The Great Escape

When the world gets too much to bear, it’s time to retreat to your ‘happy place’

Yes, I know exactly how you feel. It seems like the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. And you don’t know how you’re going to get through the next month, the next year, let alone the rest of your life.

You’ve spent days trying to live off the loose change you’ve scrounged from around the house. Or you spent endless hours queuing at the bank or at an ATM to get access to your own money. Donald Trump (Donald Trump!) is the new President of the United States. Leonard Cohen died. The list of misfortunes and tragedies seems endless.

So how do we survive in this world, which has begun to seem like such a nasty, brutish place?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I try and do so by going to my ‘happy place’. Which is often not a place at all but a state of mind I achieve by doing what pleases me best.

Here are just some of the things I have been doing over the last week or so to achieve ‘happy place’ status.

·       If you can’t stand the heat, get back in to the kitchen: There is something therapeutic about stirring a pot of rice on the stove to make a comforting risotto for dinner. Or carefully measuring out the ingredients of a gooey chocolate cake and concentrating on getting the mixture just right. Or even using the first meethi of the season to make theplas for breakfast. If all this seems like too much work to you, then crack open a few eggs, add a dash of double cream, salt, pepper, herbs, and stir slowly over very low heat. Pile the mixture on to hot, buttered toast. The world’s troubles will recede with every mouthful.

·       Get lost in the pages of an old book: There is nothing like comfort reading to make you feel better about yourself and the state of the world. And when the horrors of the world threaten to overwhelm, I retreat to the books of my childhood. I just finished re-reading Black Beauty, a birthday present from a young friend who knows me too well. And now I have started on Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers series, in the hope that the adventures of Darrell Rivers and gang will keep me from obsessing over President Trump (yes, yes, I know he’s not my President; but that doesn’t make it any easier). Word of caution: may be a good idea to stay away from the Harry Potter series. All those Voldemort references might come crashing back.

·       Out of the mouths of babes: Spend time with children. Read them stories. Listen to what they got up to in school. Ask them to tell you the latest jokes they heard in class. Get them to share their worries and fears; if nothing else, that will put your worries and fears in perspective. If you don’t have any kids of your own, don’t worry. This is an emergency and you are allowed to borrow them from friends and family. There is nothing like listening to the inconsequential chatter that emerges from children to make you forget the cares of the grown-up universe. (Note: if there are no children handy, just head for the nearest park and watch the kids at play. Their screams and shouts of pleasure will make you feel better about the state of the world.)

·       Schedule a digital detox: If you can’t stay offline during the day because of the nature of your work, that’s fine. But once you get home, put away the smartphone and tune out the constant chatter of the outside world. Don’t peek in to review your friends’ status updates on Facebook. Don’t keep trawling twitter to see (and outrage about) what’s happening in the world. Don’t even check into Instagram to see those carefully-filtered images of perfectly-curated lives. Let the outside world fade away while you listen to music, read a book, or just talk to your loved ones.

·       Watch re-runs of your favourite feel-good TV shows: My own go-to show when depressed is Friends, which I have now seen so many times that I know entire episodes by heart. Modern Family, with its blended families and cute kids, serves as another emotional retreat. And of late, I have taken to binge-watching Gilmore Girls on Netflix as well, while sneaking in a few episodes of Will and Grace. There is certain comfort in retreating to a parallel universe where nothing really bad happens; and there are no nasty surprises because you know exactly what’s coming next.

Well, that’s just a small sample of the many things I did to try and stay sane while the world seemed to run mad. But if none of them work for you, then you could always go to your actual ‘happy place’ and recover your equilibrium. Walk down the flower-edged paths of your favourite park. Take a day trip to the beach with a picnic basket of your favourite treats. Or retreat to the mountains for a weekend of quiet and calm.

And take comfort in the thought that whatever happens, the sun will rise again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. It may seem like the world has ended; but you will soon discover that the reports of its demise were vastly exaggerated.

Bully for you!

