Walking home to lunch I become aware that the breeze that is blowing still has the morning's chill. Down south Fall creeps upon us, we usually don't see the fiery displays of reds, yellows and golds that foilage puts on show in the northern states. So to sense the season's chage one has to be more aware, one has to read the signs. Here leaves are dropping in ones and twos, ivy is becoming brown at the edges, the last blooms of the season are on the rose bushes that form the fence of a certain house on the street I walk up and down twice a day.

I took a moment to watch fish, red in color, swimming in circles around the pool in the front yard of the same house. Elsewhere a terracota Buddha, baked clay that is now almost the color of wood, sits under a magnolia tree, in a meditative posture,a smile of bliss on his face. My feet impercetiably stop for a moment to gaze at him. The ground beneath my feet is covered with pine needles and pine cones. A small bird flits from tree to tree. Up ahead beyond the chain link fences of an abandoned gas station hundreds of minatures suns, yellow wild flowers, dance a tango with the big sun sailing by in the blue noon day sky.

And I move away in ever widening circles of stillness, travelling from the inner shell to the outer bodies of a Russian doll set, self similar dolls contained within each bigger body.

This evening while I was sitting in the classroom waiting for undergrads to turn up to ask questions on stuff I did in class 8, I had all these thoughts coming to me, almost like an obsessive speech pattern. I started scribbling them down on paper. Since it was a flow of consciousness thing I have decided to used a Native American term to describe it, chautauqua.

And usually as these things go, the topic that floats to the top of the head is that which one has been thinking about a lot, which in my case has been "relationships". So I am going to talk about that a little here. Of course since most of the words that follow are my thoughts, they would be colored by my prejudices, my world views etc. However I believe in the power of learning and I have come to realize the importance of this kind of learning. If learning is something that is supposed to make us better or live our lives better, than it is a great folly not to learn these kind of "soft" skills, given that we encounter pathological problems in this arena, almost like a disease.

The first thought that came to my mind was: WHY? If someone came and told us "Honey, you are going to do something that can potentially have a powerful effect over you" I am sure most of us are going to take a step back and think about it, and surely ask the question, why do I want to do this? But clearly it is evident that most of us don't have transparent and clear cut motives behinds what we usually end up doing especially relationships wise.

Why do we want to have a relationship? Rather than finding out why, we jump in blindly and end up more often than not, getting swept away. This is more evident when we see that we keep things in a "dating state of mind" as if that in itself is a good enough answer to why. Years pass and people still keep dating because they are not sure. The end result more misery, given and taken. I think it’s high time we first pose and answer the question,” why do we want to date?” before we date. Is it not to be lonely, is it to have 'fun', is it for sex, is it to socialize or is it to find a life partner?

I think clearly doing such an exercise before we jump in, is prudent mainly because of two reasons: one we can get what we want if we know what we want i.e. find people with complimentary interests and two we can be "fair" to the other person. For example if we just want to have 'fun' and we know that we just want to have 'fun' then we wouldn't date someone who has a different reason for being in this business. But say, we don't clarify the why and just go along for the ride, at some point we may want to get off, usually when it is no longer "fun" then chances of hurting the other person are very high and I think most of us don’t want to that.

On a tangential track I think this maybe is one reason why, arranged marriages in India "work out" well for the WHY is very clear and there is no madness involved in beating one another up because of divergent motives behind getting into the "Setup". Both of folks know that they are in it for the long run and they have to work it out.

Then the second most important thought I had is what I would call the "deal breakers" and how we act or react to those. A deal breaker is usually a trait or a quality or something that the other person may or may not have but that which you don’t / do want them to have. Usually I think, we don't know what all our deal breakers are up front but we do get to know these pretty soon, 2 or 3 months into the "game". Then the question we have to very very honestly answer is can we resolve them. I have realized if either of the partners has a problem with such a deal breaker ignoring it will only make it worse. Since relationships can be thought of (only at a level) as transactions in time and emotions, it doesn't make sense to keep investing into a "deal" that has a built in deal breaker that either of the folks can't live with.

In my life I have faced one big deal breaker twice, "parental approval". And in both cases I was responsible for ignoring it hoping that it would go away, it would resolve itself. The end result was a lot of heartache. When I started looking at other relationships that have unraveled I see that usually there is one critical factor that was the deal breaker. To cite a few others: religion, caste, more parental approval business etc. This begs the question what should one do when we face a deal breaker. To that the only thing that appears logical is know if you can solve it or if you can't. If you can't run like crazy. If you can you can. For a change there is no trying involved.

I think that is it for now.

Moral of the story: Look before you leap!!

Thank you for reading. More to follow.