A Family break up after 37 years of marriage

Synopsis

It is a real life story of changing times and changing values in our society over the past seven decades which will also serve as 

It can be used as a Professional guide for future parents and their children .

My grandfather from my father’s side and my wife’s grandfather from her mother's side had become good friends and a beautiful relationship was started by them around 100 years ago .

Subsequently ,during 1954 , my father and my father in law became good friends , working in the post and telegraph department at almost the same levels .Their friendship continued till my parents' death in 1997 

I had known my wife from my childhood days but a liking grew between us when both of us became marriageable in 1977.

I was an extrovert, aggressive and a dynamic travelling salesman, very ambitious and smart but it made me quite authoritative and impatient to get ahead in my life .To a great extent I suffered because of my scruples and opinions ,having learnt from my parents ,my schools and the society , as to what is right and what is wrong .

I fought for what was right and always stood up for my beliefs but as a consequence ,I suffered at my different organisations.

Sycophancy had become order of the day,now .

Bosses worked as per maxim : KISS UP and KICK down below or bowing down to their seniors like the most obedient servants and mistreated their subordinates .

Yes, I was authoritative and a strict disciplinarian at my home ,since I loved a certain order in my surroundings always .It continues in my personality even today ,which makes others a bit uncomfortable with me .

My daughter started hating patriarchy in our society largely and prevalent at our home particularly .To a great extent she was right but in our families from my parents onwards ,daughters and sons were educated and given equal care at home ,which continued in my family as well .

Still , any society takes ages to change  its old values and systems which has given it stability .

My wife was also an extrovert, beautiful and an aggressive woman, looking forward to a good life and she was never like other women of her times .Very fond of cricket and other games that boys played .She  was quite cheerful and humour loving although quite lazy ,yet , very caring mother and a supportive wife all along.

We had a reasonably happy marriage for many years, may be for initial seventeen years of our marriage , till my fortunes fell down and I had to be jobless and job hunting for many days in my life imbued with my grave illness .

I worked hard and got into an American MNC and rose up very fast as a manager .When politics started disturbing me at the big company ,I changed over to another American MNC trying to set up its base in India.We were paid very well and we always stayed in the best of five star hotels in the country or at Singapore , but our products were not selling in the market for various reasons .My boss convinced his American bosses that if they were to set up a manufacturing base in India ,things would change .A smart engineer with MBA from a leading institution , he took all of them on a solid ride .I tried to convince my expatriate bosses that what our local boss was doing , but unfortunately ,I had to leave the organisation .

With my contacts , I got another job as a Managung director with a small German outfit , but my ex Boss made me leave that job too and whatever new offerings came my way  ,he became a bad reference always along with his human resource head who are both dead now .

American company realised that and sacked my ex Boss along with seventy managers .But it took the company five years to realise what I was trying to tell them was in fact true .

Why big organisations get carried away by smooth talkers and do not conduct an honest audit in a particular country ?

Subsequently ,my career had a bad phase in an Indian outfit with whom I started working and remained jobless for two years .

When I left the organisation  a colleague of mine told me that bosses can tolerate inefficiency in their managers but cannot tolerate their standing straight in front of them .Bow down and make them feel that you are their most obedient servant which I wasn't at all .

Thanks to my two senior highly placed  mentors from Industry and beaureaucrats who helped me and I could come out of the woods . 

In many countries , especially in India ,a woman does not marry a man but his whole family and the same goes for the man .Although me and my wife had normal differences of opinion on various matters but it was my parents and my sisters vis a vis her parents and her sisters mostly , which caused a major rift in our relationship .

My wife slowly started hating my parents and my sisters and I was very fond of them all , since we had seen some utterly bad days together as children and stayed very close to each other , which was always a matter of conflict with my wife,

We , on my side of the family , loved my wife’s father from the very beginning , who was a highly humble soul and very affectionate person ,The same could not be said about my wife’s mother and sisters who were different from their father in all respects .

