“NOT TONIGHT DEAR; I HAVE A HEADACHE…”

According to a recent news report, people these days have become so gizmo addicted that members of the same family, living under the same roof, communicate between rooms of the house through mails, calls and sms-es.  One had heard of staleness creeping into married life – but detachment to this extent in marriage and family?  Many nod their heads sagely and pronounce that a family born of the compromise of an arranged marriage can only end this way; others wag their fingers triumphantly to emphasise the fate of love marriages once the daily humdrum of life has taken off the rose tinted glasses and flung them out of the window of romance.

Communication is so vital that without it a relationship doesn’t really have much of a future except as a necessity, habit or trap.  All partners and members of a domestic group – family, nuclear or joint, marriage – communicate their emotions, opinions and needs.  How they do it depends on personality – outgoing, garrulous, reserved, expressive in more than speech, physically demonstrative and so on.  It is invariably a mix of methods ranging in degrees between deliberate and spontaneous.  Words, silence, looks, expressions, touch, carriage become means of communication.  A particularly explosive situation is promised if silence is taken as agreement or weakness, especially in cultures where age and gender dictate freedom or repression.  Not communicating feelings and aspiration translates into those around not recognizing them, hence being forced to shoulder uncomfortable situations until the breaking point is reached.  On the other side is the issue of communicating but in a manner that is either garbled or downright rude, even abusive, therefore often counter-productive.

These are complex issues with no straight answers.  There may be relationships or phases in them when talking and sharing every detail seems normal.  There may be those when speech becomes unnecessary – when much is revealed by the averting of eyes, a stiff profile in the car seat, laughing eyes peeping over the rim of a cup of coffee, a sharp look, wearing a color the other likes (or dislikes) … Into this now come the gadgets that are so much a part of our lives.  Using them from a distance is inevitable but when in the same house?  There is something to be said for ‘Wat time sports prac tom mrng?’ on a trusty mobile rather than crawling out of a cosy bed on a freezing winter night to go to the teenager in the next room, cursing for forgetting to check up on that at the dinner table. 

 And for beaming a spontaneously captured pose on the webcam before the moment is lost directly to someone catching up with friends on Facebook in the next room.  The impact of emoticons relaying a grin, anger, dismay can sometimes be greater than in person.  But can these things be allowed to become the norm rather than the exception in a home is a question too prickly to consider.  Just imagine a beep from one side of the bed being answered by another beep from the other side with the classic, “Not tonight dear; I have a headache…”