From: Kamal E Y [email protected]>

To: Sabrina [email protected] >

Sent: 28 October, 1999 02:10 PM

Subject: the promises I make

My woman,

You have opened your heart to me. And now I know why you have so many characters, which is hard to find in a normal woman. Let me say, the more I get to know you, the more I admire and love you. I understand your concept of husband and why you are skeptic about marriages.

Now, let me tell you something. This comes from a hitherto uncovered place of my mind. I have never said, not even given a clue, of this to anyone else in this world. But now it is important for you to know this because my concept of a good relation stems from these things.

Of course, it all is related to my family, the relation between my mother and father. I told you I have got a chance to mingle with him until I was 15. After that, he retired from service and came back to live with us. He liked the family and he cared for us. But his character has somethings which I was not able to accept. I will list some of them.

He is very proud of himself and his family. And he often says to his friends about this. When I am with him, I used to feel so small and ashamed hearing this. From this, the seed of a trait in my character was sown. I never say anything to anyone about my family. I am really ashamed to tell anyone that I have done Engineering, and passed with distinction (that is the highest grade here) and that now I am working in a multinational company. I don't tell my salary to people who can't think of such high salaries (my company is one of the best-paying companies in India). I hate to impress anyone, especially girls, with these details. I believe in impressing the people by your behavior and appearance.

Another thing is that my father doesn't do any household work. He never helps our mother in cooking or cleaning. (Yea, he sometimes waters the plants, do some work outside, etc. but not helping my mother.) He is authoritative. He wants to read the newspaper first when it arrives, even if I or my siblings are reading it. He sits in the front seat and asks my mother to bring tea for him. While having dinner he will constantly say something bad about the food my mother has cooked. He never thinks that she is doing it all by herself, without any help, from anyone, without any money. She has a job and goes early in the morning. But before going she has to cook food for all of us. I have never heard her complaining about anything. But I really feel bad. I am too egoistic to go and offer my help. But from this, I have developed the concept of how a man and his wife/partner should be. I then decided that my wife will be my friend, not my servant/employee. I want to treat her like an independent human being, who has her own thoughts and feelings. Just like a friend, helping, laughing together, discussing together, etc. I like my partner to be active, not like my mom, who doesn't grumble about anything.

If you can recall, you can see that, I haven't given you any promise which I cannot fulfill. I have never promised you a heavenly life with me even though I have it in my mind. I want to make sure that I can 100% fulfill my promises. Otherwise, I don't give them. But there are some things which I can promise you because that is in my character. I can promise you that, I will never hit you unless I become a lunatic. I can promise that I will never push off your opinion without discussing it. I cannot promise that you will never cry when with me, because somethings may happen which is out of my control, even though I'll try my best. But I can promise you that I will never ignore your tears. I can never leave you alone without caring about you, because, in my character, if someone with me gets hurt, I will get hurt more than that. You know during the final year in my college, when one of my friends was beaten by some people, I got in between and got most of the beating. There were many friends near us, but no one came to help him, only I went because the mental hurt to see someone with me gets beaten up was more than the physical pain. I can't be not caring about you, even if we come to a point where I hate you most in this world.

See, these are not promises, these come from my character, and how my thoughts were moulded.

I feel like getting a burden off from my shoulders. I have shown my mind to someone, who can hopefully understand it. You can believe them or not. It is an open book...

Love

Kamal