Remember the moment when you were in your teens and your friend came up to you with a wide grin on his/her face and broke out this beautiful news – “I’m in love!” You then wanted to know everything that happened before those three golden words “I love you” were spoken – when they met first, how was the first impression, have they touched each other, kissed each other yet, is the person hot, caring, lovable, talkative, well behaved etc. Your friend is so much in ecstasy that you too are engulfed by that happy zone. All the romantic films come to your mind and you start seeing them always together. I don’t know about others but when my best friend had told me about his affair, apart from the similar questions, I was also very seriously concerned about what problems might arise in their marriage. I strongly believed that if you say “I love you” to someone, you just need to get married, that’s it, period! I was in my early teens but that’s the way I thought, thanks to the values imbibed in me by classic Hindi movies. Point to be noted is that they don’t tell you what happened after the hero-heroine gets  married.

I don’t even need to tell you what happened to both of them. Obviously they did not get married to each other. My filmy values which matter-ed so much to me started breaking into molecules, atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons and then to quarks. Rarely saw people getting married to their first love or first ‘serious’ love if you want me to put it that way. No, I’m saying there are no love marriages. I’m just saying that people ‘generally’ get married to their (n)th love which exists when they are at a marriageable age rather than being with their 1st serious love till the marriageable age and then getting married. What’s wrong in that? Nothing man, absolutely nothing. It’s just something I noticed. Initially I felt this to be morally (or filmy) wrong but with time, I completely stopped judging people based on this. Now come on, you’ll have to include almost the entire Universe if you judge on this topic of getting married to the 1st serious love!

Nonetheless, the filmy love values still exist and few of my very close friends have actually just married their first serious love. DDLJ zindabad!

So over the years, this one thing has changed in me so much that I really dread any friend telling me – “You know what, I’m in love.” What was once an exciting moment has become a cynical one. While he/she praises the lover with all the heart – hot, lovable, caring – I only hear words – ugly, moron, selfish – coming out from my friend’s mouth after a few months affair. Also the typical line from both the parties – “I gave so much selfless love. That is my problem. I’m so much into a relationship that I forget to care about myself but only selflessly care about the other person. But that a#@@#le, ras##@, moron/bi@#h, did not deserve my love at all.” After the break-up, most friends would console you by saying that the other person did not deserve you, you deserve better and you shouldn’t have been so nice and all. However, it is difficult for me to tell these lies (in most cases these are lies and on top of that you don’t know the other parties’ version of the break-up at all) because even before knowing that person, I knew this is what is going to happen and this is what my friend would tell me. Whatever be the case, he/she is my friend who is truly in great pain and I need to console in some way but in what way which is truthful and also useful. Difficult to decipher the code, really.

In the US, over 50% of the marriages end in divorce (over 5% in India – don’t even dare to think it’s not an awesome thing about our country, it’s exceptional and praise worthy irrespective of good or bad reasons for it). There was a research where newly wed brides and grooms in the US were asked as to what they think is their probability of divorce. You guessed it right, EVERYONE said zero percent. However, obviously over 50% of them got divorced. Stats speaketh for all but we believe we are different but those researched via which the data was deduced also believed the same. Similarly almost every “I’m in love” ends in “I hate that bas@@#d/b@#$h”.

All this brings me to the moral dilemma when my friend tells me that he/she is in love – should I ask him/her not to go ahead in love because eventually it won’t work and break-up is certain? My realistic data analyzing IIT engineer mind tells me to go ahead and stop him/her from falling more in love. However, then my positive mind asks me to stop because there are a few people who are different. What should be done? What is my responsibility because I know that heart break for my friend would be utterly painful and may be too devastating for him/her to handle? But what if there isn’t a break-up? Stats say there is a high probability. But what if?

Earlier I was extremely protective about my loved ones, my sisters, parents, girlfriend, my younger cousin brothers and sisters, close friends so much so that I used to get over-protective which would sometimes even result in fights. Can’t go into much detail but lately I’ve realized that everybody has their share of failures, pain and struggles which I can’t take away from them. Or may be I shouldn’t take away the pain which is a great teacher. And love, above all, is the greatest teacher. What if it’s only for a few months, during those months at least, it will be pure love. Why can’t love be only for a few moments, why does it have to last a lifetime to be called true love? I don’t have answers to these questions but the one answer I’ve got can be again summarized in a filmy dialogue which my friend Nitin Sharma used to frequently repeat – “Insaan ko zindagi mein kam se kam ek baar pyaar zaroor karna chahiye. Pyaar insaan ko achcha bana deta hai.” So go ahead, fall in love, love the journey, who the hell knows the destination, cheers!

With ‘Love’,

Red!