Rise of the Flingletons

Someone is predicting a new trend every nanosecond. White is the new black. Gossip Girl is the new OC. Mobile is the new TV. And while we’re at it, fling is the new relationship. The great thing about a fling is that everyone is eligible to have one. Helen Fielding’s smug marrieds, Candace Bushnell’s fabulous singletons and Amchi Mumbai’s desperate mingletons are all having those magical, intense but short-lived close encounters of the third kind.
 
The beauty of the fling lies in its size. It’s not as decadent and European as a full-blown affair. The blowsy mistress in her baby pink peignoir is a thing of the past . . . or 70s Bollywood legend. At the same time it’s not as heartless as the one-night stand. No one wants to admit to being complete slaves to their sexual desires, even to themselves. It’s too nihilistic for an age where everything is perfumed and softened, even lice medicine!

Flings come as a breath of fresh air into our metro-boulot-dodot routine. Aided by its chief implementer – the mobile phone – the fling permeates every corner of our lives. From the shower to the boardroom, our lives suddenly become a secret litany of amateur poetry and pornography in equal measure. In a sea of faceless people and automated relationships we have suddenly found that one person who knows the words of our favourite song and touches us in places we didn’t even know existed.

So why don’t such perfect flings run the mile? Well imagine going to your married mother-of-one girlfriend’s husband and asking for her hand in remarriage . . . . especially when you’re married yourself? Or how about throwing a come-out-of-the-closet party for your bi-curious partner? Utter social inappropriateness is the thumb rule of flings. Most often than not, they don’t turn into a 3-bedroom sea facing apartment, 2 kids in Sanawar and anniversary bashes in Goa. Every fling doesn’t become Dolce & Gabbana . . . and even they split eventually!

Why not long term affairs at the very least? Well, Mumbai real estate is the culprit there. Skyrocketing prices for purchase and lease coupled with virulently prudish landlords and building societies ensure that homes just aren’t the love nests they used to be. For the same reason hotel rooms too have gone from a risqué indulgence to an unaffordable luxury.

And then there is that little thing about a certain Mr Murphy, the one who theorised about things going wrong when they will. In a city of 15 million people where one feels like a nobody most of the times, when it comes to having a hidden tryst, one suddenly bumps into everyone from their Pilates instructor to their best friend’s parents.
 
But why just blame cruel fate and crueller circumstances? The fact is that we live in the age of short format. We want it to have it all and yet not die of gluttony so we order a tasting menu of life. We want the stuffed omelettes but without the yolk. We want our favourite soaps but in minisodes on the mobile. And we want true love as long as it comes in bite-sized pieces of varied shapes and flavours and fits snugly around our jobs, marriages, and budgets.

If life was stage in Shakespeare’s time then it’s a TV screen today and flings are the snappy interstitials that come between the saas-bahu dramas of our daily lives. As a sassy colleague of mine summed it up when I bumped into her at the ladies room and in the spirit of LLB (ladies’ loo-bonding) asked if she was mingling (dating anyone currently) or single. “I am flingle darling, what about you?” Count me in, sister!
 
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