62 per cent of Calcuttans feel extra-marital affairs are no big deal
A year ago, housewife Nilima Saha, 32, logged on to her computer to enter a cyber chat room. A man – married and living in Mumbai – sparked her interest. They started a private conversation. After a few weeks of intense, personal exchanges, they took to meeting whenever he came down to Calcutta on the pretext of work. The saga of clandestine meetings continued for 10 months. “That was the stupid part, “rues Saha. “I knew what I was getting into, but I didn’t get out of it without getting hurt.” Her paramour’s gaze has shifted while Saha has settled for her husband, at least for the time being.
Madhumita Banerjee, 40, once used to enjoy living life on the edge. Committing adultery was her forte. But her world turned topsy turvy once she met Ravi , 10 years younger than her. Initially, it was fun but when Ravi insisted on meeting even when her husband, a marine engineer, was in town, she started pressing the panic button. It didn’t stop there. He started blackmailing her. Today she has been reduced to a hypertensive woman in need of psychiatric help.
When adultery came Rakesh Malhotra’s way, he didn’t even see it coming. “One of my colleagues and I just developed this friendship. Initially, we enjoyed talking to each other, at time even flirting. We talked for four months before anything sexual happened,” he recalls. But now his colleague has moved to Mumbai, so he is, somewhat reluctantly, back to playing a devoted husband.
Journalist Basab Dutta, 38, recently married a school teacher, Moyna. While Basab is hopelessly devoted to her, she has multiple partners. “It is a borderline personality disorder,” says Dutta. He has started keeping tabs on her. With her home reduced to a prisonhouse, Moyna is now suffering from acute depression.
This is kahaani ghar ghar ki in Calcutta . Adultery is on the rise in the city – and the figures are alarming. According to a Telegraph-MODE survey of a sample of 100 people in the 30 – 45 age group, 44 per cent of those married for less than five years have had extra-marital affairs. Psychiatristhim Ashim Chatterjee, associated with Mon, a psychiatric nursing home in Calcutta, points out that extra-marital affairs among the educated, urban population in the city have gone up by more than 50 per cent in the last five years. “And this percentage,” he explains, “takes into account only those who seek psychiatric help on account of adultery either committed by them or their spouses.”
A leitmotif in most of the soppy TV soaps, adultery seems to have tacit social sanction in the city today. Technological advancements – SMS, MMS, virtual chatrooms – have removed time and space constraints. Nuclear families, odd working hours for both men and women, and accessibility and exposure to the world outside the four walls have added to the galloping infidelity statistics.
“Free mixing and proximity to members of the opposite sex contribute to the allure of a secret liaison,” contends Gitanath Ganguly, senior lawyer and executive chairman, Legal Aids Services, West Bengal . “The increase in adultery has led to an escalation in matrimonial disputes. As a society, we give lip service to monogamy – but we have now come to undermine it. We call it ‘extra-marital gallivanting’ at our counseling centre. It starts out as a fling and then looms large as a crisis, once the individuals cross the threshold of taboos.”
The survey’s findings also corroborate the growing acceptance of adultery. About 62 per cent believe that extra-marital affairs are no big deal while 54 per cent think it is but natural for married men and women to be attracted to members of the opposite sex.
Couples often share a tacit understanding that they will not step on each other’s toes. They go by the live-and-let-live adage. “A breakdown of communication or rather the lack of it is also responsible for the escalating figures,” says consultant psychiatrist Aniruddha Deb. No questions are asked, no answers are sought by either spouse. “That is because marriage has lost its sanctity and there has been an erosion of values,” says actress Roopa Ganguly. “The tolerance level has gone down, people’s expectations have increased and so has the level of dissatisfaction.”
She underlines another important reason – the fact that sex is no longer connected to morality. “It’s more of a need. If that remains unfulfilled, both men and women stray. Earlier, for most women, sex was never an issue. They were conditioned to believe sex was not an important aspect of life. But not any more.”
