Easter Holidays and Ramblings on Divorce

I missed my boys terribly, as they were with the English Wasbund eating roast beef. This was the first family oriented holiday that I had to spend without them and I would be lying if I were to say that it wasn’t soul crushing. All I could do was to send them funny interactive e-cards with bunnies spray painting Humpty Dumpty or singing the Easter blues.

Fortunately, although my very small family is in Croatia, I have spent Easter Sunday in a warm atmosphere surrounded with the people I care for. My friend’s family, large for my one or two child European family standards, have adopted me for every major holiday, and I have spent past Thanksgiving and Christmas Day with them. I met my friend, Ms C., at the ‘End of Season’ annual function at the outdoor tennis club we both belong to. We discovered that we were both in the throws of the divorce with three children and, despite her beating me in tennis, became friends.

I find her family to be very engaging and stimulating. Discussions rage over dinner table laden with ham, rack of lamb, asparagus and other culinary delights. At one moment we could be talking about movies we have seen, the next we could be voicing our opinions on Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Syria. The house was abuzz with children and their stories from college or from the many activities they do. The Golf Masters was permanently on in the family room for anyone who wanted to check on the latest development.

Sitting at the table, I suddenly became aware how we were a microcosm of the family structure in the U.S. today. There were two happily married couples, three divorced singletons and two widows.

According to the statistics, we live longer, especially women, who should expect to celebrate their 80th birthday if they are white and 76th if they are black. They continue to lead active lifestyles and travel, long after their husbands have passed away. The same statistics point at men’s life expectancy being 5 years less than that of the women. (Bring on the jokes!)

Divorce has become a common phenomenon, although there is nothing common in the way people act during this process or in the emotions arising from it. It is a well known fact that half of the marriages in the U.S. end up in divorce. This figure is even worse for the second marriage with 76% ending in divorce. For the brave enough to attempt it for the third time, 87% will be filing for the divorce. I sometimes feel that, as we approach the midlife number 40, life becomes a game of musical chairs. Lots of people are dancing to different tunes, but when the time comes to sit on a chair, there is always someone left standing. When the music starts and the next round begins, the person that was left standing has a chance to bump someone else off the chair, and so the game continues. The marriage counselors are desperately trying to piece together the flying debris from the broken chairs. The players having the most fun are the lawyers, competing in their own game of who can run to the bank the fastest with the largest bucket of money.

Have you ever played the game?

The Namesake (Another Night at the Movies)

The Namesake is a film directed by Mira Nair that juxtaposes well two cultures, the modern American and the traditional Indian. It follows the lives of a beautiful, artistic Ashima and Ashoke, her professor husband from an arranged marriage. Ashima’s expectations differed from those of her Western counterparts, as she was conditioned by the society she grew up in to marry the ‘best of the lot’ who came knocking on her parents’ door, and not for love.

With the marriage she replaces the colorful, warm, though overpopulated Calcutta with the bleakness and isolation of New York City in search of Ashoke’s dream. Through all the ups and downs that life presents them with, they stay true to their values and to each other.

The film moves on to the next generation of the Ganguli family, born and raised in the U.S., with their different perspectives on life and different values. The story centres around Gogol, or Nick, as he prefers to be called when he becomes a teenager. One of the central themes of the film is Gogol’s dilemma which name to embrace. Is it going to be the name given to him by his father, inspired by the writer Nikolai Gogol as well as an important past event that changed Ashoke’s life, or Nikhil which in Nick form could easily blend with the American culture.

The film also examines the possibilities of immigrant’s children mingling with the elite of their birth country. It raises the issue whether the modern relationships based on the same ‘roots’ have more potential to succeed than those of the chance encounters.

Where, in my opinion, the movie fails to deliver is by trying to pack in too much without going deeper into the characters. At one point a director concentrates on showing that the Bengali culture and traditions are alive and well in New York’s suburbia, with immigrant families closely knit together. At the other, the protagonist is left isolated and alone in times of a major life crisis. I somehow felt that one would preclude the other.

The director likes to use flashbacks, which I felt did not always serve the purpose. Rather than seeing the crucial past event again in this form, it may have been more original to view it from some other perspective entering deeper into the psychology of the character.

My rating would be four out of five.