How to deal with the hotbed of hatred that goes by the name of the Internet

Cyber bullying has been much in the news of late. And it spawned a fresh set of stories after the wife of the Republican contender for the US Presidency, Melania Trump, gave a robotic stump speech to announce that she would work on combatting cyber bullying if she ever became First Lady. Once we had stopped pointing and laughing -- and asking her if she had ever met her husband, the Insulter-In-Chief, Donald Trump -- it was difficult to disagree with the substance of what Melania said.

You only have to spend ten minutes on the Internet to realise what a hotbed of hatred it has become. Clearly the anonymity that the net offers does something strange to people. It brings forth their worst instincts. It encourages them to spew abuse and insults from their safe havens in front of their keyboards. It turns otherwise rational and sane human beings into a raging mob spitting expletives and vomiting bile. It makes them think nothing of throwing stuff at you that they would never dream of saying to your face.

So, yes, Melania had it right when she spoke about how "We have to find a better way to talk to one another, to disagree with each other, to respect each other."

But she is quite the wrong messenger to put out this message. After all, every night she lies down to sleep beside Donald Trump, who is prone to go on vicious tweet storms in the early hours of the morning, asking people to check out (non-existent) sex tapes of former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado. So if Melania really wants to fight cyber bullying then she should start with the bully snoring gently next to her. Confiscating his phone and deleting his Twitter account would be a good start.

But I am guessing that is not going to happen any time soon. And even if we try and take comfort in the hope that after November 8 we won't have to bother very much about what Donald Trump has to say (am writing this before America goes to the polls, so knock wood) cyber bullying will still be a clear and present danger.

Like most women who have an online presence I have been subjected to my fair share of cyber bullying over the years. The abuses remained much the same. They were always some variation on calling me a 'prostitute', wishing that I would be 'raped' (except that I was too unattractive for any man to bother), calling me fat or ugly (or both), ah well, you get the drift. But over time my way of coping with the steady stream of vitriol did evolve and change.

My initial response to all the sexist abuse on such platforms as Twitter was to hit back hard. I would reply to every abusive tweet and tie myself up in futile exchanges that did nothing other than exasperate, infuriate, and even debilitate me. After a few months of this, I realised that what they say about wrestling with pigs is true: you both get dirty but only the pig enjoys it.

All I was really doing with my instant responses and cutting repartee was feeding the beast. I was just encouraging bad behaviour instead of cutting it off. I was giving cyber bullies the space to function and thrive instead of cutting off their oxygen supply.

So, I decided to change tack. Now, instead of replying to these angry cyber warriors I would just draw attention to their illiterate rants in a suitably high-minded manner. Thus began a brief phase when I would retweet the most vile tweets with a pithy comment like "Your mother would be so proud of you". The hope was to name and shame the most vicious offenders so that they thought twice about using language like this again.

I know, silly me. What was I thinking? All I did achieve by retweeting the messages of these trolls, who sometimes had less than a hundred followers, was allow them access to a larger audience on my timeline. And boy, did they revel in the attention this got them!

It was time to roll out another strategy -- and this one has served me well to this day. It's called Zero Tolerance. I block anyone who is abusive towards me. I block those who bully and abuse others. I block those who spout communal nonsense on my timeline. I block those who retweet this kind of nonsense. It is an endless process; block a dozen trolls and a hundred others spring forth to take their place. But despite the occasional moments of despair, I keep at it.

Is it a viable solution to cyber bullying? Of course not. But it is a good start to keeping cyber bullies out of my space. My logic is simple: I would not tolerate this kind of behaviour from people in real life; so why should I tolerate it on the Net? Anyone who behaved like that in my home would not be invited back. So, why would I allow such louts on my timeline, which is my virtual drawing room?

Which is why I don't have much use for Melania Trump's claims of combatting cyber bullying. If she can't deal with the bully in her bed, what hope is there for her taking on those hiding in the dark shadows of the Net?

Eom

Mid-life crisis?

