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How can one person or a single emotion have so much hold on you as to wipe away the rest of your life?
One of the most painful experiences of romantic love is when one partner loses interest, while the other retains his or her romantic illusions. Ensconced in the illusory world that lovers create, it takes time for one partner to realise that the other has burst the bubble and escaped.
And with that realisation come immense pain, disbelief and denial. You feel wronged, and like a fish out of water, try desperately to flip back into the earlier equation. People try pleading, cajoling, emotional blackmail, manipulation even threat — anything to get back the magic. Some like Jiah Khan, even give up their lives. But that is no way to love or be loved. You cannot, and should not, force anyone to stay in a relationship, because an unwilling relationship causes unhappiness and is unnatural, often bordering on the dangerous.
Sometime ago, a reader wrote to me in utter distress about a girl he met through social media. They (let us call them Rajan and Priya) struck up a relationship, and Priya waited three years for a commitment. Rajan told her to move on as he was not ready to commit. After a year, he realised he was unable to forget Priya and decided to get back with her. But by now, Priya had actually moved on and was in love with someone else. When he wrote to me, Rajan confessed he was so obsessed and regretful that he could neither eat, sleep nor work. He had taken to stalking Priya and the more he saw her, the more he regretted his mistake. This self-destroying obsession cannot be termed as ‘love’!
I was reminded of Rajan when I read actor Jiah’s suicide note where she says, “the pain that you (Suraj Pancholi) caused me everyday has destroyed every bit of me, destroyed my soul. I can’t eat or sleep or think or function. I am running away from everything. The career is not even worth it anymore…”
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How can one person or a single emotion have so much hold on you as to wipe away the rest of your life? There is certainly something abnormal in this. People like Rajan and Jiah are so firmly locked within their own emotions that they fail to notice that their love is not reciprocated anymore. For, how can you love someone who doesn’t love you back? How can you suffer abuse and keep going back for more? And if you really love someone, how about giving them the space to choose who they want to love and live with? Where is your pride, your dignity, your love for others in your life, or even for yourself? Obsessive personalities love disproportionately, lavishing all attention on one individual, to the exclusion of all others.
Let’s take a look at what Jiah accuses Suraj of in her letter — she says life is not worth living when the person you love “threatens to hit you… cheats on you, telling other girls they are beautiful… throws you out of their house… lies to your face… makes you chase them in their car or disrespects their family… You didn’t even meet my sister, you didn’t bother buying me something, you chose to be away from me on Valentines Day.”
If anything, what emerges clearly is the picture of a young man raring to get on with his own life and end this relationship. And, unfortunately, Jiah comes through as highly emotionally-disturbed and not able to deal with reality, insisting on clinging to a relationship that is clearly dead.
Of course, this in no way exonerates Suraj, whose responsibility it was to try and help Jiah deal with her emotional distress. Instead, he not just closed his doors on her and openly flaunted other girls, but in an unforgivably cruel gesture even sent her a ‘break-up’ bouquet that reportedly proved to be the last straw for the distraught actor. When one lover walks out of a relationship, it is his duty to help the other get over the hurt.
Why would a woman want to stay in an abusive relationship? Jiah says, “I didn’t see any love or commitment from you. I just became increasingly scared that you would hurt me mentally or physically. Your life was about partying and women”, and accuses Suraj of “cheating and lies”. If that was so, she should have given up on him in any case and worked on freeing herself of any emotional distress. But she chose to remember all that she had done for him, and then gave up her life as well.
In her letter, Jiah talks of all that she gave to the relationship and almost seems to be demanding a price for her love, loyalty, time, obsession, and the gifts she gave Suraj. If a relationship leaves you with a gaping void within, why give so much to it? “I have no confidence or self esteem left, whatever talent whatever ambition you took it all away. You destroyed my life… you made me feel alone and vulnerable. I am so much more than this.”
One should give only as much as one can comfortably give to a relationship — be it emotions or gifts. The moment you give much more than you receive, or more than the relationship deserves, you raise your own expectations unrealistically and are bound to be disillusioned.
And nobody, I repeat, nobody can destroy you or make you feel powerless in a relationship unless you allow them to!
