Love and Romance

26, single and a through and through 90s kid, I have grown up on a healthy appetite of romantic movies such as Hum Apke Hain Koun, Dil To Pagal Hai, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge, etc. All 90s kids in India know what I'm talking about and if you’ve seen these movies you know I undersell it when I say healthy. For me romance has been just that. Being told I'm loved, mixed with an outward and obvious show of love. That’s the kind of personality I have and I make no excuses for it.

My parents have always been a stark contrast to me. Reserved and extremely conscious, it has always been a big deal if I can steal a kiss or a hug from them. My parents are even less demonstrative with each other and I rarely see them hug or say ‘I Love You’. I have always wondered how this worked and somewhere in my head I decided that when I finally get married, my marriage will not look like that.

My parents had an arranged marriage. My grandmum saw my mother at a function and decided this was the girl who was going to make an honest man out of her son. Stage was set and my parents were engaged without even meeting each other. They were engaged for two years during which my parents respectively finished their CA and MA. They also took these two years to finally meet each other (along with their siblings) and write letters to each other. On Sept 30^th 1984, my parents were married. 30 years on, I see my parents as two friends ambling along life and having as much fun as they can while managing their respective jobs and two over demanding daughters.

Ever so often, there are experiences in your life that make you question everything you know and believe you understand about life. On one of my mother’s innumerable travels to Delhi, she decided she was going to take the train.  Thanks to our miscalculation of the travel time and traffic in Bombay, she was running late and would almost definitely have to make a run for it to catch the train. While I waited for her call to tell me she had reached, I noticed that my dad seemed nervous beyond words. For the one and half hour it took my mum to reach her destination, all my dad did was pace around the living room with the phone in his hand, picking it up in the first ring.

My initial reaction was to laugh it off but then I finally saw it. That was love. For my parents it wasn’t about the demonstration of love. For them, love was worrying whether my dad had had his medicines, or my mum made it in time for a travel. It was what made my mother want to make lunch for my dad despite a back ache and what made my dad drive her for an important meeting irrespective of his schedule.  In that moment my concept of love changed. Just when I believed I knew and understood what I want from life, I realized, maybe what I wanted was something completely different. When all the chemistry and passion has died down and the novelty and excitement is gone, what I really want is a friend. Someone I can talk to about books, music, movies, sports and life in general. Someone I can laugh, cry and be crazy with. In the end, after 20 – 30 odd years, if my daughter was to write this, I hope she’d write it this way too.

Advice

“...Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth...” (Cortesy: Sunscreen song, Baz Luhrman)

The one thing there is never any shortage of, is advice.  We live in times when everyone around you thinks they know the best possible way to deal with a situation and they don’t stop and just revel in the knowledge of their superiority over you. No sir! They will actually sit you down and dispense advice more freely than the Indian government giving out Quota seats. They will tell u exactly how you should deal with the situation and go ahead and also tell you when to sleep, eat, talk, drink, stopping only short of telling you when to poop. Small mercies.

Problem is all the people giving you advice want you to believe they’re in this with you. That somehow the situation affects them as much as it affects you. Truth is, when everything’s said and done, none of them will care. Yes, they might show you sympathy, they might feel bad for you but the truth is they are not in this with you. The situation is yours and yours alone. The battle is yours too. Then why shouldn’t the victory and the battle scars be yours too?

This is not to minimize the importance of the advice people give me. I thankfully accept all your concern, love even, towards me. It reminds me that I have beautiful people who support me and that there are people out there who have possibly been through the same things as me and have a helpful word to say. However, just a suggestion, don’t talk like this impacts you. Give the situation and its impact on my life credit. Treat it with the same respect for privacy as you would my phone; the situation might be a manifestation of my dreams and those are mine alone.

Big Love

I think I finally know why people say they will never forget their first big love. Unrequited or not, first love is like a drug. It’s all consuming and all encompassing. If it doesn't make or break you, it definitely does change you. It trains you, sets expectations and if you're lucky, it shows you not only what you're capable of mentally but also emotionally. And when this love is lost, which happens more often than not, you grow the fuck up. Maybe you’ll leave a part of you behind and maybe you’ll take a part of them with you. But you pick up the pieces, pull yourself together and you move on. And you tell yourself the one universal truth - you will be alright. Tough times don't last, tough people do and you will repeat this to yourself till you actually are all right.

Movies, Books and Real Life

I think it was sometime in 2009 when I trekked up to the cinema hall with 3 of my closest friends in UK for what was going to be a life changing experience. Since that day, I have steadily maintained that my life as I knew it had changed.

As girls I have realised it’s almost our business, no, birth right to analyse and dismantle every words said, every move made by a man to mean something (good or bad). We love it... it thrills us; it excites us and gives us a reason to hope. Hope somehow is the beginning of the process. We sit there hoping and kidding ourselves into believing and seeing things that may or may not exist. All those who saw the movie know what I'm talking about. Yes, I am talking about he's just not that into you.

That movie for me broke away from the usual bull shittery of happily ever after and don’t worry if he doesn’t give shit about you, when you finally put on tonnes of makeup and/or wear good clothes the guy will come grovelling to you you to take him back.  Oh how I've fantasized about the time when that happens. But for this movie, there was no fluff, no fantasies - real women, real stories, real issues and (sometimes) heart breaking-ly real results.

A year after watching the movie (a couple 1000 times) a friend told me about the book. The only thing on my mind was – if the movie was this good, the book has to be. But it was different! It wasn’t better or worse, it was just more direct. I don’t know if it was having it written out in print or it was having it said in a letter format or maybe it was knowing that these were normal everyday women (hey, the movie still had some very, very gorgeous women, here I was free to determine the prettiness of the letter writing women :P ) facing everyday issues that the words he’s just not that into you finally seeped into my brains.

But more I read the book, the more I realised it in general encompassed all the men there are. And was it all black and white... were there no grey areas? What if a man was actually busy with work? What if he actually was commitment-phobic? The’ what if’s’ started outweighing the honest truth of the book and I found myself grappling at ends, wondering when is good, good enough? And what if there isn’t a guy out there who has all of this, what do you do? Sit around and wait for what may or may not ever happen? Is it worth giving up on a reality that is pleasant for a dream that one day you might get up from and realise you might’ve almost had it but you let it go.

If only I could count the number of times I’ve hoped for my life to be a book or at least easily lived according to the guidelines put down by someone else. But no one said it was going to be easy. You live, you stumble, you walk and you fall, you get up and try again. No one is going to tell you how and no one is going to tell you just when it’s time to finally hang up your boots. But it’s always nice to see a little board pointing you in the right direction. The book’s made sure I am on the path at least – who know if I go the distance!

Muted

The loud whispers of unsaid words
The claustrophobia of unseen walls
What keeps us together now
Are feelings that we had
We go back and forth
Trying to make it work
But we both know
It’s nearing its end
Words not blame, actions not reactions
Care not hate and two kind words
We part ways as strangers
Maybe to meet again
Let not our loss overshadow our will to try
Let not our fears take over
Knowing what we had wasn't so bad
Maybe test the bonds of friendship again