Old Is Gold

Pranav and Pratik were two friends who lived in the same colony. They went to the same school. Pranav owned a car while Pratik's father was a common person. Pranav's father was a doctor at a well-known clinic. Both of them had one common problem. They were not dominating. Pranav knew about his reality but Pratik did not. Pranav married in a rich family and sought their support. He had two children, while Pratik got married at the ripe age of 33. Pratik and his wife shared their honeymoon expense and they started their happy married life.

However, circumstances forced them to take a divorce. Pratik was hurt by the divorce because his own parents, whom he did not like, were abusing him at the time of his divorce proceedings because they had to shell out the expenses for the divorce. Knowing their nature, Pratik had applied for his divorce petition himself because he knew his parents would not give him money for a lawyer and he did not earn enough himself. Therefore, he had used his knowledge of law to prepare his own reply to the allegations leveled by his wife. Pratik's world had come to a standstill after his divorce. He had started becoming habituated to his wife's company. However, all his family members were gullible.

Pratik's relatives caused a rift between him and his parents. Pratik had talked about his hardships during his childhood to his newly wedded wife. However, unknown to him, she gave all that information to her relatives and they started harassing Pratik in all his jobs. Pratik was married because his wife's relatives wanted his house in return for the dowry they had given his father. However, Pratik did not know about this fact because his father had not told him about it. Nor did any other relative of his let him know about this fact. However, when his in-laws harassed him, he decided to isolate himself from them.

He decided to take his time in marrying again. He wanted to be alone because his first and only girlfriend and wife did not trust him. She had questioned his credibility because she had heard some negative things about her husband. She questioned his credibility and they had a scuffle. This ultimately resulted in their divorce. She had filed for a divorce but he did not want one. However, when the wife gave him a threat that she would torture him if she did not get divorce from him, Pratik's parents began to get afraid of his in-laws. They forced him to give divorce. He was coerced to accept the divorce petition and act accordingly.

Already before his marriage, Pratik had never dated any female because he had an abusive mother. He also had an abusive father. His father was very egoistic. For everything that he did for Pratik, he would abuse him. However, he did not realize that it would have a negative influence on their relationship. He had to withstand the worst of it ultimately when his son did not do anything for him. He had to take help from his wife, whom he hated because she had spoilt his life. She had also spoilt his son's life. However, he could not do much because he was weak himself.

Due to the divorce between Pratik and his wife, he started having a phobia of interacting with females. He started hating them. He already did not interact with females before his marriage because his mother abused him. For every child, the mother gives unadulterated love and the father fulfills his or her needs financially. However, for Pratik, love was his mother preparing food for him and his father doing things and abusing him. He never gave him any money in his hands to spend and have the fun that youngsters have. Therefore, he did not like both his parents. Pratik was romantic by nature. He obeyed whatever his parents told him. However by doing so, he was killing his own personality.

For every youngster, a sense of responsibility develops when he starts having girlfriends. However, as Pratik was not allowed by his parents to have girlfriends, he never felt the sense of responsibility. He never understood his own needs. He masturbated and studied looking at his teachers in his school. He also masturbated looking at beautiful newsreaders on a local channel. His father was a silent spectator to all this. He never told him what his problem was. He never told him to have sex with females. In fact, he advised him never to follow females. He advised him as per his experience. His mother did not let him have male friends and his father did not let him have female friends.

This made him a loner in school. His friends in school would tease him. This would make him withdraw in his own shell. He did not feel the need to branch out on his own, as he did not understand his own needs. He had developed a phobia of females.

This phobia cleared a bit when he got married. However, when his first girlfriend and wife abused him, he started reliving that phobia once again. He had given her a lot of love. He had invested both physically and financially in their relationship. When his wife proved to be ungrateful, his heart broke. She was also gullible. She took in the poison that Pratik's relatives fed her about her husband. They gave her that poison with money.

They were together for six years but she did not develop enough trust in Pratik to rethink about the poison that was doled out to her about her husband by his relatives to fulfill their own ulterior motive. Following the divorce and after his father's demise, he put out a post on a popular social media channel asking for females to make him his friend. He specifically said that he was ready to be abused by them in return for their friendship so that he could get back his trust on females so that he could marry once again.

He was of the belief that life was a simply supported beam and the man and the woman were the two supports. One of his supports was gone and therefore his life was converted into a cantilever beam. In such a condition, he approached his childhood friend Pranav to help him out. Luckily, for Pratik, Pranav's wife was in the same field as Pratik. She took it upon herself to rid Pratik of the phobia by working with him. They both started working together and depending on each other. Pranav's wife was the dominating partner in their relationship. Pranav was not and therefore he was closer to their two children.

She decided to make Pratik work with her own father. She had become a civil engineer because her father was also a civil engineer. They were running a small company. Pranav had married for money and therefore he was happy monetarily. However, Pratik had married for love. After Pratik's marriage, his in-laws constantly interfered in their married life. Even his own parents were very negative about the relationship. Pratik did not have love from his parents therefore; he decided to give his wife more attention. This did not go well with his parents and they took part in breaking his marriage. However, when Pranav's wife took it upon herself to rid Pratik of the phobia, he became slightly free of tension.

He decided to work with her with the same honesty and dedication that he had worked with all his employers. He wanted someone trustworthy because he had lost his confidence. He had loved his family more than his profession until then, but no one had stood by him. So he decided to do the opposite after his marriage was broken. He decided to take up Pranav's wife's assignment. He told her he wanted a traveling job because he was stressed because he was not having sex. He had invested in a holiday with a popular holiday company before marriage but they did not give Pratik the benefits he wanted. Therefore, he was unhappy on both his professional and the personal front.

He talked to Pranav's wife and decided to come clean. He decided to tell her everything about his personal relationships. He decided to work with her father and take his company abroad. He decided to channelize his energies and his sorrow into working for his new boss. He also decided not to marry again until he fell in love with someone. He worked with his new boss for years to come.

Professionally he worked with his new boss and personally, he began his ties with his best friend Pranav. He decided to start depending on them for his emotional and financial needs.

Things started looking up for him. His new employer was happy for him. He was so happy that he started forcing him to marry again. However, Pratik was adamant. He did not wish to get married until he fell in love. Pranav also tried to talk his childhood friend into getting married but to no avail. His first and only girlfriend of his life had ditched him so he was very disillusioned with life. He worked hard at his civil engineering job by day and spent time with his laptop by night, like a very well-known writer. He worked during the day and wrote stories by night on his laptop.

He decided to create a backup of work so that he could fall back on it as and when he needed to. He made friends with Pranav's wife. She became his best friend and employer and Pranav got someone trustworthy to work with his wife. The association lasted until Pranav and Pratik lived. This story proves that old ties are very valuable. Old is Gold.