love a wierd one- flings, affairs, explanations and answers.. part three

Someone, a very dear someone, once asked me, if I was running away from love… lets answer her today and hope she’s chances upon it, sometime in her life… however far into the future, the chance event happens…

     Nope, I haven’t ever run away from love, in fact I have always stared it in the face… and tasted it in a myriad flavours and yet, the flavour that I seek, the traces of which I carry in my mind- conscious, sub-conscious or un-conscious, I know not myself, but I know it’s there, for each time, I taste a new flavour, find it in a new form, I know, that’s not what I seek…

…..at times, it feels, like I have found it… yes, finally I have, the heart skips many beats and the mind races on mindlessly, it seems that it’s all there, every bit of the essence that I seek, the sweet music of romance reaches a crescendo, bliss knows no bounds and then it all collapses… collapses like a palace, a large palace…a beautiful palace… a palace of cards…

     ...then, I wake up, as if from a dream… knowing that, it wasn’t  for real… it just felt like it was… it was love, but not what was sought… not the flavour, that lingers on the tip of the tongue, but never quite settles down… there is never an absolute, always some ingredient missing…

     Shattered, I wake up… but surprisingly good to go, probably coz, I’m used to it, now or coz, I’m wired that way or maybe I realise that I haven’t really lost anything, that was mine to lose and on I move again, in search of the feeling, the flavour that’s mine… one that I hope, (I hope against hopes hopen!!! As Mr Nash* puts it…) dost exist… but I know not, if it does…

*Mr Nash- the poet- Ogden Nash

-The Word.

love a wierd one- flings, affairs, explanations and answers.. part two

     There was a professor, that I once knew, who took one of his students out on a `lunch date’ and the affectionate relationship he shared with this student was a hot topic of discussion across the department. Now, once the student confessed to the professor, that she couldn’t define what she felt for him, but whatever it was- was a very special feeling…  The married, gentleman-rogue professor, in his turn, hugged the girl and told her that some relationships needn’t be named or defined.  Now there would be those, who would abuse the professor and pass him off for a lecher, for playing around with someone half his age and a student, at it… and there would be others who would appreciate the mutual affection, maturity and the platonic nature of the relationship…( I personally can do neither…)

    

     On another such occasion, I tried to dig into another such intelligent mind, who was a publicly signed off philander and he came up with a very interesting thought process, rather long but very simply put,” there is love in degrees…relative love,” he said to me, “I may love the A more than B… so when a girl asks, how can you love her if you love me or vice versa… I may be tongue tied for the wont of the ability to explain this fundamental of `relativity of love’ but it exists none the less…”…” then there is the burden of ethical loyalty involved in goings on like these…”, he went on, as if he’d never gotten a chance to explain his point of view, before, “ a burden imposed, probably not unreasonably by the society and the culture that has evolved there in… when, you love someone, you have to be loyal to her, they say… I agree to this in effect that, even though I may love A, B and many more so, I can never love another, the way I love A, my love for A is very unique and unmatched for, I can never emote for another, the way I emote for her… and such is the case for the B and everyone else that I love… in fact there is no scope for being dis-loyal… You can’t love two individuals the very same way… for the simple reason that they are two different individuals… and if the argument for loving only one person held any sense, then no one would go beyond loving their own mothers, who is the first person, I believe, one loves in all his/her life, though that is love in a different flavour completely, but it is love, none the less… “…. Now that was such a long soliloquy that I didn’t want to add any further sentence breaks in that one…  now, whether you call it just an excuse to clear his own conscience off his shenanigans or a honest expression of an understanding of thought process break down, is for every individual to analyse…

Cont..d in part three...

love a wierd one- flings, affairs, explanations and answers..

“What I feel for you, is the closest, that I can feel to love for any one… probably, I’m just wired that way...” 

     Love tis such a weird one… a very funny and a complicated emotion. There may be thousands nary millions who’ve written books over it, talked words worth miles if measured in length...  Each one perceives it as it appears to him/her. Multi-layered and splendiferous, it leaves no one untouched… though the degrees of contact, understanding and perception may vary and so may the approaches… There is love in Moulin Rouge, Hir Ranjhaa, Laila Majnu… the romanticised, glamourized version, the so called eternal, platonic love… (…as platonic as it can be, when two passionate lovers are involved) … the love that metaphorically lasts for ever...

    Then there is the love the fickle one, that changes by the season, passionate while it last and fizzles out just as fast… and then it catches up again, just as passionately, but with another muse… there will be a million out there, who would detest their sacred idea of love to be made so mundane and crass so as to call these flings- love, but tis love, none the less… one has to experience it to know, its love…

     And of course, there is more to the types of love than just these, every relationship augers a different flavour of love, the love between a parents and children, the love between siblings, friends, people in a community, country … and god knows where else this emotion will blossom….

     There was a professor, that I once knew, who took one of his students out on a `lunch date'.....



Cont..d in part two...