It’s Love, Stupid!

Google images

There’s an imbecile in all of us, dying to come out at the first hint of love. My first brush with the incredible stupidity much in love couples display was as a 10 year old on a summer trip to Mount Abu. It was one not so fine morning, when we stepped into the sightseeing bus crammed with eager tourists armed with cameras and Uncle Chips, that I first encountered this strange species - a motley group of honeymooning couples coochie–cooing like crows in heat. One of them must have spotted the terror in my eyes. Before I could scream Mummy, save me, I was perched firmly on their laps. The next few hours I was privy to the most inane conversations ever heard and embarrassing public displays of affection. Every time the bus halted they would scurry off to the nearest cliff and pose Khajuraho style with me as the hapless spectator. Needless to say I was traumatized.

Love spares no one and I knew I was infected when Nadeem Shravan and Altaf Raja songs started making sense. I discovered the true meaning of insomnia in “Mujhe neend na aaye, mujhe chain na aaye”. With a stupid smile plastered on my face, I would walk around aimlessly, often banging into pillars. A firm believer of keeping my options multiple, I would be in love with at least 4 guys at a time. A lost- puppy look on my face and a playlist of the cheesiest romantic songs constantly playing in my head, I was dying to feel like a heroine in a Mills and Boons novel, touched for the very first time.

I was in search of my tall, dark, obscenely rich and brooding, silent and tortured hero! When I did find a guy with looks to kill, he’d open his mouth and spoil it all. The silent brooding one was dull and the rich one was yet to be born! But that did not deter me from crushing over guys I had no intention of confessing my love to.

Finally I did find love and with it the imbecile in me. Every time the phone rang, I would run towards it like PT Usha on steroids, sink into deep depression if he didn’t call me every two hours. I would look for pathetic excuses to call him again and again. Mind you, these were the pre-mobile days, so I had no way of driving him up the wall with “do you miss/love/care for me?” texts! I found everything about him incredibly endearing including his body odour and would feel hurt if a friend passed a snide remark on his cute flappy ears. Silly girl, she’s just jealous!

Love manifests in its myriad ways. As a Mom who thinks her baby is the miracle the world was waiting for and claps the loudest when her son sings off-key at Chintu’s birthday party. As a daughter who sees her Dad as the knight in his shining armour who can do no wrong. As the hopelessly in love girl who says, I love you soo soo much my Sona, Sweetu, Baabu, Lolu, Golu, Molu, Janu with passion.

Why, I even had to bear the ignominy of watching my no-nonsense Mom baby talk with our dog and coin silly songs in his honour! While our neighbours saw him as a huge, out of control German Shepherd, my Mom saw him as her baby who loved her blindly and didn’t argue unlike her own children.

Research suggests, love is like a drug that wreaks havoc on your body. Your heart races, your tummy gets tied up in knots, and you're on an emotional roller coaster, feeling deliriously happy one minute and anxious and desperate the next. When he says, I’ll put my head in the freezer, climb up the electric pole and dive into pool, even though he doesn’t know how to swim, he means every word of it! This drug called love is capable of shutting our senses down like the temperamental Northern grid. Look what it did to Ms Sherawat when she sang “happy brrrrday dear Naaarrrendra Mohdi jee” and made us fall off our chairs clutching our stomachs! I am convinced that it’s love and not his lack of intellect that makes Rahul Gandhi give ROFL statements in all earnestness. For long he’s been encouraging the poor to fall off to sleep and dream big to overcome hunger and poverty. After all, poverty is just a state of mind. He insists if the poor cannot see the biggest dreams, he’s not interested in sleeping!

See, what love can do to your otherwise functioning grey cells?

On a serious note, love is like a river. Tumultuous when it begins its journey from a molten glacier, a little unsure of itself as it absorbs intrusions and changes its course many times, before settling into the sea – deep, unwavering and calm.

Mature yes, but never too old too old to make a cute puppy face and coo, Shonaa – I’m chho tired, can you pleees fix me a cup of tea?

Silliness, thy name is love.