Rehne do chhodo bhi jaane do yaar; hum na karenge pyaar :D

Disclaimer : 

a) This post is full of gallows humour. Narrow- minded people who take everything very personally may please refrain from reading this post... for I have no intention of offending anybody in any manner. I am only responsible for what I say and not for what you understand and perceive. 

b) Since the topic is very sensitive and heart-achingly (quite literally!) familiar to all, I would like to say beforehand that this post has very personal opinions as to why I am so averse to everything related to love and I, by no means, intend to preach anybody anything. 

c) The pictures have been inserted hither and thither just to jazz up the humour content of the post.

Apart from tax, there is this one enigma that I absolutely fail to understand - LOVE !

Ever since I gained sense, I have always considered love to be the very essence of our lives. They say that we learn to love even before we are born - as a fetus in the womb, we fall in love with our nurturer. As a kid, we fall in love with the caring eyes, the affectionate faces and the tender hands of our parents. But as we grow up, we tend to distort this beautiful feeling all together! I mean, see, isn't love supposed to be something that lights up your eyes like a blind man seeing sunshine for the first time? Instead, what I have always seen in my friends' eyes are tears! Isn't love supposed to be your sanctuary when your mind searches for solace and peace? But on the contrary, what I find is chaos and stress everywhere I look!

Of course my brother's suspicions could be true that I belong to Pluto, and not Earth, with my own stupid ideologies and beliefs about everything... but I would rather stand by my gobbledygook that to love means to slowly break down a person's walls without him/her noticing and then rebuilding them with windows to let the sunshine in, than accept what my eyes show me all around - darkness and depression because of love. So it's either me or there is something grossly wrong with the way people interpret love.

Before you declare me to be an alien from Pluto, I would like to first substantiate my basis of enunciating the above statements with the instances of love I have seen in 24 years of my existence in this universe -

1. The Fri-end Love

This is the love that begins on Monday and ends by Friday. The weekend is for recuperating with loads of booze/ ice cream. The next week, of course, brings a new story. Each Monday is an inception and each Friday is a breakup.

I remember wasting my chocolates for cheering up one such friend. I saw her crying her eyes out over her recent breakup (it was Friday) and offered her chocolates out of humanity. She had them all. She was seen with a new guy on Monday.

Lesson learnt : Never waste your chocolates on anybody. EVER. Eat them all by yourself.

2. The K K K Kiran Love

The obsessive love. While it evokes outrageous amount of passion in one party, for the other it is absolutely nightmarish! Kindly remember that there is always a Sunny Deol with his dhaai kilo ka haath, protecting his Kiran and that SRK dies in the end, before venturing into obsessive kind of love.

Query : What is the point of such an infatuation? You can never force anybody to love you, can you? Unless you can brew a love potion. But even in that case, you risk creating Lord Voldemort.

3. The Ex Parte Love

The one-sided-love. Another category of troublesome love, one sided love often enkindles unrealistic expectations in the party in question. The other party, usually uninterested, is caught unawares by surprise gifts and flowers and messages dedicated to them.

The consequences of this kind of love range from pitiful friend-zoning to dangerous 'wo meri nahi hogi to kisi aur ki bhi nahi hogi' psyche resulting in blackmails, acid attacks or kidnapping or sometimes gruesome murders.

Query : Again, you cannot chain anybody and make them love you... what then is the point of expending all your energy at a place where one gets no reciprocation? Personally, I believe that what's yours comes to you no matter what and what is not meant to be yours is not going to stay with you no matter what! doesn't that make running after a person, who doesn't give a damn to your existence, totally futile?