No, it’s not that bad; but this may be the time to ring in some changes

There is something to be said about multiculturalism. For one thing, it allows me to celebrate New Year thrice every year. There’s the regular New Year on the 1^st of January, when I party along with the rest of the world. There’s the Baisakhi New Year in April that I get to enjoy because I was born into a Punjabi family. And now, there’s also Diwali, which is celebrated as New Year by Gujaratis, a community I belong to by marriage.

This Diwali, though, as I did my puja, praying to Ma Lakshmi for prosperity, I realized with a start that I have more New Years behind me than I have New Years to look forward to. Without even realizing it, I have tipped beyond the halfway point in my life. And from now on, I’m going to be counting down rather than adding up.

Yes, like Bill Clinton said so memorably at the Democratic National Convention, I too have more yesterdays than tomorrows.

But while I am not in the throes of a mid-life crisis quite yet (well, I think so; my friends and family may well disagree), I have come to the realization that time is not on my side. In fact, it is the enemy, racing past even as I struggle to play catch up.

So, from this year on, my motto is that immortal line that has stayed with me since my days as a student of English literature: ‘Carpe diem’. Seize the day. Make the most of every moment because it will be over before you know it.

As is my wont at such times, I began by making a list of all the things I should and should not do to get the most out of the days, weeks, months and New Years I have left. Here is a small sampling:

·       No more revisiting of favourite destinations. I’ve been there and done that. There is an entire world out there to explore. And I should do it while I can still explore – as in walk on my own two feet without the aid of a Zimmer frame. London and New York will still be there when I am old and decrepit. But I may not be able to do justice to the mountains of Switzerland and the beaches of Croatia when I need to stop and catch my breath every 10 minutes.

·       Sit right down on my desk and write that book. No more procrastinating. No more endless revision of chapters that I have written already. No more displacement activity masquerading as ‘research’. No more endless trawling of the Internet. No more excuses about lack of time or mind-space. It is time to sprint to the finish line. And when I’m done with the book I’m currently working on, it will be time to pick right up where I left off the novel I abandoned three quarters of the way through.

·       Prune that reading list. Reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that I no longer have the time to waste on airport bestsellers and other junk reads. From now on, I will only invest time in authors whom I love and books that show potential. And no more feeling like a failure because I can’t finish a book – if that is a failing, then it is the author’s, not mine. (Also, if I intend to re-read the classics that I last studied in college – just to see if they speak differently to me – then I need to get on with it. Middlemarch awaits…)

·       No to endless socializing with people I don’t even particularly care for. No to large parties where no conversation is possible (mostly because you have nothing to say to fellow guests). Yes to small dinner parties with friends and prospective friends, where we can actually hear ourselves talk and listen to those speaking to us.

·       Declutter my life: not just of things that no longer bring me joy but also of people who only bring me down. A ruthless cull is in order, so that I can both simplify and sanitize my life. By the end, I hope to be left with a pared-down existence that allows me to appreciate what I have rather than bemoan what I don’t.

·       No more taking health and fitness for granted. From now on, sadly, it will be a slippery slope downhill. And the only way to make a controlled glide down is to invest time and energy in eating well and exercising right.

·       Ah no, you misunderstand. That doesn’t mean I am going to survive on salads and soups and turn away from dessert. Life is too short to eat rabbit food. Or to drink water rather than wine. But it will get shorter if I forget that magic word: moderation. So, I’m going to keep repeating it to myself in the hope that it sticks even when that pesky memory loss kicks in.

So, that is my magic formula for getting through the rest of my days. Read, write, travel, play. And yes, eat, drink and be merry…Well, you know how that one goes.

And a belated (or early) Happy New Year to you all, whichever one you choose to celebrate.

Eat, Pray, Love

Let's mark Diwali as a Festival of Lights, not a Celebration of Excess

My childhood memories of Diwali revolve around (no, not shopping, crackers or mithai) cleaning. Yes, you read that right: cleaning. As a child I rapidly came to recognize that the first sign that the Festival of Lights was around the corner was that industrial-scale cleaning would commence in the Goswami household.