Is there life after rape? Should a woman live in a purdah rest of her life, if a maniac forcibly violates her privacy? Should she conceal her identity and the identity of those who are near her and next to her?
Are the media and legal system doing the rape victim and her family a favour by not making public her identity? And withholding all references that may point to her identity?
I do not think so. By not naming the rape victim, you are not favouring her but perpetuating the shame and stigma that is associated with the heinous act. Rape is not the fault of the victim. By treating rape as an unmentionable crime, the media are treating the rape victim as an untouchable, someone who is different from you and me.
How does the fact that the public does not know her name, help the rape victim handle the trauma that she is undergoing? The fact remains that she has been assaulted, privacy violated. Those who have done it deserve to be hanged, after establishing their crime in a court of law.
But why should the victim be always on the back foot? Why are we shrouding her identity, apparently, in an ethical effort to help her?
In fact, in every rape incident, everyone who knows the victim at an individual level knows that she has been subjected to the crime, however long, and however hard, you try to pretend so. In the latest incident of rape – of a medical student at the Manipal Medical College in Udupi in Karnataka, all the students in that campus now must be familiar with the name of the victim. Knowing the name is not the crime, but in the age of surreal connectivity, there are no secrets left among us. To know is a human urge, especially if it involves someone’s misfortune and misery, such are rape incidents. So would be the village or town that the rape victims come from. Her relatives would know. So would all her classmates. All of them talk. In a free society, where people are free to gossip, and their fair idea about what is happening around them will continue to do that, unless we want to be a society where news should be always treated with an ethical pen.
Now the point is this. All those who are faintly familiar with the rape victim would know who she is (whether in the case of the Manipal medical college student or Nirbhaya). It is they who are going to be judgmental about what happened to the rape victim and they who will continue to treat with her variety of judgments ranging from empathy, sympathy, support, stigma, shame, unwanted attention, etc.
For someone outside the familiarity cycle, it does not matter the name of the victim. Whether they know it or do not. So if you do not reveal the name, it does not matter to the public, and if you reveal the name, it does not matter, too. So why not reveal the name and help the rape victim tackle her surroundings head on?
The shame associated with rape should go. For that there should be more courageous women such as Sunitha Krishnan, who does not deny the fact that she was raped, but works tirelessly to help such victims.
Rapists have all along thrived due to the “unmentionable nature” of the crime. The stigma and shame that one has to suffer have forced many victims and their parents to live in denial and never admit that their daughters were raped. There used to be an extreme case of under reporting of rapes all over India earlier, which is slowly changing now. It is not surprising that according to National Bureau of Crime Records, Kerala (in fact, Kochi) tops the list of rape cases in India. This does not show how perverse men in Kerala are but how politically empowered the society is. This shift has to go further now. We should be moving towards a mature society that would enable a woman say to the rest of the world, “Yes, they raped my body, but could never rape my mind.”
—John F. Kennedy carried on an 18-month-long affair with a teenaged White House intern, according to a new book by the woman who claims to have been the late US president’s lover.
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Former US President John F. Kennedy. AFP FILE PHOTO
Excerpts of the shocking memoir, “Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath,” were released Monday by the New York Post, which said it purchased a copy of the book at a local bookstore, although it is not scheduled for publication until Wednesday.
In her tell-all memoir, author Mimi Alford, now a 69-year-old grandmother, recounts the president’s tears after the death of his newborn son, and recalls that he confided to her, while
embroiled in the drama of the Cuban missile crisis that “I’d rather my children red, than dead.”
Alford provides intimate details of their relationship, which started in the summer of 1962, when she was just 19, less than half the age of the dashing president, who was killed the following year by an assassins’ bullet at the age of 46.
In an excerpt published by The Post, Alford wrote that she met Kennedy just four days into her internship, and that he invited her the following day on a personal tour of the White House residence that included first lady Jackie Kennedy’s bedroom.
Now 50 years later, Alford, a retired New York City church administrator, writes that it was there that she lost her virginity to Kennedy that day.
“Slowly, he unbuttoned the top of my shirtdress and touched my breasts,” Alford — at the time Mimi Beardsley — wrote in the excerpt.
