Chp 124. The Ironies of Love

Exactly a year ago, I left Bangalore for good ol’ Mumbai to bunk at my sister’s pad. That was when my heart was grinded, shredded and minced into a gazillion pieces. Kima became Kheema. I sought solace in my sister then, flying to Mumbai from Bangalore just in time for her birthday.

Here I am again today, flying down to Mumbai from Delhi to celebrate her birthday. The only difference is, my heart has completely healed now. Time is a healer they say. How true.

Just like the song of White Lion that goes “There is life even after a broken heart, you can fight the pain from a broken heart”, I guess the hardest part of any break-up is just the initial phase. A broken heart cannot be cured by alcohol or friends or rebound girlfriends or watching Oprah Shows all alone. The only cure is time. Had I prayed to the Good Lord, I would have definitely felt better, but back then I wasn’t the person I am right now.

One thing I have realized when it comes to this game of cat and mouse is that people who are in a relationship seem to have this know-it-all attitude about anything related to love, and those who aren’t in any relationship have a very cynical attitude about it.

The ones who think they know everything about love (especially the newly married folks), tends to irritate you up to the brink of insanity, obliviously encouraging you to point that shot-gun towards them: “You know, buddy, love is not about how she looks or speaks. It’s about feelings.” And picture in your mind your smelly hairy ugly obnoxious colleague clasping his hands firmly as soon as he uttered the word “feelings”… Aaaargh, wouldn’t you wanna commit hara-kiri too?

And then there are those who are completely skeptical about love, especially the recently dumped ones. Utter the word “love” and they’ll look at you as if you’re inflicted with the most repulsive contagious pus imaginable. The mere sentence “I think we should reconsider our situation and slow things down a bit, maybe see other people” can turn the World’s greatest amorist into the coldest cynical misogynist.

Ah, the tides of love .

Funny how all things corny and mushy makes you wanna run to the loo to throw up, and yet, when that same thing happens to you, you’re like, wowww what hit me??? It’s something like swearing never to fall in love again after an unfortunate experience, only to fall a victim to the seductive call of Aphrodite all over again.

That my friends, is how materialistic love toy with our hearts over and over and over again. Love swoops into our life and sweeps away all sense of reason. Sometimes it makes us even dumber than a baby toddler. You tell the young child, “Sonny, don’t touch that. It is hot. It is called fire!” or “Don’t shove your teeny weeny fingers inside that electrical socket”, chances are, he will probably do it. But the difference is, once he realize how much it hurts, he will never do it again. We, on the other hand, are fully aware of the consequences, yet repeat it nevertheless. It’s something like that joke “One sure evidence that there exists superior extra-terrestrial life beyond Earth is that they haven’t tried to contact us” .

Still, that is how life is. C’est la vie.

In any relationship, it is of utmost importance to realize which World we live in. People too engrossed in romantic novels à la M&B sometimes make the mistake of trying to live out that delusion dream of a perfect relationship with a perfect Prince Charming. And while doing so, often make the mistake of missing that oh so obvious train stopping right in front of them.

Girl, here’s a radical suggestion. Throw away your Carole Mortimers, Emma Darcys and Daniel Steeles. Try reading Guy-ie magazines instead (not the graphical kind). Because what is the point in reading such mushy books when it is a known fact that we guys will never read them?

It’s something like table manners. Girl reads book on table etiquette. Guy reads book on table etiquette. Girl and Guy sit together at table. Things work out fine because the guy does everything the girl wishes him to do, according to the book on table manners.

But when it comes to love, girl reads girlie mags, guy does not read girlie mags, and hence does not do the things the girl expects. And in the end she tells her friends that he is unromantic and unaffectionate. Here’s a thought. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the guy is romantic and affectionate, and that the problem lies with the girl being over-romantic and over-affectionate?

I mean, is there a tangible standard definition of what romance actually is? To a girl, romance can be a candle lit dinner, red wine and Michael Bublé playing at the background, whereas to a guy, romance can very well be a greasy KFC zinger burger, a can of Kingfisher beer and Metallica blasting at the background. You might say, “use your common sense, the second option is not romantic at all”. Now hold that thought for a moment while I explain my theory of “burger + heavy metal” romance . The very word “common-sense” means that the knowledge is common. The question you should ask yourself is, “made common by what?” Made common of course by all those M&B writers, Archies & Hallmark cards and sophisticated restaurants thinking of different ways to increase their profit.

Seriously, here is a food for thought. Giving a rose to your loved one, no matter how clichéd that is, can still pass on as something “sweet”. Now are you really giving that rose because it is sweet, or because it is a depiction of being sweet as is observed in the movies and novels? Take the Holy Bible for example. There are many great love stories in there, especially King Solomon’s “Song of Songs”. Yet we never find anybody actually “getting down on their knees to admit their undying love” or “holding hands and walking together by the idyllic shores of the Red Sea drenched in myrrh and frankincense while romantically sharing an exotic plate of barbequed manna”. The Love mentioned in the Bible is pure, unadulterated and direct, with no extra fittings. The extra fittings are just an invention of the human mind along the passage of time for that “feel-good” factor.

Anyway I guess those are the ironies of love.

• You play with fire, you get burnt. Yet the spirit of love never dies.
  
• There is no love without hurt.
  
• Things you used to find too corny and “so not you” suddenly become your very principle of existence the moment you fall in love.
  
• The moment you fall out of love, you suddenly have this strange unexplainable hatred for all the opposite sex. The harder you fall, the deeper your hatred.
  
• No matter how “artificial” some of our behaviors are when it comes to love, you still do them nonetheless.

Have a great week ahead.

Ps. I will try updating my blog from Mumbai, but will most probably not able to update the “blog section” of misual.com. until then, keep the faith everybody.