4. The 'It happens only in India' Love

This has 2 dimensions -

a) Religion

Interfaith love has no unconditional acceptance in India. Period. I have read countless cases in the newspaper and have seen numerous movies on the same theme. Either or both the parties are shunned by their families for sake of religion. What I have always failed to understand is that every religion propagates love and in no religion does God ever utter a single syllable about killing one another in the name of religion... who, then, are human beings to kill His creations in the name of religion? This issue is so deep rooted and misunderstood and sensitive that I am afraid of deviating from the theme of this post if I delve further into this!

b) Caste

Another mystery I have never been able to decode. My own friends have been a victim of this and I don't even have the heart to touch upon the pain and misery it brings.

Query: Seriously, just one question - would you want your daughter/sister to be with a Hindu guy who indulges in domestic violence or a Muslim guy who keeps her happy? How does being with someone of the same caste guarantee happiness in any way?

5. The I-don't-walk-my-talk Love

People who promise the moon and the stars on paper and in face of even a slight adversity, jilt you in the middle of a landfill that leaves you stinking for a lifetime!

Lesson learnt : This, honestly, appears to be the worst form of relationship to me. It would leave you scarred not just as a lover but as a human being in general as it shakes one's faith in humanity.

6. The Gay Love

This is just to raise the humour quotient in this post :P

Imagine walking down the lanes of your campus with your male buddy expecting a 'I like you' at the very least. Instead, what you hear him saying is "I am gay and I like your brother"! :D

N.B : No offence intended.

7. The Infidelity-Apology-Pendulum Love

This is the most common love in DU ! I had tons of friends who had steady girlfriends somewhere and they would leave no chance of a fling with random girls they happen to meet anywhere!

Now, there can be two possibilities -

a) The steady girlfriend remains in dark about the flings.

b) The steady girlfriend somehow finds out about the flings and breaks up.

Possibility 'a' is a far-fetched theoretical situation because girls have uncanny abilities to find out everything. So ultimately, we arrive at possibility 'b' and now begins the circle of breakup followed by constant apologies and requests for patch-up. The steady girlfriend usually agrees out of past feelings. Things get better. The guy gets complacent and succumbs to temptation of flings again. Hence the nomenclature 'Pendulum'. Please note that girls too fall in the trap of flings and by no means, do I wish to imply here that this category is for boys alone.

Query : Why does the need for flings arise when you already are in love with somebody? I mean, logically, there can be only one inference of flings that you are not happy with the one you are with! So why the fake drama of commitment? It is like person has two separate needs of love and lust. For love, there is one steady relationship and for lust, there are numerous flings!

8. The No means Yes Love

It may be a subset of category#2 or #3. It is the kind of love in which one party constantly declines the offer in every possible manner but the other party is adamant in a very filmy way and has a topsy-turvy lexicon which says no means yes. I, personally, find this category, which is generally seen among boys, to be funny in an absolutely pathetic way. Why? Because I have seen my friends literally kowtowing to the person, who isn't remotely interested in them. 

My advice : Buy a new dictionary from here.

9. The 'Use Me as a Doormat' love

I will try to illustrate this in a very practical way. Did you have that geeky topper friend in college who was suddenly seen teaching/helping in practical files/completing assignments of the hottest girl in the class during the exam season? Well, I am going to let the cat out of the bag (sorry, girls!) - I have heard my female friends talking in the girls' room about how the geek was infatuated with them and would readily do anything just to talk to them. So they brutally ignore him the whole year... during the exam season, a little flirtatious smile does the trick and voila, they have all the notes and assignments and important questions lent to them by the geek. I feel sorry for the poor geek who, despite being the brightest and smartest in the class, gets fooled again and again, under the impression that those smiles genuinely mean something.

Query  : I am confused between the essential character of this category of love - is it the geeks's foolishness or the self-centeredness of the girl? 

 

(Geeks would understand this Rubik's Cube meme:P)

10. The 'Father of the Nation' Love
Well, the only place I like Mahatma Gandhi is on a currency note so when I say Father of the Nation, I mean money. 
This category of love is based purely on pecuniary interests. It is generally dominated by girls. Haven't you had any friend whose girlfriend left him for a richer guy? Or who was abandoned because he didn't gift her a brand new Iphone for her birthday? 
Query : I am a little confused. They do have a point though. I mean, people who claim love is more important than money... do they pay their bills with a hug?! But still, I personally feel that money can buy you a dog but you need love to make it wag its tail at you. 