Entire rooms would be cleared out so that they could be washed and swabbed and swept until the floor was clean enough to eat off. The 'special crockery' that lived in the cupboard all year long, and was never used for fear of breakage, would be brought out ceremonially to be given a good scrubbing before it went right back on the shelves. The silver would be polished, the bronze given a good seeing-to. And all the Gods and Goddesses that presided over the Puja room would be ritually bathed and clad in brand-new clothes.

All of this was, of course, a communal activity, with the entire household pitching in to do their bit. Even the kids who were too young to be of much help would be handed a dusting cloth and sent forth to do their best.

I know it doesn't sound like it, but it was enormous fun. So much so that even now, when the weather starts to change and the air begins to hint at Diwali, my thoughts go back to my childhood home in Calcutta and our annual Diwali clean-out. I flash back to the vision of all the household furniture piled up high in the verandah to be given a little lick and polish, while the rooms were flushed of the dust accumulated in corners over the year. Which perhaps explains why to this day, to me, nothing says Diwali like the smell of soap-suds and bleach.

Growing up, it was made abundantly clear to me that it was only after the house was squeaky clean -- and sparkling enough to pass inspection by Ma Lakshmi -- that the task of celebrating Diwali could begin.

Of course, it was a different Diwali in those days. For one thing, communities were more integrated, and not only did we know the names of all our neighbors, we also thought nothing of dropping in on them unannounced. In fact, we weren't just in and out of each other's houses, anybody who was around at mealtimes would be asked to tuck in as well (and even expected to help clear up!).

Not surprisingly, Diwali also used to be a more communal (in the positive sense) affair. Kids would pool their resources to buy crackers and then get together in the evening to set them off while the entire neighborhood watched. Card games were more laid-back, with low stakes so that nobody could lose a fortune no matter how hard they tried. And it was enough to take a box of mithai to the neighbors to wish them Happy Diwali; you didn't need to put together an extravagant hamper full of luxury chocolates, wine, whiskey or cheese.

But as you may have noticed, things are very different these days. Instead of a home-style festival focused on family, friends and feasting, Diwali has been turned into a celebration of conspicuous consumption.

On Dhanteras it is not enough to buy something useful for the kitchen. No, the ads tell us that it is imperative to splash out on some gold. It is not enough to just buy one new outfit for the Diwali day itself. No, you must invest in a whole new wardrobe so that you never repeat a dress as you make the rounds of the endless 'card parties' that precede Diwali. It is not enough to just light up the house with diyas on the day of Diwali. No, you must get garish lights hung on the facade of your house for weeks on end to properly get into the 'festive spirit'.

Well, even though I have made my peace with the modern, more mercenary Diwali, sending out and receiving hampers with the best of them (keeping up with the Junejas, as I like to call it) there are times when I find myself longing to go back to a simpler time. A time when Diwali was truly a Festival of Lights not a Celebration of Excess. A time when we worshipped the Goddess of wealth instead of just spreading our wealth around.

So this year round, I made a resolution. I would try my best to recreate the spirit of the Diwalis of my childhood and teenage years. Here's a tiny little sampler of how I went about it.

* No to electric lights. Yes to earthen oil-filled diyas with homemade cotton wicks. (If that seems much too fiddly to you, go with beeswax candles.)

* No to heavy-duty hampers that take in everything from macaroons to Darjeeling tea to premium champagne. Yes to eco-friendly gifts like potted plants which will flourish and grow rather than be consumed and forgotten.

* No to splurging on household goods that I don't need (and scarcely have the space for). Yes to taking a collection of goodies and presents to the local orphanage and seeing the kids' eyes light up.

And, on the cheerful note, here's wishing all of you a very Happy Diwali. Stay blessed.

The concept of consent

The Donald Trumps in all our lives simply don't get it

Like everyone else on the planet, I have an opinion on the US election. And yes, you're right, if I had a vote, it would go to Hillary Clinton. Because, you know, the other guy is a sexist, misogynist, self-confessed serial groper.

