Journey of Love

Someone I know is a self-confessed love-addict. He is thirty-two, works at a mid-management level in a corporate organisation and is doing really well in his career. It is just that he doesn’t seem to have found The One, and he flits from one relationship to the next.

‘I can’t help it. It is the thrill of that initial, giddy, out-of-control feeling that happens in every new relationship that I am addicted to,’ he admits. He has been in seven wildly unsuitable relationships so far. And each one ended in a disaster. It wasn’t that he did not love the women. It was just that he found a reason to break off each time. ‘What happens when you get to know her better?

Why don’t you make an effort to see it through?’ I prod. ‘Too much work, really. And once I get to know a woman better, the mystery vanishes.’ ‘So does she just become another notch on your bedpost? Do you even realise how that makes you sound?’ I ask in mock-horror. Of course I know him very well and I am only teasing him. It is just that he is too much of an idealist and is still seeking the ‘perfect woman’. But I am not going to tell him so and lose an opportunity to rile him a little.

‘Yes, I am aware. I am a serial philanderer and I am never going to get married} he says with a straight face. ‘I would like to see you falling in love. I mean true love. You will be singing a different tune then.’ ‘I too am waiting for that day,’ he sighs.

If we are to go by what the movies and novels tell us, falling in love just happens. If it is a Hindi movie, you hear a melodious track in the background, the lyrics usually waxing eloquent about the heroine’s beauty, comparing various parts of her anatomy to the moon, stars, the sun-—even Fevicol. This is accompanied by the hero gazing at her with the expression of a glutton discovering a six-course banquet consisting of various gastronomical delights.

In real life though, falling in love often happens over a period of time. You see someone gorgeous and get attracted strongly. If you strike up a conversation, find each other likable—or intriguing, as the case may be-then you exchange phone numbers or email ids. After a couple of dates, discovering many things and maybe a kiss or something more, depending on how much in resonance your moral compasses are, the magic happens, and wham, you are in love.