11. The  Transitive Love
Remember that boring chapter in Maths - sets and relations? So, there was this category of relations called transitive relations. Simply put, if a>b, b>c then a>c. While this might hold true in the world of mathematics, it is impossible to be transitive in real life relations without involving a lot of pain for more than one person! A loves B, B loves C, C loves D and D loves A. Imagine the kind of pain and longing each of these four persons suffer when they see that the one they love doesn't love them back.   
This category of relationship has inspired a lot of Bollywood movies like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Dil toh Pagal hai etc but most of them end up being a love triangle and eventually the hero gets to be with his happily-ever-after. Sadly, life is not a movie!
My Advice : Never fall in love with a person who loves somebody else already. EVER.

12. The 'My parents want to marry you' Love
Well, this is India-specific relationship. The boy (or girl) stays in a relationship for a number of years and then suddenly his (her) mother rejects her (or him) for some silly reason like complexion\ height\job\amount of adipose tissue\shape of nose\too crazy about harry potter etc and the boy breaks up even before one can utter WTF! 
This category reminds me of Chetan Bhagat's 2 States... the boy loves the girl...the girl loves the boy...  the girl's family has to love the boy... the boy's family has to love the girl... boy's family has to love the girl's family...the girl's family has to love the boy's family... and in the process, if there is still any love left between the boy and the girl, they get married !

Query : seriously, does your mother have to live with him\her for a lifetime or you? Your parents already have each other and now it is not their but your life partner that you have to choose for heaven's sake!
(Also, in my personal opinion, If you find someone who is just as crazy about Harry Potter as you are, marry him\her without further ado ! :D )


13. The Dominating Love

Easy, fans of Fifty Shades (there are fans of this book?! Whoa.), I mean dominating in the normal way! The category where the person with deeper, more intense feelings is dominated by the other one who is aware of the fact that he/she has an upper hand because of vulnerability of the partner so he/she constantly hangs this axe of  'I am breaking up with you' on his/her partner and always has his/her way by emotional blackmail!

Query : I don't know if this 'coercion' even qualifies as love...I mean, this self- righteousness, is this even love? How long can anybody sustain such an emotionally draining relationship? And Why?

Of course, I understand that this is entirely an abstract concept and is subject to personal opinions... because you cannot control anybody's free will, that's the thumb rule when it comes to human psyche. And then there is another factor of looks! People are often deceived by looks... Cupid, they say, is blind! and by the time they realise that they bought silver misconstruing it to be platinum, they are already in the middle of relationship and getting out of it is a painful business for both the parties.

In the end, I am left as baffled by this mystery of what/how/why/where of love as I was before writing this post and wholeheartedly support all my friends' prophecies about how I am going to die single because my mathematics says alone > wrong.

But I can safely infer that love is congruous to CA Final -

• There is a lot of input involved. When I say a lot, I mean to say backbreaking, extremely arduous, involving sleep deprivation and nervous breakdown,  totally frustrating, mentally draining kind of effort. (Love totally requires painstaking effort)

• Your effort won't guarantee that you'd understand what the situation demands. (Who can understand why boys go nuts over shapes and sizes? And honestly, has anyone of you ever understood how a girl's mind works?)

• There is always a possibility of all your input going waste because of some amendment. (boyfriend, girlfriend and Wo! you can never know when a third person enters and ruins everything that you have created so far.)

• You might put as much input as you are capable of and still the output remains as uncertain and elusive as the identity of batman is for the people of Gotham City. (Are we ever sure of matters of the heart?)

Anybody who has answers to my queries may please comment in the comment-section!

Yours sincerely

Agony Aunt :P