The Desdemona Syndrome

“A co-dependent is one who let’s another person’s behaviour affect him or her and one who is obsessed with controlling that behaviour.”
Melody Beattie, Author of Co-dependent No More

“You become less judgemental when you understand that people can be both good and bad.”

Roland Mouret, French Fashion Designer
“Unkindness may do much; And his unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my love.” William Shakespeare in Othello the Moor of Venice (Desdemona at IV, ii)

The Desdemona Syndrome

The killing of innocents is what happens when you let that murderous feeling take over. However, you do get to destroy the betrayer even if it drives a stake through your own heart at the same time. More so, when you’ve got it all wrong Othello - and snuffed the truest love you can imagine. It’s gruesome, sad, pathetic and about as necessary as self-induced vomit at a Roman orgy.

On the other hand, you don’t have to be in love with the strangelee. You can disapprove strongly, “loathe” Dubya fashion, “defend” like Israel, “cleanse” a bit like the Serbs, rape, ravage, extort Mujahideen style or target infidels enmasse on a global jihad. Despite self righteous justification and all those promises, the results of bloody revenge invariably leave you underwhelmed. Blood, it turns out, doesn’t quench thirst or actually satiate that itch to kill.

But the beat does go on. Watch, for instance, the whole world sputtering with rage at North Korea’s “brazen” (China’s description), trashing of the Non-proliferation Treaty of which it is a proud signatory. But think of it from Kim Jong Il’s point of view. This lonely ruler of the ROK (Republic of Korea), is probably thinking what’s a signature on a document compared to the fear of annihilation? Annihilation directed not at the ROK peasantry, you understand, which wouldn’t put the wind up him particularly, but Himself! Kim’s afraid, but naturally, that America is fixing to invade the hills and ravines of the peninsula and do to him what’s already been done to Saddam and the one-eyed Mullah Omar.

“Regime change,” that 21st century update of a “forward policy” it appears, has an unpredictable underbelly. And Kim, demonstratedly, has the weakest stomach for the ousting process we’ve encountered so far. The denizens of the ROK, on their part are very pleased with their achievement. It comes on top of the ROK’s proven ability to make silos full of very good missiles some of which can be traded for all manner of gain. Gain such as accurate blueprints for a nuclear reactor and parts for a centrifuge or two sent on to Pyongyang by that nice Mr. AQ Khan who lives in a lovely lakeside villa near Islamabad.

So many bonafide heavies seem to be crowding our consciousness these days. They may be accomplished in being sinister but to what ultimate end? The movie villain business of world domination is wearing a little thin but why is it that the heavies don’t quite see it? Suicide squads, human bombs, Sarin gas, stealth, subterfuge- almost a complete absence of conventional honour with the end considered to be the entire sum.

No, these heavies are not like movie villains at all, but neither, frankly, are the lovers consumed by things other than sweetness and light. Think Omkara. I bit the bullet and finally watched it on DVD last night. This, after giving it a miss on the big screen out of fear that it would bring on a titanic depression reverberating in Cinemascope with Dolby sound. I can appreciate Langda’s terrific acting of course and Vishal Bhardwaj’s inventive adaptation of Willie’s classic all-fall-down tragedy. I can marvel at all that insinuation, credulity, insecurity, envy, lust, violence, insecurity and obsession. But who can, or even wants to, save me from shaking my head at the waning moon? Ah! the folly of it all! The depressing thing is that Omi’s passionate stupidity is such an accurate metaphor for what’s going on.

The hero from the bigger recent hit Munnabhai will agree -empathising particularly as he waits for the 1993 Mumbai blast case verdict for defendant 117. Dutt will agree that all the revived Gandhigiri his Lage Raho lot thought up wouldn’t go very far to keep the world from going “mental” anyway.

Clinically speaking, in a new age 2006 kind of setting, this sort of extreme manoeuvre acquired a new label about ten years ago. They call it co-dependency - described by the American National Mental Health Association as “an emotional and behavioral condition that affects an individual’s ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship. It is also known as relationship addiction because people with co-dependency often form or maintain relationships that are one-sided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive.”