“Then he reached up between my legs and started to pull off my underwear. I finished unbuttoning my shirtdress and let it fall off my shoulders.”
“After he finished, he hitched up his pants and smiled at me” before pointing her in the direction of the bathroom, the Post reported.
“I was in shock,” Alford wrote.
“He, on the other hand, was matter-of-fact, and acted as if what had just occurred was the most natural thing in the world.”
The young debutante, described by one Kennedy biographer as a “tall, slender, beautiful” college sophomore, continued the relationship for a year and a half — even traveling with the president on occasion — until their affair ended with Kennedy’s assassination.
Although they never kissed, and there was always a “layer of reserve between us, the sex was “varied and fun” she said, although Kennedy sometimes “acted like he had all the time in the world. Other times, he was in no mood to linger.”
During their affair Kennedy reportedly taught Alford to make scrambled eggs and to appreciate the music of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. Despite their intimate liaison, she continued to call him Mr. President.
And she explains in her book that it never occurred to her to resist the advances of the leader of the free world.
“The fact that I was being desired by the most famous and powerful man in America only amplified my feelings to the point where resistance was out of the question. That’s why I didn’t say no to the president,” she wrote.
And when she finished her stint at the press office of the White House, and returned to Wheaton College in Massachusetts, he sometimes would call her under the pseudonym Michael Carter.
The last time she saw him was on November 15, 1963, a week before Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas. “I’ll call you when I get back,” he told her. Alford reminded the president that she was soon to get married.
“I know that, but I’ll call you anyway,” he replied.
Kennedy is said to have carried on numerous White House affairs during his presidency, including with an alleged dalliance with Hollywood starlet Marilyn Monroe.
The Post wrote that Random House, which published the book, says that after the president’s death Alford “grieved in private, locked her secret away and tried to start her life anew, only to find that her past would cast a long shadow — and ultimately destroy her relationship with the man she married.”
I love the process of being able to ask you, readers, a question and get your responses February’s question was about love and the secrets to long-lasting relationships. It seems your answers were close to what my answers would be: Laughter, kindness, respect, allowing the other to grow, hanging in there when it gets rough, not walking away. And great sex.
One of my favorites was from someone who said that the secret to a long-term relationship is “not wanting a divorce at the same time.” That reminded me of something Olivia Harrison said in her documentary on her husband George Harrison, “Living in the Material World.” She said a secret to a long marriage is not getting divorced. That seems clear enough. If Cupid had a twitter account, what do you think he would say?
It is 147 years since the death of The President who deflowered me on his wife’s bed, so I have decided, after a struggle with my conscience and an advance the size of Brazil’s GNP, that it is time to unburden myself of the secret I have long hidden from the world. It is also time for me to divulge just how cute I was when I was a teenager, not to mention how terrific I look for my age. I’m not your average great-great-great-great-grandmother, after all. Have you seen these cheekbones? When I was brought to the Lincoln White House as an intern, I had no idea what I was doing there. I just wandered around asking people “Mister, do you know why I’m in Washington? Somebody sent me a note.” You see, I hadn’t applied for the job. I hadn’t ever heard of the word “intern.” We used other words then, not that I knew those either, because I was very naïve. I was just a sweet and innocent knockout long-drink-of-water (that’s what they called tall young ladies then) of a debutante from a preposterously wealthy East Coast family who attended a posh girls’ school. Curiously enough, I had never met a man. My own father was kept in a separate room and brought out only on major holidays. And not one student at my sophisticated posh boarding school ever discussed the so-called masculine sex. When boys from nearby Trinity or Yale came by to visit, they stood outside the windows and wrote their initials in the snow while we young ladies stayed indoors, needle-pointing and playing the zither. I had no idea what this “kissing” business was, for example, and believed that babies were brought to home by poor Irish immigrants who birthed them for you. Isn’t that quaint and yet oddly arousing? It wasn’t until I saw the twinkle in The President’s eye that I understood that I had been brought to The White House as what the French mistress might have called an “amuse bouche.” It’s not that I was bitter at