlement.
This brings me to my own reflections—not born out of bitterness or confusion, nor as some would ignorantly speculate, from damaged affections, or misplaced desires. I am not confused. I am not escapist. I am not broken. I am certainly not homosexual, fluid, or whatever else the world, in its idle amusement, would seek to label me. I am simply someone who values—above all else—my clarity, my peace, and my freedom. I would rather walk alone in the truth of who I am than be bound by the folly of convention or the expectations of others.
One must, before entering the covenant of marriage, understand the weight of what one is choosing—not merely for oneself, but for the woman, the children (should there be any), and the wider constellation of lives affected by that union. The world is quick to preach that marriage is a balm for all woes; parents speak of it as if it were salvation, and society parrots the phrase “settle down” as though it were synonymous with moral triumph. But I say: there is no “norm” except the one a man or woman freely chooses for himself or herself.
If I am ever to be with a woman, it will be by choice, not compulsion—not because society demands it, nor because family or friends cast disapproving glances. I am answerable to my conscience, and to it alone. I do not live to appease the world; I live to honour the still voice within that knows what peace truly means.
And here is a truth I daresay most would rather leave unspoken: ask ten couples if they would part ways with their partners were it not for the gaze of society, and I dare say eight, perhaps nine, would whisper “yes.” We are a generation that stays not out of love, but out of fear—of judgment, of loneliness, of perceived failure.
So when I consider all this, I do not feel sorrowful for having refrained from diving headlong into a pool whose depths I had not measured. I know myself too well to believe I have not the time or the inclination to wrestle with the unnecessary wounds of heartbreak, nor the slow torment of rebuilding from a ruin I could have avoided.
Madness, you ask? Perhaps, to those who judge from a distance. They may think me odd or difficult to comprehend, and they are entitled to their illusions. But I—within the fortress of my mind—know that I am neither mad nor lost. I am, rather, deliberate. I am precise. I am clear-eyed, and above all, free. And in a world drunk on pretence, that is an uncommon and upright sanity.