We all knew this stuff about Donald Trump anyway. So why did every woman across the globe have such a visceral response to his words on that infamous Access Hollywood tape? Why did they send a shiver up our collective spine? Why did First Lady Michelle Obama confess that it shook her 'to my core'?

Why did all women take the Donald Trump tape so personally?

Well, because all of us have had a Donald Trump rub up against us -- quite literally -- at one time or another.

The truth is that if you are a woman - no matter what shape, size or colour you may be, or where in the world you grew up - you will have come up against a Donald Trump at some point in your life. Or even several Donald Trumps at different points in your life.

The uncle whose 'cuddles' always made you feel uncomfortable as a child but you couldn't figure out why until you were all grown up. The neighbour who regularly brushed up against you on the common stairwell and didn't even bother to look apologetic. The faceless man who felt you up on a crowded bus, his marauding hands all over your body. The boys who stood at the street corner to shout out loud comments about parts of your body and what they would like to do with them. The work colleague always 'accidentally' touching parts of your anatomy that should remain inviolate. The boss whose eyes undressed you every time you walked into his office.

We have all known these men, these Donald Trumps, who feel entitled to grab a woman, kiss her, molest her, objectify her, treat her like a piece of meat rather than a human being. Because even in the 21st century, the medieval, feudal concept of 'droit du seigneur' -- the right of powerful men to make free with a woman's body without her consent -- is still kicking ass and grabbing female genitalia with complete insouciance.

What that Donald Trump tape did was to bring back to all women every buried memory of being violated, of having their bodily integrity breached, of being treated with disrespect, of being reduced to a sex object, of having sexual assault 'normalized' in social discourse. That was why it felt so personal.

Small wonder then that it inspired such Twitter hashtags as #NotOkay started by Canadian author Kelly Oxford, who shared four stories of her own experiences with sexual assault and encouraged other women to speak up. In less than a week, Oxford tweeted later, 30 million people had read or contributed to the #NotOkay stories while a million women had shared their stories over the course of one night alone.

But for every woman sharing her story, there were probably ten others who remained silent about past assaults on their bodies. And there was another Twitter hashtag that explained why: #WhyWomenDontReport.

Not that any woman needed that explained to her. We know all the myriad reasons women don't report sexual assault all too well: because we are embarrassed, ashamed, afraid of creating waves, terrified of being disbelieved, and mortified at the thought of being known ever after as 'that girl'.

It seems so much easier to just brush it off as just another drawback of being a woman in a man's world, to shrug it away as one of those things that women have to 'deal' with and carry on with our lives. Because if you started complaining about every such event, you probably wouldn't have the time or energy to do much else.

The more important question is why men commit sexual assault. Why do they feel entitled to feast on our body parts? And why do believe that they can get away with it?

Well the short answer is because they can. And they do. Time and time again. And one of the reasons they get away with it again and again is that women are too ashamed, too humiliated, too traumatised to call them out on it.

And because they know that even if we do, we will not be believed but blamed. What were you doing there? What were you wearing? Did you lead him on? How much had you drunk? Why were you alone with him? How come you were out so late at night? Why are you speaking up now? Why didn't you complain at the time? Why didn't you try to fight him off?

Why? Why? Why?

The questions pile up until the accuser ends up feeling like the accused. And she starts to believe that she would have been better off if she'd just shut up and put up.

Well, you know what. It is time to tell her that that's #ItsOkay to speak up. And to listen hard when she does.

Face off

Why the unmasking of Elena Ferrante makes us all so uncomfortable

It was in the February of this year that I last wrote about Elena Ferrante. The English translations of her books were being launched in India, and it seemed as good an opportunity as any to write about one of my favourite authors.

The central theme of that column was how it helped that we didn’t know who Elena Ferrante actually was when we got lost in her fictional world. And how the author’s decision to hide behind pseudonymous anonymity was not just a writer’s caprice or a brilliant publicity stunt set up by her publishing house. Ferrante’s anonymity had a purpose: it allowed her the freedom to write about stuff that we struggle to acknowledge to ourselves, let alone say aloud to the world. And it was this liberty that allowed her voice to soar as high as it did; and to speak to the rest of us.

