“Eat your cookies and get the hell out of here.” These are not ordinary circumstances and I generally do not expect such sentences as answers to my first question. “You promised you will not ask frivolous questions but ...” The lady is pretty upset and I take a look around. A group of paunchy middle-aged men are exhibiting canine grin. What did I do? I just asked the lady how many times she had fallen in love. I order another cup of coffee. Beautiful young girls are drifting here and there in the hotel galleries. “You know what?” I tell her, “I am not so sure what the plural of rude is. I was never in a situation where I needed to use it until I met you.” The lady unleashes a suppressed sigh. “Why ask me? Why not go look it up in the dictionary, like a man?” My question still hangs there and I wait for her temper to cool down. I wish I could ask other beauties around the same question but I am at a festival in the rudest colony.
It is customary to encounter the odd logistic niggle when starting an interview, and it is nothing you can’t fix. There is an hour to go before she reflects on her past life and tells me what she believes. I try all possible means to convince her that it is not an interference into her privacy and that it is not some sort of a trick I had learnt from Cupid last night. On the table next to mine is a couple — in love from what I can gather. They are busy devouring each other and I start thinking about the curious nature of the this phenomenon all the more. They are in love. What is love? Do you love only once? I turn my attention away from their ‘Que Sera Sera’ looks and see the coffee cups once again emptied to the drains.
“It has been a month now and I am trying to get back to my normal life and habit.” The lady asks for more coffee in exchange for words. “I have gone back to thinking that my men were all fallen heroes. I took a couple of days off and have started taking Xanax again.” The couple is still busy eying each other. “Young people can turn from rigid hardened professionals to careless nymphs in less time than it takes to microwave a pizza.” She continues to sip coffee. “But that is not exploiting people, that is exploiting idiots. I have been an idiot once ... twice, rather. How people get excited by love is beyond me. I would rather marry a sober 100-year-old man, with glaucoma-infected eyes, who climbs in a car and sets off to what he believes to be the store, than fall in love with a youngster drawing heavily on his Marlboro. But there is something that forces people to succumb to its lure.
“And then there are times when you feel that you missed what is called actual love. It is like a great idea falling in love with that person but you forget to act on it and someone else does it instead. And there you go. You want to fall in love, and once you fall you regret it.” I try to understand the human compulsion she seems so convinced about. “The problem is the school-age. Most of the youngsters are aggressive and one can do nothing about it. Love is better when disciplined. This is all what I have learnt from my experience. They can even push your head down the toilet. If this is love, this is an ultimate act of cowardice.” I try to convey my sympathies and pray she gets to know how the world works. There is a murmur from the couple on the next table. I think of the interesting perception of the two youngsters, behind our twisted rhetoric. May be there are some truths they don’t want to know.
“Why do people commit suicide for love? Is it not brave on their part?” I ask the gentle lady. “Suicide is a coward’s way out. Life is precious and even more when you are young and have a few bucks in your pocket. I can’t still figure this out. I have more contempt for such lovers than I did when I was in love.”
Every now and again, when consciousness returns to her (she is indeed in a reverie), she asks for more coffee. This is the last cup I can gulp, but I must for I must know how love can transform a person from being an idealist to a very practical businesswoman. But then I realise that I must leave to meet a friend of mine, still in love. I thank the lady, and tell her that love, I always thought, was good. She laughs at me. There is silent recognition of my embarrassment all around me. I leave the place, after ordering another cup of coffee for her. Coffee and lovers, or ex-lovers, have always been compatible for one reason or the other.
On his extremely well-kept lawn, heavily guarded by trees, my friend hands me a piece of cake. “It is special because my wife made it. You have it and you will fall in love.” He looks at me when I ask him what to him is love. “Love is sheer emotionalism in adolescence. It is the reason why you felt so restless when you were in your mid-teens. Then there is infatuation, commonly confused with love. And then love when you get married. That is true love.” His simplicity and precision brings the memories of the days immediately following my sixteenth birthday. It is a dream-like feeling.
I think of my resolve on seeing a beauty that day: I love her, and I want to make sure her all wishes are fulfilled. It was that simple then. But I have come here to get an idea of what love is. His wife gives him a hot cup of tea and I get acquainted with the idea of love he has in mind — tranquil matrimonial respectability. Just when I am about to leave, the friend advises me. “My advice is find yourself a girlfriend with at least as many defects as you have. Someone with obsessive compulsive disorder.” I leave the place immediately — an insane asylum of some sort. I sit in my room and ponder. I meditate. I think of the peace that love may bring. I have come across various phases of love. But I have not understood it.
I am the kind of guy who believes there is hardly any difference between the love of parents, wife and friends. But then it is love, and not its shades, that I know. The malady of heart called ‘love’ is as mysterious as it has always been. What is the value of a certain special look from a woman you think of often? Is it really a folly? Is it a feeling of all feelings, one that has most need of leisure and makes us most incapable of pursuing a reasonable and diligent course in life? Or does it help us never ossify?
There may be various kinds of love but all love known on earth, of every kind is born, lives, and dies, or attains immortality under the same laws. “Love has always been the biggest thing in my life — or rather the only thing in my life.” So says Stendhal. Is it admiration, hope, or want of perfection? I have seen people whose hearts tire of everything monotonous, even perfect happiness. They start to doubt and question the veracity of what their heart once felt. Is it not love that tortures them?
Love is there as a universal principle and love is there individually. Sometimes, a tiny dose of hope is enough to awaken love and at other times the stronger characters never change for it. Why man falls in love is, perhaps, because man is not free to avoid doing something that gives him more pleasure than any other action possible. The will has no role in this whole affair. It comes and goes like fever. What is shyness? Perhaps, an evidence of love.
Love is a civilisation’s miracle. It is known that among really savage or barbarous nations, only physical love of coarsest kind is found. Why did a sage become a musical fanatic? Because human feeling was difficult for him to explain. I ask my mentor what love is? “Love is innocence and mischief combined, a feeling that may translate dreams into reality. It happens as soon as you look into the eyes of the beloved.” I pick up Shelley’s discourse on love. “What is love? — Ask him who lives what is life; ask him who adores what is God.” I wish there were more pebbles on the beach.
“Eat your cookies and get the hell out of here.” These are not ordinary circumstances and I generally do not expect such sentences as answers to my first question. “You promised you will not ask frivolous questions but ...” The lady is pretty upset and I take a look around. A group of paunchy middle-aged men are exhibiting canine grin. What did I do? I just asked the lady how many times she had fallen in love. I order another cup of coffee. Beautiful young girls are drifting here and there in the hotel galleries. “You know what?” I tell her, “I am not so sure what the plural of rude is. I was never in a situation where I needed to use it until I met you.” The lady unleashes a suppressed sigh. “Why ask me? Why not go look it up in the dictionary, like a man?” My question still hangs there and I wait for her temper to cool down. I wish I could ask other beauties around the same question but I am at a festival in the rudest colony.
