31 December 2008

Love, actually.

You know that moment. When you look at her, suddenly, out of the blue. It could be any other look, but it isn't. Suddenly your eyes are filled with beauty. She looks like the most beautiful thing you've laid eyes on ... that's the moment you realise you love her. It happened to me today. There I was... just standing... and I turned around, and she was there. She was so beautiful. 

I knew, at that moment, that I love her. 

I love her for all she is and all she isn't. She isn't perfect, but I loved her. She looked like the image of  beauty... I almost felt like she glowed a little... like the star from Gaiman's 'Stardust'. 

Was it too late, I wondered. Here I was, thinking of going our seperate ways... and this is the time that bastard cupid decides to strike. At least I know i love her. Tis better to have loved and lost... 

If I have to sell her, I'll miss her a lot, that's for sure. 

Her hood... just looked so perfect today. The slight bump on the hood, made to accomodate the bigger engine... the high clearence... the eagle painted on her bonnet. Even the slightly worn out tires ... the dent on the side (ah i remember that drunken evening... we've spent lots of beautiful times together, you and I). I love it all... i love all 1.3 litres of her. 


26 December 2008

Lovers

There are different kinds of lovers. It's a little chocolate, there are also different kinds of chocolate. Incidentally, my father, who brings home a lot of chocolate, brought home 3 big bars of dark chocolate with fig. You might not believe this, but it was brilliant. The chocolate was dark and soft and gooey, with a mushy, dark pink fig paste. I loved it. When it got over, I turned to real figs, which I've never really enjoyed before, and I loved them too. 

Chocolate does that to you. As does love. 

But my sister, you see, hated it. "Ugh, who eats fig chocolate." So did my sort-of-girlfriend. "I hate figs. I hate the little seeds, and I hate mushy-ness. Don't give me any," she said. 

Different people like different chocolate, and different people love differently. Different people have different understandings of love, that much is true. 

Thats the problem, see. The problem isn't that people can't find a way to define or describe Love. Its just that they can't find a way to agree on the definition of love. 

Here, according to my very limited experience with love, that bitch, are the different kinds of lovers.

1) The romantic lovers. Many, at some point in our romantic lives, have been this kind of lover. I don't think I ever have, actually. As a young man (yea, I used to be one), I remember friends looking at a girl from far and saying, "I love her man... I really do." This love has nothing to do with real, deep emotion. Its just, you know, Romantic. The kind you see in Hindi movies. Many of my friends never even worked up the courage to talk to these girls. I clearly remember one saying, "I'm going to marry her, I dont know how, but I am." It didn't matter that he never had a chance in hell. 

Or like my friend Nina, who was in college with me. One days she came to me and said, "This boy came and gave me a note, but its french, and I don't know french, what does it say? It said, "Je t'aime beaucoup." I had to laugh at the guy. Not only was she way out of his league (yes, the fact that he wore only tee-shirts with a Sports Authority of India Logo on then{he said his father was an official there} may have had something to do with it), but they had also never spoken! Ah, the romantics. Yea, they never went anywhere. But i've heard stories did go somewhere you know. This girl, Mansi, was in my college, much older than me of course, and there was supposedly this boy who was totally in love with her. He only managed to say it to her, I hear, years later, and they eventually got married. She's on tv now, Mansi Scott.

2) The reason-to-love lovers. "I love you because you're so zen,"  she said  to me. Easily the nicest, most perfect girl I ever dated, I have no idea why I kept breaking up with her. It may be because I'm not essentially a reason-to-love lover, but that's besides the point. She wanted to love me more, so she brought home a dvd of a korean movie (about a girl who loses her virginity to an arrow) and some chinese movie called "Raise the red lantern". I only watched the second one because I thought it would have some kung fu in it. It didn't. 

I, on the other hand, didn't love her because I thought she wasn't bright enough. Its besides the point that I was proved wrong the moment she got accepted into Columbia's journalism program. 

The thing is : we needed reasons to love each other. We needed to say, "I like you because..." I guess its a good way to love, if you're thinking of a long term relationship. Its good to know why you like someone, so you can keep reminding yourself about it. But then again, you know if you have a reason to love somebody, then someday, when you change, that reason may cease to exist. 

3) The spiritual lovers. There was this girl once. I don't know where I fell in love with her, but I realised it on a deserted beach, in the middle of the night, when she said, "Let me show you how to really hug somebody." You know, words are always a barrier to emotion. There are never enough words for feelings. The english language is the worst. There's just one word for love. You kn ow that story about the inuits having some 30 odd words for snow. Well, Indian languages have many more words for love than English. There's a word for every different love that goes with every different relationship. But there still isn't enough to describe it all. That is why I can't describe what I felt with her, but we were bonded on a different level. The kind that you can never explain, you know, where souls meet and all bull. 

It doesn;t matter  now, of course, cos two weeks after that day on the beach, she went and got married. 

I think i'm essentially a spiritual lover, though, who will love without knowing why. Who want's to be understood without ever saying anything, who can never lie to his lover, because words don't count for much. Thats my problem, see, that kind of love, I don't know if it comes by very often. 

4) The reverse-love lover. "I don't want a soul-mate. I want someone who loves me inconveniently." This is the perfect way to define the girl i'm tangled up with right now. See, this person makes their decisions for love based on how much the other person loves them. They're the complete opposite of the Romantic Lover. More than wanting to love, they want to be loved. They want people so say odd things like, "I love you more than life itself," "I cry myself to sleep thinking about you," and "I can't live without you."

Ideally, Romantic Lover should meet Reverse-Love Lover, and it should work well. Until of course, More-Romantic Lover shows up and Reverse-love Lover feels more loved.


So i've left all the minor lovers out of this list. You know, like, says-i-love-you-during-sex-only lover, liar lover, arranged marriage lover... that kind. Those don't matter. 

And oh, happy new year to you, whatever kind of lover you are. May you find true love this year. 

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