Well, today it is my unhappy duty to inform you that the veil of anonymity that Ferrante wrote behind has been rudely ripped apart by an ‘investigative journalist’ called Claudio Gatti, who discovered her true identity or, more accurately, invaded her fiercely-guarded privacy by rummaging through her financial and property records. And that he ‘outed’ the author in no less authoritative a journal than the New York Review of Books.

Well, be that as it may, I am not going to play Gatti’s game. I am not going to refer to the author of the Neopolitan Quartet of novels as anything other than her chosen nom de plume, Elena Ferrante. That is how she wishes to be known to the world. And it is not for us to decide otherwise.

Nor is it necessary to know the ‘real’ woman to appreciate what an enormously talented writer she is. That kind of autobiographical detail actually detracts rather than adds to an author’s mystique. The relationship between a writer and a reader is essentially one of imagination and a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. Sordid reality plays no part in this social contract. If anything, it takes away from the reading experience rather than add to it.

So I, for one, am not going to enquire too closely into who Elena Ferrante ‘really’ is. I don’t want to know where she grew up. I don’t care about her romantic life. I am not interested in whether she is married, divorced or single. It doesn’t bother me if she identifies as straight, gay or bisexual. And I certainly don’t need to know whether her political beliefs verge to the hard right, the liberal centre, or the extreme left.

This is not a decision I make lightly. No, it is a decision born of bitter experience. Over the years, I have lost count of the number of authors whose books stopped speaking to me when I found out too much about their personal lives or even political beliefs.

It all began when I made the decision to study English literature in college. Once I had signed up, it was not enough to just read texts – poetry, prose or drama – and appreciate them for what they were. No, we also had to learn about the author’s, their lives, their beliefs, and all that had influenced them in the course of their literary careers.

Well, given that I was the bookish, nerdish type, I entered into the enterprise with all the enthusiasm at my command. I had no idea how badly this would go.

It began with T.S. Eliot, a poet I had always admired, some of whose passages constantly played in my mind like the lines of a much-loved song (“I grow old… I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”). So you can imagine my despair when my research into the person led me, somewhat inevitably, to the discovery that he had been something of an anti-Semite.

I thought I would be okay with Philip Larkin, the writer of such immortal lines as “Sexual intercourse began in Nineteen Sixty-Three (which was rather late for me). Between the end of the “Chatterly” ban And the Beatles’ first LP”. And yes, it all seemed to be going rather well until the 1992 publication of The Selected Letters of Philip Larkin.

That’s when the essential banality of Larkin’s existence was laid bare, with its judicious mix of racism, classism, sexism and misogyny. Sample quote: “The lower-class bastards can no more stop going on strike now than a laboratory rat with an electrode in its brain can stop jumping on a switch to give itself an orgasm.” Ah, quite.

Since then, I have steered clear of getting too up close and personal with writers I admire. But I thought I was on safe ground when I picked up a biography of one of my girlhood favourites, Georgette Heyer. This was a woman who had made her reputation with Regency Romances that I had read so often that I knew the punchlines and plotlines of each by heart. And what do you know? She turned out to be a fan of Enoch Powell (yes, he of the “rivers of blood” fame)!

So, thanks very much, but I am not taking any chances with Elena Ferrante. All I need to know about Ferrante, the author, lies within the covers of the many books she has written. Everything else belongs to the private person behind that name; and that person is entitled to her privacy, keeping it safe from the rapaciously prying eyes of the world.

  

Splitting image

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt provide us with the perfect example of how not to conduct a divorce

Remember the time when Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin issued a joint statement on Paltrow's website, Goop, to say that they were 'consciously uncoupling'? Oh, how we laughed!

'Conscious uncoupling'? Seriously? Which asinine psychiatrist came up with this particular bit of psychobabble? And what on earth did it mean?

