Title: Perfect love: 5.5 Ways To A Lasting Relationship
Author: Shubha Vilas
Publisher:
Pages: 203
Price: Rs 350
Who does not wish to enjoy a warm, fulfilling relationship with their partner? Yet the truth is even in the sunny splash of love, relationships tend to develop long shadows, bringing often more misery than joy. How do you keep love fresh and vitally alive always?
In this book Perfect Love, TEDx speaker Shubha Vilas shows us how, by delving into our ancient scriptural past, aglow with love stories — that of Nala and Damayanti, Krishna and Rukmini, Shakuntala and Dushyant, Udayana and Vasavadatta, Savitri and Satyavaan, and Draupadi and the Pandava brothers. Stories that have merged into the Indian collective consciousness and remain in our memories, albeit mostly blurred. Vilas persuades us to revisit these stories, narrating each in simple, elegant prose, and then scoops out chunks of wisdom hidden in the whorls of the plots, wisdom that we can apply to our relationships in this millennium too, to advantage.
Like the first story of Nala and Damayanti explores the dynamics of what happens when we come across flaws in our partners with whom we are strongly bonded. It illustrates the wisdom there is in forgiving our partners their weaknesses and moments of apparently cruel behaviour/wrong actions.
When Damayanti is abandoned in the forest half-naked, without any resources, by her otherwise loving and dutiful husband Nala, she is bewildered, but instead of reviling him in her heart, she chooses to hold back judgement and focus on staying alive. After many twists and turns, when she again meets Nala and hears his story, she wills to give him a second chance and they live happily ever after. The author clinches the story with his comment, “Damayanti realised that practising contempt would harm her more than anyone else…She gave Nala a second chance not because he deserved it, but because she deserved peace.”
Similarly, Krishna and Rukmini’s story underscores the power of expressions of love in forging a relationship (“Choose words well to win the game of love.”); Udayana and Vasavadatta’s, the importance of spending time with our partners and deep communication (“Whatever we invest time in, grows. If we invest time in love, it grows.”); Shakuntala and Dushyant’s, the need to trust our partner and more importantly life (“When you learn to have faith in yourself, God and life, you will learn to trust others as well”); and Savitri’s story, the great force that is contained in one’s determination (“Anyone who has collided with destiny has to be more determined than destiny itself”). Savitri wins back Satyavan from Lord Yama by her ingenuity that flows fr0m her inner resolve to make her relationship with Satyavan last.
Lastly, Draupadi reveals how relationships based on conditions can work beautifully provided these are positive conditions, that is, “conditions that focus on keeping relationships intact.”
Significant to note, all the women in the six stories are projected as not just great lookers, but vested with strength, and other myriad virtues like high intelligence and compassion. Also, as the first story spells out and the subsequent bolster, love is identified as being “not about looks, but about a match of qualities.” Thus, Nala and Damayanti fall in love with each other even before meeting each other — just by hearing about each other’s qualities. And Rukmini fixes on Krishna as her husband from learning about his greatness. The book abounds in potent relationship pointers like “The commitment to be grateful in a relationship is the commitment that keeps a relationship.” and “Each one of us is guided by an inner voice whose role is to bring joy into our lives.”
In a nutshell, this book is a perfect guide for anyone entering a relationship or desirous of improving/salvaging a
relationship.
