Fyodor Dostoyevsky is one of the most famous writers of the 19th century. His novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov are considered two of the greatest classics in the world, with a timeless appeal because of their deep insight into the human condition. But the most intelligent thing he said, I believe, is about being an idiot. He said, “Two intelligent people cannot fall in love; true love needs one idiot.” That, my friends, is what you call an epiphany.
Full disclosure: I wouldn’t know what he is talking about because I have never fallen in love. Happily single and unwilling to mingle, the closest I have come to true love is asking a boy I liked if he wanted to dance with me. Unlike how women in rom-coms—with their perfect hair and full assurance of a happy ending—make it look, this was incredibly hard. There is only one thing that could give me the courage to do it: that beautiful social lubricant known as alcohol. Three gin-and-tonics down, I approached him, reasonably confident that I wouldn’t be scarred for life if he rejected me. Unfortunately, he did. I like to believe that Dostoyevsky would have called him the idiot for dissing true love when it was staring him right in the face, albeit in a drunken and slightly unsteady state.
But I have seen true love at close quarters, in the form of my parents’ marriage. And from that second-hand vantage point, I can totally affirm the truth of what Dostoyevsky said. My parents are the most romantic couple I know. When I was young, I used to be embarrassed by their PDA; all that coochy-cooing made me nauseous. During their engagement, they wrote mushy love letters to each other, some of which would make even Shakespeare blush. When they got married, the inevitable proximity stopped the letters, and they instead began exchanging flowery messages on the phone. The intensity of the language might make you think they were long-lost lovers writing each other during war or amid some terrible calamity, instead of doctors sitting and typing from neighbouring rooms in the same hospital; I can only pity their poor patients.
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Gradually, however, their romance settled into a more palatable and less demonstrative mode. That’s when they started realising the truth of what Dostoyevsky said. Being two intelligent doctors, their egos were beginning to clash. Subconsciously, to oil the machinery of their marriage, they decided to take up the mantle of the idiot by turns. My mother, for example, plays the fool with remarkable intelligence. She has perfected the art of making her ideas look like they came from him. In fact, he makes it easy for her. My father has a way of contradicting everything my mother says and then reiterating the same thing later.
For example, if she says it looks like it is going to rain, he’ll contradict her forcefully. And then after some time, he’ll say, “It looks like it is going to rain,” fully convinced it was his idea in the first place. This selective amnesia, I hear, is a chronic condition with many men and, as is the way with such conditions, they remain blissfully unaware of it.
My father, on the other hand, plays the fool with remarkable ignorance. He is a physician, planter and landowner, and takes each of these roles extremely seriously. In fact, he is very good at them. He is also very good at fixing things, staying away from my mother when she’s angry and nagging me about all the things I have left undone in my life. Which, I have realised, is actually a good thing. Without his constant nagging and my constant complaining about his nagging, we would not really have anything to talk about. That unrepaired oven is currently our greatest bonding mechanism.
Despite his intelligence, he is quite the idiot about certain things. For example, he cannot, for the life of him, find things that are lost. “Where’s the sauce?” he’ll ask my mother. “In the first cupboard to your right,” she’ll reply. With a panicked look, he’ll open every cupboard in the kitchen. Except for the first cupboard to his right.
He also has a hearing problem that has nothing to do with his hearing. He takes all my mother’s statements and turns them into questions. “Maria’s daughter is going to America for her graduation,” my mother might say. “Maria’s daughter is going to America for her graduation?” my father will ask. “That’s what I just said,” my mother will say. “That’s what you just said?” my father will ask, with a look of complete innocence.
Today, my parents have taken to mercilessly teasing each other about the other person’s idiocies, having a convenient blind spot about their own. In the beginning, I used to worry about this constant arguing and picking at each other’s faults. Now, I have come to realise it is like foreplay for them; it is what spices up their love life. So, when my mother argues with my father about who was supposed to call the plumber to repair the bathroom pipe, I tactfully retreat to my room. Before the unrepaired pipe in my own house becomes the subject of their combined wrath.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.