The
other day I watched a movie named “The Intern”. After a few days I ran it
again; less because of legendary actor Robert De Niro and charming Anne
Hathaway, more because of the lovely, entertaining and gripping script. It’s
all about a single (widower, in fact) 70-years old retired gentleman trying
desperately to live a lively life through making himself engaged in various
activities. Luckily he intercepts a flyer sticking on a wall regarding some
senior intern positions in some company. He applies, gets the job and during the
course of working there helps his boss, a 24-years old beautiful married girl, in
overcoming her ever expanding office woes as well as helping save her married
life.
Let’s recapture a moment from “The Intern”.
Boss
Girl: Let’s talk about your wife
The
Intern: She was lovely
Girl:
Long marriage?
Intern:
Not long enough. Only 42 years!
So how long is your age of married life? At my age, crossing into upper 50s we all ought to have spent more or less 25 years of our married life. It’s been a pretty long span. While looking back at this point in time, it appears to have passed in a flash. We never realized during all this long period of life that when we were concentrating relentlessly to improving our quality of life; solving our everyday issues, raising children, struggling to settle down, taking care of ageing parents, and maintaining relations with extended family members and friends, etc., the time never stopped and the clock kept ticking away.
We have had tough times; our past speaks of perseverance and endeavors to realization of targeted goals in order to reap and comb up the luxuries of life. And while we chased down our dreams we forgot or ignored to fare well with our spouses all along. These ladies deserved our better treatment, more than our luxuries. Fulfilling their needs and demands were important but that’s not all we were expected to do only. Spouses are not machines or robots doing chores from dawn to dusk, and in between when we get together we keep discussing the issues and problems that have been solved and those that are still lingering on. Instead of showing and expressing our love and care we prefer hitting the bed to fall asleep instantly leaving them despised, frustrated, and insomniac.
Men are an ungrateful entity. Some of you may disagree over my “sweeping statement” but it remains the harsh reality that while wives remain faithful, truthful, sincere and romancing with their respective husbands, the creed known as husbands takes their better halves for granted. We always remain friendly, helping and throwing our crooked smiles to all other ladies coming in contact with us sans our spouses. Allow me to confess that having mere religious liberty to marry four women at any single time in our life gives us an unparalleled domination over our wives to dictate rules of married life games, indirectly leading to threatening and emotional blackmailing. We may infrequently express to our wives our aspiration of marrying other women while sporting a farcical smile on our faces but deep down within us the very desire of going for second marriage keeps kindling, never subsiding.
Nevertheless, after being together for decades, the loving, friendlier or mere pulling-on relationship between husband and wife gets stronger naturally. They become habitual of their habits and routines. Things flow at ease between them, with minimal arguments and almost negligible disputes. They know each other’s ailments and remain vigilant of medicines-taking times, eating behaviors, sweating smells, sleeping patterns, snoring absorbing/avoiding techniques and most importantly, when to demonstrate patience.
The long bond between the spouses makes them inseparable albeit death. Perhaps, death of the partner is the moment when the other undergoes a revelation that the life spent together has been cut short by nature too early, and that living a lonely rest-of-the-life at the old age would be the most toughest and difficult thing ever to happen.
What
will happen to our age group after 15 years from now? Those who do not survive
need not worry about it. The couples surviving till that time would be the
luckiest and loveliest, and those without having their spouses living around by
2030 should be seeking senior intern job positions!