Irrespective of the nature of the affair, nearly all extra-marital affairs follow very specific patterns. Family researchers point out stage one is usually the talking stage when there’s a spark. Stage two is when it is kept a secret. The third stage involves having lunch together or watching a movie. That is the dating phase. And finally the fourth has the two engaged in an intense sexual and emotional liaison.
These stages combine four main factors – security, safety, stability and secrecy – which determine the longevity of an extra-marital affair. Whenever there is a question mark on any one factor, trouble brews. As was the case with Madhumita Banerjee who felt insecure when Ravi started making unnecessary demands.
Crisis looms when the cheating partners reach the fourth stage. That was the case with a 28 year old housewife who approached Ashim Chatterjee for counseling. “She had a severe attach of depression. On the face of it, she looked happily married; her husband seemed very broadminded and caring. It was only after a series of grueling sessions with her that I discovered that the root cause of the depression was her paramour’s transfer to another city,” he recounts.
It isn’t as though infidelity was non-existent in the past, as actress Moon-moon Sen points out, a trifle indignantly. But in most cases, it contained an element of romanticism. This is no longer the case, at least not in a majority of extra-marital affairs. For many, an affair is a part of life and evokes no guilt pangs. Explains Saswati Mukherjee, a paediatrician associated with Bhagirathi Neotia Woman and Child Care Centre on Rawdon Street , “Today an affair is a casual matter, nothing worth remembering. It isn’t about liking your paramour more than your spouse, it’s just a matter of convenience.”
However, even today, the consequences of infidelity can be disastrous. The larger human element muddies the script as it did in the case of Sandipan Ray, a pharmacologist. He married a woman who seemed, at that point of time, like a “babe in the woods”. But Ray later discovered, much to his dismay, that his wife had a foundness for other men. He continued to give in to her whims and shower her with gifts, hoping she’d change. Instead, she staged a walk out, another guy in tow.
Ray now seeks revenge through other women whom he, in turn, takes for a ride using his sob story of unrequited love as a ploy. But he doesn’t stick to one woman for long. His objective is simple. “I only want to have fun, no strings attached. I was conned, now it’s my turn to play the conman.”
Ray is no exception. There are many who, once betrayed, take to philandering. “This attitude can only lead to a further loss of self,” cautions Aniruddha Deb. Rather than harbouring ill-feelings and suffering from low self-esteem, it is important to draw on one’s strengths and create a life of fulfillment, which is independent of the partner.”
Susmita Sanyal did just that when her husband left her for another woman. “Initially, she was devastated. But gradually, through counseling sessions, she came to terms with the situation and is now coming into her own,” recounts Deb. Today, the two are separated but are not divorced. The husband is living with his girlfriend while the wife stays alone.
That happens in a majority of cases. Most couples shy away from divorce on grounds of infidelity. “Infidelity is difficult to prove in a court of Law. People are hardly given to admitting it,” says Gitanath Ganguly. Small wonder, then, that the survey shows 83 per cent denying having ever had an affair.
Satya Sundar Sarangi, member of the Supreme Court Bar Association and life member of Indian Council of Arbitration, agrees, adding, “Although there has been a 50 per cent rise in cases of matrimonial disputes – in South 24 Parganas alone, in 2004-2005, this figure was 2,000, while three years ago, it was 1,000 and before that, it bordered on 600 – 700 – these are criminal matrimonial cases.”
At times couples rule out divorce if there are children involved or, for that matter, property matters. They, then, prefer to run the extra-marital affair on a parallel track. Roopa Ganguly feels that is fair on the children. “On many occasions, I see married couples who do not get along having affairs. But they maintain the decorum of marriage for the sake of the child, which may be wrong on moral grounds. But I feel it is justified on practical grounds.”
It seems, then, that in today’s context, infidelity is the flip side of technical advancements and a fast-paced lifestyle where marriage is more of a contract than a commitment. The bottomline – as Deb puts it – is that you must nurture and prioritise your relationship with your spouse. Or else you may just end up as yet another infidelity statistic.
(Some names have been changed). The Telegraph, Calcutta , Sunday 29 January 2006
|
No comments:
Post a Comment