Things we can't do-Take 3
(We can't be promiscuous)
We, unlike the more promiscuous Americans, lead a conservative life. We tie the knot only once, and our marriage is far more stable, rock solid. Divorces, separation and adultery are alien practices, which we identify only with the Hindi maa bahu soaps in the National Doordarshan and newspaper reports of Beckham-Loos-Victoria kind. We are a clean society with no dirty khudei to wash in the public. Or in private.

But this girl defies everything I know about Manipuri women
I know a woman who has been in a live-in relationship with a guy since the last four years. I have nothing against this, and I always thought they would marry each other ultimately. They were a perfect couple; sometimes I envied them. In part because they seem to be so happy, and in part because I was a singleton, who had none to accompany me to walk into the sunset hand in hand and exchanged sweet-nothings with me.

But, just recently, a storm hit their relationship, and sadly and beyond my belief, the girl ran away with another guy and got married. All these happened so swiftly as if the main players in the story had only a few days to live.

What shocked me the most was not that the woman threw the original boy in the bathtub (he is 5 years younger), but that she came back to live with him, barely 5 days after the marriage. Her husband lives and works in another city. The husband apparently agrreed to live separately on her insistence that she would not leave her job in Delhi.

Based on the accounts of the boy, it is also very clear that she sleeps with both. Either her husband is the most stupid man in the world or he is the epitome of liberalism gone too far. I am confused, maddened and shocked. What should be my proper reaction to this rare event in my life?

Are they really aliens?