Today a significant number of people live in the grip of their unhappy obsessions, focussing all their energies on how to outsmart a partner, a sibling, a parent, a friend, a co-worker or even their former selves. Also, there is now recognition that this kind of behaviour is actually diseased.

As a collective, similar negativity, no matter how sonorous the justifications, gives rise to terrorism, racism and other politically-hued exclusivist stances based on a real or imaginary sense of grievance. Or sadly, it represents the consequence of some cold hearted strategist’s hidden agenda propagandised into the hearts of innocents. Young people in Kashmir, Gaza, Baghdad, Kabul, Colombo et al become unwitting victims of the propaganda because of a predisposition. And because of anger at what they’ve seen.You see, co-dependency is nurtured in childhood as toddlers learn to repeat history by observing adults dysfunction. Low self-esteem, so much a by-product of living in a dysfunctional environment, helps this co-dependency take root.

So now that we’ve bought the T shirt where do we go from here?

If you’re a modern psychiatrist, you’d lean towards regression therapy with a view to unlocking the secrets of childhood trauma and setting them and (consequently you) free.

If you’re a Hindu Guru, you’d be learned in Jyotish and nudge your followers to ensure compatibility, gunas, doshas, varnas, ganas and so on; you’d check to see whether Mangal is well inclined and likewise Rahu, Ketu and Shanidev. To the Hindu Guru, compatible people do not gratuitously misunderstand each other. Conversely, the incompatible can do nothing but get their knickers in a twist. Ergo, stay away from people who aren’t your type and all will be well. The Moor would never have topped his Desdemona if he felt sure of her in a Jyotish sense. Because a Jyotish compatibility, is a psychic X-ray which transcends straight forward infatuation by profound, subliminal and sure-footed degrees. It would have seen the Moor strangling Iago promptish instead - thereby turning Othello into a resounding flop for ol’ Willie and making it unnecessary for Bharadwaj to create Omi or Langda to perturb us.

This finessing of the mating dance, can, provided you believe in and practice the process, ensure happy coupling in supreme mutual confidence. It also keeps co-dependent turbulence out of your bed.

Compatibility screening won’t take care of everything in your orbit however-for instance, your biological family, but if there are people around who make you suffer, you need to accept it as your karma and pray for redemption.

Good, but how do we apply Jyotish, if at all, to the collective madness around us? At the most comprehensible level, you can’t. Thing is, Jyotish has a lot to do with reasonably precise birth timings (of individuals) and the accuracy of predictions depends heavily on this aided by large doses of arithmetic. The macro trends have more to do with tendencies and have many complexities that tend to throw most predictions out of kilter.

So when it comes to the fate of countries and regions perhaps the most enduring theory continues to be the somewhat mystical Hegelian theory of “The March of Nations” even though it gained a degree of notoriety for being embraced by Hitler and the Nazis as well as arch rivals Karl Marx and the communists! Hegel said many complicated and difficult things but in this instance alluded to the torch bearers of destiny being different nations at different times.

Conflict, seen in this context, is in Hegelian dialectic called “negativity” and acts as an agent of both civilisation and change. Great but does it have anything of the inevitable about it in the Jyotish vidya sense? Maybe, could be, yes. Lord Krishna when queried about some of his more statecraftish tactics in and around the Mahabharata battlefield said the real point was to foment enough conflict between the Kauravas and the Pandavas to see to it that the golden age of the Kshatriya was brought to a close. Hmm…They say the soil of Kurukshetra is reddish to this day but mysterious are the ways of The Preserver incarnated as a Yadav.

Still, if that is how Lord Krishna chose to pass the torch, myself Brahmin have to wonder what some of the tension players of today represent in the big picture. I don’t know of course, because I am not even the humblest of Lord Vishnu’s satellites.

Perhaps Desdemona understood it better than everyone else in the play. After all she said: “Unkindness may do much; and his unkindness may defeat my life, but never taint my love.” What do you know – she did know all about Gandhigiri after all, or was that really Willie speaking.

(1,690 words)

Title: The Desdemona Syndrome

By: Ghatotkach

Tuesday, 10th October 2006, (Karva Chauth)

This and all original essays on GHATOTKACHSERIES are copyright 2005-2006 by Gautam Mukherjee. All Rights Reserved.