If we want to stem the deterioration of the society, we may have to reintroduce the values of family love that we have left behind.
- We have also to take stock of the increasing trend of more and more men and women going solo which is a negative development, from which we need to take a U-turn.
Dr. Jernail S. Anand
The very mention of the word ‘love’ sends us into a romantic trance. How much poets have written about it. And the students of literature have often idealized it. Even religious narratives use the names of iconic lovers to explain mystical relationships. Lovers have been looked upon as social revolutionaries because human society has never given sanction to it. If we find love and marriage celebrated anywhere, it is only in tribal societies. In our progressive society, love is a taboo. A ‘bad harkat’ [a mischief]. Was it intended so by gods too? Can we imagine the original duo, Adam and Eve living without love? Milton has described their love for each other very graphically. But, down the ages, things have turned sour and we have started looking at a basic virtue of mankind, as something suspect. I wonder if there is any one person who has never felt infatuation for some body, and who has not remained disturbed by separation from someone once in a while. Because, love is a universal emotion. I would not like to try to distract the focus of this feeling. Essentially, love is a strong attraction between a man and a woman. All other loves are secondary in nature.
Family Love
But, today, the focus of my attention is Family Love. It may look strange to talk of family and love both in the contemporary times, when people prefer to go solo, marriages are on the rocks and society as a whole is going against having kids, which are a stumbling block for career conscious men and women. In my epic ‘Lustus: The Prince of Darkness’, it has been underlined that Lustus, the corporate devil, does not want people to love. Rather, he wants people to entangle themselves in incompatible marriages, so that it could disturb their sexual balance. In this way, he wanted a loveless generation which he calls the bastardization of the human race. And, this is what is happening to our social life. Family is in tatters. Love has evaporated and kids are suffering. In such a state, when love is not the driving force of a relationship, it will be easier for Lustus to strengthen his grip over the entire population.
Married Love
Love already is a banned object. The real tragedy lies in the fact that from our lives, family love has been missing. Human body needs food to sustain itself in life. Gods have been very considerate. A man’s stomach is very small. He cannot eat more than two or three ‘chapatis’. But if this small food is cooked with love, and then, taken with love, it goes ahead of giving just the sustaining power. It gives us the strength also to make us mentally strong. This was possible in the First World only, when we were governed by the stories and events found in Holy Scriptures, which focused on a strong bond between husband and wife. In fact, Indian ethos do not celebrate ‘unwed love’. However, we elevate love between husband and wife. Our scriptures also tell us of love between couples. The love between iconic lovers like ‘Heer Ranjha’ and ‘Romeo Juliet’ is not the cup of the tea of civilized society. The Second World in which we are living, has taken a 360 degree departure from the previous one.
The First World: Of Peace, Happiness and Tranquility
It may not be entirely out of place to visit our world a few decades back. There was a world in which woman was the proud owner of the kitchen and it was her independent domain to feed her man. She too loved feeding him and her kids. The operative word here is ‘love’. She had no other job. It was out of a sense of duty that she loved this task and felt happy and proud doing the household chores. She loved it because she was not divided between her house and her office. Maintaining the house was man’s job but maintaining the home, the woman’s. This was the world which lent a lot of peace, happiness and tranquility to the house.
The Second World: Of Wealth and Prosperity
However, with the onset of the Second world, the focus shifted from Peace and Tranquility to Wealth and Prosperity. The woman asserted her power to become an equal partner of man. She joined the working world without thinking that the love attached with cooking and serving the cooked food had been ignored. By and by, it became essential for woman to work in order to run the household. Today a man’s earnings are not enough to meet the EMIs. Therefore, per force, woman has been exited from the home. But she is still required to give birth to babies, although this urge has been delegated to surrogate mothers.
The Loss: The Family Love
What has been disturbed mortally in this exercise is the family love. The strength of the human civilization lay in the power of love which kept the family together and then, the society together. Stomach was such a small place to fill, but it shifted its residence to human mind. Hunger took the shape of lust, for more and more. And, now, whatever man and woman might earn, they could not fulfil the wants of the family.
The Lapse
Today, we find the family disintegrated and the society in tatters because men are whole only in body but broken and scattered in mind. In the absence of love, men appear to have played host to a hundred inhuman passions, like jealousy, competition, power, fame etc. They are now part of a malignant system of society which creates monsters.
So, finally, where we have arrived today is the monsterization of our society. All because of one small lapse. We did not give Love the honour it deserved. Now, it appears to be too late in the day. This generation has gone the wrong way. I wonder if we can instruct the young minds to start believing in family love and in the basic values of life. Particularly, when family is not the order of the day.
Conclusion
The take away of this discussion is: that life was beautiful only so long as men and women could have a healthy tradition of sitting together, and having their meals, in an atmosphere of love. Food, now is nobody’s priority. Thanks to Swiggy and Zomato. Women too do not like working in kitchen, for most of the time, they have to be in the offices. A situation as arisen where husband and wife do not share the dining table. Moreover, nowadays, the way people marry, we cannot expect any sort of family love. It is all by calculation and arrangement. Family has lost its sanctity. Those who loved, are already on the banned list. So, we are moving adrift in a society which does not believe in love. The results are before us. Break up. And mental and moral depravity that has become a settled issue with our society. I think if we want to stem the deterioration of the society, we may have to reintroduce the values of family love that we have left behind. We have also to take stock of the increasing trend of more and more men and women going solo which is a negative development, from which we need to take a U-turn.
Read: SIGNING A MORTGATE DEED WITH CORPORATE GODS AT MOUNT MAMMONA
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Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, President of the International Academy of Ethics, is author of 167 books in English poetry, fiction, non-fiction, philosophy and spirituality. He was awarded Charter of Morava, the great Award by Serbian Writers Association, Belgrade and his name was engraved on the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. The Academy of Arts and philosophical Sciences of Bari [Italy] honored him with the award of an Honorable Academic. Recently, he was awarded Doctor of Philosophy [Honoris Causa] by the University of Engg and Management, Jaipur. Recently, he organized an International Conference on Contemporary Ethics at Chandigarh. His most phenomenal book is Lustus: The Prince of Darkness [first epic of the Mahkaal Trilogy]. [Email: anandjs55@yahoo.com
Link Bibliography:
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