Status Updates From Storm in Chandigarh

Even the dirt. It would recognise that somewhere within the desirable woman, behind the eyes, the mouth, the breasts, there was a struggling, imperfect human being to be valued for her own sake. A marriage like that would be uncommonly strong and uncommonly pure.

Freedom. Funny, she thought, we apply it everywhere except in daily living. What happens there? What makes us so timid, or so tyrannical towards one another? Jerked back to an awareness of the man beside her, she knew that marriage to someone like him - but there was no one like him - marriage to him would not be a shaky affair. It would take not only the best one had to give but the trivial and absurd as well.

“I think most couples face that kind of problem over some area of their lives. There are things they can’t talk about to each other, and those become a burden they carry alone. They have to watchful about them, and it can become very wearing over the years.”

That, he thought, should be the limit of one man’s power over another, to be able to change a look of doubt to one of belief.