Well, in the 'uncouple's' own words it meant that though "in many ways we are closer than we have ever been" they had come to the conclusion that "while we love each other very much we will remain separate". And so while they would still co-parent their two children and remain a family, they had decided to end their romantic (and sexual) relationship. 

At the time  Paltrow did not know the originator of the phrase, American psychotherapist, Katherine Woodward Thomas, who would go on write a book with the same topic (Conscious Uncoupling; 5 Steps To Living Happily Even After), telling the world about her "proven process for lovingly completing a relationship that will leave you feeling whole and healed and at peace". According to Thomas, a divorce doesn't need to be a painful, bitter experience. Instead, we should treat it as an opportunity to turn our pain into "a catalyst for making a breakthrough in the way you show up in your life … and in your next relationship".

Nevertheless, Paltrow and Martin incorporated these lessons into their pre and post-divorce dealings. And as a result, they -- and their children -- have come through on the other side relatively unscathed. They still holiday as a family, they introduce each other to their new partners, hell, they even go together to award nights (Paltrow used one such occasion to praise Martin as the best dad ever). 

So, guess who's laughing now?

I was reminded of this as the car crash that is the Angelina Jolie-Brad Pitt breakup unfolded in front of a fascinated world. It was as if the two of them had taken cognizance of the principles of 'conscious uncoupling' and decided to behave in the exact opposite way.

First off, there was no joint statement. In fact, it wasn't even a joint decision. Jolie blindsided Pitt by filing an hour before the court was about to close (and after the glossies had closed their pages). Pitt had known that his marriage was in trouble, but was completely unaware that he was in for the chop so soon.

Jolie said in her statement that she had taken this painful decision for "the health of the family". Pitt countered by asking for privacy because this was a tough time for their kids, who were his first priority.

So far, so intriguing. 

Then came the leaks. Camp Jolie maintained that Pitt had a problem with alcohol, marijuana and anger issues. He had been abusive to his eldest son, Maddox, on a flight from France to America. He could not be trusted with the kids so Jolie was asking for sole physical custody. 

Camp Pitt insisted that Brad had just 'yelled' at his son. And he was cooperating with the authorities on the charges of child abuse, confident that he would be cleared. Once that happened, he would fight for joint custody. 

Meanwhile Jolie moved out of the marital home with all six kids into rented digs (which, it turned out, she had arranged long before the plane incident) and cut off all contact with Brad, blocking all his phone numbers and denying him access to their children. Amidst all this, there were suggestions tossed into the media that Pitt had cheated on Jolie with co-star Marion Cotillard (denied by all parties) and that Angeline herself was being 'consoled' by Johnny Depp. 

And before you could say 'pre-nup', the Jolie-Pitt divorce had turned into the stuff of tabloid dreams, a public spectacle that left the whole world gawping and gasping.

Needless to say, break-ups of lesser beings like us would not unduly trouble the world like this one did. But nonetheless, we can learn some lessons from the Jolie-Pitt divorce from hell:

* Keep private stuff private: When you are angry and hurt, you want to lash out at your partner. You want to tell the whole world how terrible he/she was and how miserable you were in the marriage. Well, take a deep breath and don't. If you can't do that, then keep your moaning within a circle of trust. The entire universe doesn't need to know your business.

* Don't use the children as pawns: No matter how much you loathe your spouse, don't let that hate percolate down to the kids. They need both parents in their life; they need to be able to love both their mother and father. Be sensitive to their needs. And never ever allow them to believe (as Maddox probably does) that the divorce is somehow their fault. They are probably blaming themselves anyway. Don't make it worse.

* Don't cut off all lines of communication: If you can't bear to talk directly, then communicate via a go-between whom both of you trust. Because just as you got into this marriage together, you have to negotiate the choppy waters of divorce together as well. And a modicum of civility will ensure that you come out whole on the other side.

* Take a leaf out of Paltrow and Martin's book and give 'conscious uncoupling' a chance. It's really not as daft as it sounds.