Her mother had suffered from psychological breakdown during 1960's , when my parents supported her and her family whole heartedly .

Closeness brings its own advantages and its own disadvantages in such relationships. My father and my wife’s father remained good friends all through their life .But her mother never did the same except in a formal way .

From Our childhood days , we had stayed with each other very close-by at Ambala Cantonment and at other times  stayed together in the same house .

I knew very well her family’s good and bad points and my wife knew about my family's secrets and almost every little detail .

A seemingly happy family to an outsider was slowly disintegrating under its own weight , after having stayed together for more than 36 years , because of several reasons, which I am trying to explore now.

I am trying to go back and recount and understand various incidents , the ones , to me and according to me solely , are majorly responsible of this great break up.

My wife and my children would have their own versions of this fiasco .undoubtedly ,  which I completely respect .

It is quite easy to throw responsibility on somebody else’s shoulders and walk away free .All of us and our change in circumstances, have been responsible to a great extent of what happened to all of us .

Time and tide never remain the same and those who adapt and change according to the changing times remain reselient or fall apart ,otherwise .

Leo Tolstoy spent twenty years of his life in finding out as to what is the purpose of a human life?

He met renowned philosophers and scientists all over the world and came out with five commandments viz, Never get angry ,Never use cuss words ,Fogive often  Do not lust  , Love your enemies .

I failed on two of his first two commandments viz, anger and using cuss words but only against my wife and never against anyone as has been the custom in our country .

My family failed on last two counts that they never forgave me and became utterly vengeful towards me and my family as a whole .

None of us had lust for sex in our life,thankfully .

One fine morning,the next day to my son’s wedding during September 2016 , I got ready and left my home and my family ,thinking when things get settled ,I shall go back home to my family .

Atmosphere was quite tense at home that time , after my wife and I had an argumentative fight getting violent and my daughter getting involved in it to support her mother ,as always ,and her sisters walked in to make the matters worse .

Unfortunately ,the situation worsened even after more than two years of our separation .

Although we never got divorced , yet  I have written an imagined case of divorce after 38 years of marriage in a court .

I tried to convince my family as to why we should always be together as a family for facing good and bad times in our lives .My wife belonged to 1950/60/80's and my children were from 1990/2000 onwards generation .

Forget him .

Never forgive him .

Let him go to hell - , was their attitude with which they stormed my wife 's mind .

No amount of my apologising and explaining helped me and I thought of putting my dirty laundry on the paper today .It is quite difficult to write many private and internal happenings at one's family ,but I am left with no option at this stage .

In between ,I visited my wife and my daughter at their home , to talk to them face to face .

I was constantly crying and my daughter was saying , Dad we can never ever stay together as a family  . 

I hugged both of them and came out in my cab waiting for me .

How it happened and why it happened is a long story of 37 years of ups and downs that every family goes through and luckily , we all survived our good and bad times for almost four decades .

But let me focus on the last ten /twelve years ,since my severe illnesseses viz, cancer of the kidney  ,my hearing loss ,my retina problem ,a big tumour sitting at the back of my forehead , my loss of job that happened during this period ,led to my or our family's overall downfall .

Was it pre destined ?

That is a typical Indian way of looking at things .

Is it karma of each member of the family that comes into play ?

My actions , my wife’s reactions , my children’s struggles with their career settlements .?

Or times had changed and we didn't change with the times and the so called generation gap came into play  ?

Do we keep postponing the inevitable ? 

And when incidents come together to let it happen and we look back in anger or amazement at the bygone times and feel sad and sorry about them .

Any family unit is a part and parcel of a particular society .

Metropolitan town dwelling has made it quite isolationary and small fnuclear families in their existence ,to an extent that your next door neighbour may not even know what has transpired in your home .

During 2002 , we were having our breakfast when we realised that a young married girl staying upstairs just above us was committing suicide .Only when we heard commotion outside ,we realised that a young girl had died .

Coming from smaller towns ,having lived in a well knit joint familiy and becoming a nuclear family in a metro city, takes