having been denied an interview with his wife, the formidable and famous Mary Todd who had graduated from my alma mater Miss Totter’s. That wasn’t it at all, even though I had never been denied a thing in my life. It wasn’t that I felt competitive because at Miss Totter’s we were taught to be highly ambitious without losing our femininity, which is like being taught to be a carnivore without ever eating meat. It’s true that people said The President’s wife and I looked alike (although, since I am being brutally honest about all my memories as I recall them, I was taller and prettier than the President’s wife, as you can see from these early photographs of me; have I shown them to you yet?). So I was there in Washington because the President had obviously heard about my innocent ways and sharp intelligence. I was one of a select few. That’s why the girls at Wheaton College, which I attended even though it had only been founded in 1860, were fondly referred to as being part of the “Breakfast of Champions.” Clearly it was because we were recognized for our ability to make excellent conversation during meals. I was so fascinated by politics that I spent my time open-mouthed in amazement. The President and I spent a lot of time in the pool which was actually a bath tub. It was very big, though, because The President liked to splash around. We played with little log cabins because of his boyishness and wrote our names with soap on tiny toy shovels. I found it charming that he kept writing “Girl” for my name because it was his way of being intimate. Did I feel I was betraying the First Lady? Not really. I was very young and besides, the train tickets and buggies from Washington were sent by Staff members so they must have been worse double-crossers than I was, which I wasn’t, because of my extreme youthfulness. My life since The President left me a bag of gold coins as a dowry? (“For The Girl,” he wrote tenderly, saying so much about our relationship in so few words, a loving token that I naturally threw it away). Mostly dieting. And working for the other party. As I said, it’s not that I’m bitter.
Are you a single woman who has kissed umpteen toads but not yet landed the Prince? Or are you just holding on to something that was never meant to be? If you want to know what makes a man fall for a woman and willing to walk her down the aisle, Mimi Alford photos and details of her JFK affair and Dave Powers encounter air tonight on TV. But Mimi Alford didn’t just recently decide to detail her life as Mimi Beardsley, alleged JFK intern, in a new book. Rather, Mimi Alford was sought by news reporters nearly a decade ago. And when tracked down, the former White House intern admitted that she had in fact had an affair with Kennedy and Dave Powers.
The real credit on tonight’s news story, however, should be bestowed on the New York Daily News who discovered Mimi Beardsley nearly a decade ago. Mimi Alford is not exactly breaking her silence tonight. She did so nearly a decade earlier to the Daily News.
Part of the confusion about Mimi Alford started with her name. When she was in the White House as a JFK intern, her name was Mimi Beardsley. Initially Beardsley was a prep school senior who met the president during a White House visit in 1961. She then went to Wheaton College. Then Beardsley was delighted that she was given a summer internship inside the White House press office. But it wasn’t press work that Beardsley was about to do. Rather, she was to join an inner circle of young women who traveled officially with Kennedy but didn’t partake in official business.
In 2003, Robert Dallek published a book entitled An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963″. In it, Dallek detailed his access to previously sealed White House documents. Dallek uncovered an alleged affair between JFK and an intern. Dallek tracked down Barbara Gamarekian. Gamarekian told Dallek that she knew about an intern that had an affair with JFK, and knew her name to be Mimi.
Because of Alford’s name changes over the years, however, New York news had difficulty tracking her down. In 2003, that changed. Mimi was found living in New York as Marion Fahnestock aka Mimi Fahnestock. At the time, she was an administrator at Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.
Gamarekian had previously told Dallek that Mimi was often hiding in the floor of JFK’s limo on vacations; she was traveling on Air Force One; she was meeting up with JFK at secret resorts; and even joined him as he traveled to international peace submits.
Mimi worked two summers at the White House reportedly. She later married Anthony Fahnestock.
Initial news reports in 2003 claimed that Mimi never told her then husband about the JFK matter. It remains unclear if that is true. Andrea Henderson Fahnestock, Anthony Fahnestock’s second wife, was a curator at the Museum of the City of New York in 2003. She told the New York Daily News at the time “This story doesn’t involve my husband.”
But Alford tells news that the JFK murder left a shadow on her life, so much so, that the pain would destroy her future marriage.
