The Grey Patch

The path that leads to a beautiful journey often has pitfalls. While walking through this journey sometimes we see things as black and sometimes we see things as white. Most of the time we forget to see that most of these things have patches that are grey, neither completely black nor completely white.

In marriage one comes across these grey patches which we fail to recognize; thus fights happen. During the early years of Priya's life she thought that hers was the right idea all the time. She loved her husband Rohit but had an opposite personality to him. Rohit accepted her views simply to avoid conflict. Over a period time, Priya started dominating their relationship believing that everything had to be either black or white. Rohit tolerates this but he was now getting frustrated.

One day they went to a friend's house where the discussion began about what is the right way of raising one's child? Everyone had their point of view and so did Priya. Rohit also pointed out his idea which was contrary to his wife's idea. They didn't realize when this discussion led to an argument. Finally Rohit said "I am fed up of always agreeing with you. You are not always right. We need to see a lawyer discuss about a divorce."

Priya was shocked. She hadn't seen this coming. Their friend's daughter who was 10 years old went to Priya and gave her a glass of water. She said to Priya

"Aunty don't worry, uncle got angry because you are not ready to see his perspective. I had a goldfish whom I loved very much. Yesterday when I came home from school, I couldn't find her. My parents told me she died when the cleaner removed her from the water to clean the fish tank. The cleaner forgot to put her inside water. My mother scolded him a lot. He apologized but my mother said he did his job badly so he should be fired. I asked her why should there be only an option of failing at a job or succeeding at a job? Isn't there a grey patch where one can sometimes neither fail nor succeed? Aunty everything need not be seen as black or white when the rainbow has so many colours. I was upset about my goldfish. My perception may have been that the cleaner did not do his job well. But his perception was that it was a mistake that didn't necessarily mean that he was bad at his job."



Priya wiped her tears and went to Rohit. She apologized for her behaviour. She promised Rohit that going forward she will discuss things with him rather than telling him what should be done. Rohit hugged her and said "Everyone has a different perception of looking at things. Just because one is right doesn't mean that the other is wrong."