I have often wondered what is it about love that makes it transient or permanent? Are we really supposed to fall in love just once or is it supposed to be a trial and error process which might or might nor lead one to the bliss point. If the former, then, how does one differentiate between the real thing and the other situations, where it might not be the real thing. If it is a continuous process which leads you or prepares you to fall in love, by being in love multiple times, then what’s novel about it? I have known people who were so in love for so very long that you couldn’t imagine anything wrong with their ‘perfect love’ world. I used to feel secure when I used to see them because it used to reinforce my belief system and help me keep my faith.
Then a strange thing happened. One of these friends I knew, who was seeing another friend of mine, broke up with him and promptly married another person within a couple of months. Needless to say, my friend was devastated but this incident shook me to the core. It was as if my belief system came crashing down and I had suddenly been told to stop believing in all that I believed in. I am definitely exaggerating the impact of this incident on me, relative to that on my friend, but nonetheless, I felt betrayed in a strange way. If they, who had been so in love, couldn’t make it to the altar, then where is the everlasting essence of love? Can they just stop loving each other overnight or even over a long period of time? How do you do that? How do you switch off that part of you which found the other person loveable? How do you stop feeling a feeling, unless, something very fundamental has changed with the person? How does one find the intensity of loving two different people with the same passion and completeness, and if you cant, then is it ‘love’..and if it is not, then what would you call it? Can there be two true loves? Is there a plural to love at all? Are we living in an era of relative passion, where we are afraid of settling for less and hence, we keep throwing away what we have because we believe that something better than that is always on its way.
When I fell in love for the first time (or that what I believed in at that time!), I felt as if this was the end of the search for me, because here was a guy who I was crazy about and I had this notion of who and how we would be together. When we did not exactly end up in the ideal world that I had dreamt up, I realized that it was an infatuation, but that did not stop me from feeling broken and dislussioned. Now, when I look back on it, I laugh about it as do my friends who had to go through my ‘break up’ with me. When I really did fall in love, it was nothing so stupendous which would blind me into a frenzy, but was this deep and intense feeling where I felt as if there was a chord between me and him and that chord could tug at the core of my heart. Not taking away any of the intensity and significance of infatuations and crushes, I think that love is a much deeper and lasting feeling which doesn’t have a plural. If it did, it wouldn’t be love. If it was so dispensable, it wouldn’t be so painful and heart wrenching. If there was no magic and divinity in love, then why would it be so above explanation and analysis?
I don’t know the answers to all these but I do know that I don’t want to stop believing in this patchy love filled world of mine, which keeps on getting clouded by so many cynicisms and doubts.
The friend in question is happily married to this second true love of hers, but even today, when I see her pictures with her husband, I keep searching for something in her eyes, which would make me believe in my world again, where there are perfect endings and rosy sunsets and people do happily live ever after.
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