My Day of Love

For a long while, I only saw the back of his head and sometimes, if I was lucky, a side-face. We sat on diagonally opposite ends of the same classroom. He was the dreamy front-bencher and I was the participative back-bencher. I used to observe him quite intently even before we started talking. I noticed that he doodled a lot. He’d always be scribbling or sketching in his notebook, never looking up from his desk, not even to acknowledge the professor’s presence. There was always a pair of earphones nicely hidden behind his long and shabby hair. I thought he was genuinely cool. When we first saw each other face-to-face, I tried so hard to make an impression, he confesses now that he disliked me then.

The year our paths crossed was the same year we chose to walk different ways. He moved to another city and I got busy trying to make money. The first time we really met, just the both of us, was the night before he was to leave Mumbai. We shared paani puri and awkward silence. But by the time we were to say goodbye (with an awkward shake of hands), I was hoping with all my heart that he’d stick around for just a little bit longer.

That was four years ago. He did stick around. With subtle gestures, harmless prods and seemingly inconsequential nudges, one at a time, patiently, diligently, he made room for himself in my cluttered heart. And he’s made it clear – he is here to stay. I don’t know exactly how or when it happened; maybe it had started from the day I first saw the back of his head, maybe it had started way before time itself or maybe, like a platinum love band, it simply has no start and no end. We were, we are and we will be.

There is warmth in him, a comfort in his presence. We’re wound up in each other – we couldn’t keep away even if we tried (and we have tried). They say that you’re nobody till somebody loves you. He believes in me – and that gives me strength beyond all else. He can see through my pretenses and he can break through my walls – I am most vulnerable when I am with him. I am also most protected when I am with him; he guards me fiercely.

Every moment with him is my wondrous day of love – an eternity, a legend. I fall in love with him all over again, every day. Sometimes, it’s in the moment where we make up after a fight, because of the falsetto he talks in when pleading with me to forgive him. Other times, when I don’t see him for months, it’s while watching the sun set over the sea; the beautiful memory of our first sun set together washes over me as the sun reflects a million sparkling diamonds. And every morning when I wake up, I know that there is no morning that will ever match up to our first sunrise together. Most ferociously, it is in those tiny moments that we share – when he walks towards me and the closer we get the harder it gets for me to breathe, when he looks at me with a fire in his eyes and my heart stops beating, when I look away and he softens his gaze, when he kisses my forehead and when my smile lights up his face.

Vivek and I celebrate 19^th September, the day of our first kiss, as our day of love. He kissed me on my forehead on a railway station moments before he took off for Delhi. He lives in Pune now, and we meet off and on. We fight about almost everything and are constantly planning for the zombie apocalypse, among other things like our bedroom wall.

Glad i finally wrote about us,

Thanks to preciousplatinum.in & Indiblogger for this motivation!

Signing off with a big smile,

Wannabe Wayfarer :)

First Love

Precursory statement: This is not about my first love.

So, yet again, I bunked yet another class for yet another movie. Ek Deewana Tha today. And the world may give it half a star or none, I loved it. I loved it because it’s one of those movie experiences where I’m stuck to the seat even after the credits have started rolling and the movie itself plays in my head for the rest of the day.

The possible scenarios for all typical Hindi romantic movies (not mutually exclusive):

·         A lot of focus on “You never forget your first love”

·         LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

·         Crazy jobless mawaali woos shy delicate princess

·         Love vs. friendship

·         A happy ever-after against ALL ODDS

There was nothing new or fresh about Ek Deewana Tha. Except Prateik. His dancing skills, acting and just him being so cute in love! For people who’ve seen (or will see) the movie, notice the way he hugs her at the Taj Mahal! ^_^

Okay, less than 3 hours since I saw the movie and I cannot recall the name of his character. But his portrayal of that “i-would-die-for-her” kind of lover is etched in my mind. For the moment atleast. Probably because I’m being very sensitive about love this month. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the winter. Winters always make me want to cozy up to somebody and thereafter realize that my ugly pink teddy bear needs a wash. Only during winters, I let myself go “Aww” on mush. Or when I’m eating a half kg tub of ice-cream.

Re-focusing (though there isn't much of a focal point here), while watching this typical romantic movie on a wintry February morning snuggling my hoodie, there were a few couples who came to my mind. I love real-life love stories and so I’ve heard a lot of them. Some were strikingly similar to this one. More than one was a LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. So fact remains, even if I have never experienced it, love at first sight happens. It’s one hundred percent real and possible. Though, in all the love stories - real as well as fiction- that I can think of, the whole love-at-first-sight emotion is stronger for the man. Because apparently the girl of his dreams is so shy, she doesn’t even look into his eyes. Pfft! I couldn’t be that shy even if I tried. So is the phenomenon exclusive to the ‘bashful boy – timid girl’ pair?

The way he looks at her… sigh! THAT, THAT makes me wish that someone falls in love with me. Just one look, and he decides, “She is the one. The girl I will marry. I love her.” Surreal.

In most cases, like in this movie, the man’s first love is his love at first sight.

I want to be somebody’s first love. Someone he is madly in love with. Someone he will chase to the ends of the world. Someone he will never give up on. Someone who, for him, is his “biggest audience”.

Now, some bubble bursts:

• I don’t think love happens just once. Can’t you love more than one person to the same immeasurable extent?
• Why is the woo-ing and chasing customarily boys’ domain? I want to pataao guys, cheesy pick-ups et al, without being labeled unpleasant things. I want to do crazy things for the one I love. Hmm.. Okay, this question I think I’m answering for myself. I would want to do all those things only if I’m sure he loves me back. Boys are probably more rejection-resistant that way.
• For the normal, non-breathtakingly-beautiful variety of human beings with a zillion things to work out, does love really find us?
• Also, my over-analyzing alter ego, who I try to keep suppressed as much as possible, has a very disturbing theory; that one rarely marries the love of their lives. Most passionate love stories have depressing ends – war, death, or simply (and possibly the worst of its kind), living different lives with different people, away from each other. Apparently, the original EDT has a different ending – one where she ends up marrying a bloke from U.K.; not the happy ending which the audience sees.
• Now that the alter ego is on the fore, might as well get this out of my system: Maybe it’s never about love. It’s just a trade-off. Weighing of options.  The ‘U.K. + parents’ approval + stability + rich hubby’ package probably tilted the scales as opposed to ‘love’. Bleh.

Signing off,

The Ever Optimistic

Wannabe Wayfarer.

P.S.: I do not know how to add audio, but if possible, listen to the music of Ek Deewana Tha. Particularly, Hosanna in Tamil. A.R. Rahman creates magic!