In speaking about Mimi, Barbara Gamarekian told news in 1964 “Obviously, she had a special relationship with the President”. How far did that relationship extend? Mimi Alford writes in her book that she had relations with JFK. JFK gave her substances to sniff before having relations. JFK asked her and she consented to having relations with Dave Powers in front of JFK. And JFK asked her to have relations with Ted Kennedy but she declined.
Tonight, is not an immediate revelation about Mimi Alford. Her existence has been known in White House sealed documents since the 1964, she was first detailed by Robert Dallek in his 2003 book, and she broke her silence admitting the affair in a news interview with the New York Daily News that same year. In 2009, LALATE detailed extensively her plans with Random House to publish this book, a book she was reportedly paid seven figures to write.
So when Mimi Alford’s book hits shelves today, and she appears on TV news tonight, it is certainly not the first we have ever heard of Alford.
So, with that in mind, perhaps the best question we as Asian women should be asking ourselves is this: Does he treat me like an individual? And perhaps the dealbreaker is then not what race of girlfriends he has or how often he frequents the bubble tea shop, but rather he who assumes anything about our personality based on our physical attributes, or disregards our autonomy because of our anatomy.The best bit about being a woman is wielding the power to create and nurture while enjoying the thought of being a beautiful creation herselfThe thrill is not just in being a woman, but being a woman in the right century! And in this day and age, there cannot be many women, who do not revel in their sheer femininity and absolute power! As we all know, femininity and power, far from being mutually exclusive, are two sides of the same coin. Think Shakti, the divine, feminine, creative power! The Power responsible not just for all creation, but the agent of all change as well. I cannot believe any woman not feeling this great sense of empowerment and well-being that springs from within. The power to create, nurture and heal that is a part of her very being, endows her with unique abilities, positioning her as the centre of all existence and change around her. When Lord Byron wrote She walks in beauty, I’m sure he talked not just of the grace and deport of a woman, but was able to pierce through to her very core, which provides the majestic aura she walks within. To me, every woman who is allowed to grow unfettered, exercising her free will, is bound to walk in beauty! What is it that a woman enjoys the most about being the fairer sex? I would say her ability to revel in her power, as much as the freedom to indulge her weakness.She is admired for being strong and loved for being frail and helpless; she can rave and rant when crazed with anger, and the next minute melt into a puddle of helpless love. She can enjoy her many moods and feminine aspects without having to abide by adages or the need to be strong all the time. A woman’s intuitive understanding of life and relationships, and her role as the great bonding factor in a family are unique strengths that she does not share with the opposite sex. The depths of passion in her eyes, the wealth of caring in her heart, the power of resilience, of survival are all qualities a woman enjoys, growing more beautiful and understanding with the years. As usual, my Facebook friends (I appealed to only women) had interesting insights to share. Each one of them loves being a woman and with one exception, they all want to be reborn female! Madhulika Dash applauds a woman’s “sense of compassion…… and the ability to infuse life into whatever we touch…”; Anjali Bhargava says, “The sheer strength a woman has… epitomises the completeness in a being.I revel in the sensuous, intoxicating power of being a woman!” Deepika Sahu wouldn’t trade her world as a woman for anything else — a world “so very full of colours, variety, ability/desire to give without calculating, love, sensuality, tenderness, sensitivity… and of course gorgeous men who make me feel like a queen!” Pramila Maheshwari quips, “Shiva or Sati? Always the fairer one is the choice — she is happening, life, creation, nurturing — all activity is at her end.” Madhu Kamath says, “We are an unprecedented intricate, beautiful and unique piece of creation!!” Harmesh Khanna loves the “fact that we don’t have to hide our feelings or keep a stiff upper lip at all times…our ability to keep going in the toughest of times …of being ourselves, of getting pampered.”
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If you need to hear what the stars say, Katrina Kaif loves the fact that she can be “soft and feminine and yet a successful working woman”, Sonam Kapoor loves being a woman because of “the ability to create life.” Marilyn Monroe said, “I don’t mind living in a man’s world as long as I can be a woman in it.” A naughty friend says, “Chuck all that, I love the fact that I can get the strongest man down to his knees in a puddle of desire if I set my mind to it. Why would I want to be that man!” Why indeed! And to support her, here we have it from the Father of all politicians — wily statesman Chanakya, “The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman!” Need we say more?