Love

Ahh…love…I have long refrained myself from writing anything about it, but as I struggle to decipher the lessons I learnt in this beautiful journey of love, I can’t help writing about it. Well, the most remarkable thing that happened to me in love was the immense improvement of my memory. I know it’s a very strange thing to say while speaking about love, but let me come to the point. I am sure it happened to all who fell in love. I have always struggled to remember things, be it my chemistry formulae, or where on earth I had kept my very important notes (I always found them after my exams were over), or where I had kept the house keys (It’s more difficult to remember when the whole family is standing at the door, glaring at you). So, you see, my poor memory always made me and people around me suffer. But, suddenly I noticed that I remember everything, every word he uttered ( it might be about a something you were never interested in, doesn’t matter) , what color was the sky that night, what was the shape of the moon, the color of the shirt he was wearing, the shape of the cuff button, the song which was playing in the restaurant, the number of roses in the vase, the number of times he smiled, the number of times you held hand, the faint smell of his perfume…phew! Believe me, it’s a big feat for me to remember so many things at a time, may be some clever scientist can explain this- When in love, chemical A in your brain reacts with chemical B to produce a chemical C that stimulates the secretion of a memory enhancing hormone D ..whatever, but it’s really interesting. I strongly recommend that teachers (especially male teachers in all women colleges) should be selected giving maximum weightage to looks, so that students instantly fall in love with him and remember every word he utters:).
Yes, so coming back to love, you undergo all those familiar phases of the cycle..the initial ecstatic feeling that someone actually loves you, you rediscover yourself..things that you had never noticed or thought about earlier. You reposition yourself, venture into unknown territories, smile at yourself in the mirror, nod sympathetically when your friends talk about their love life, understand love songs better. You rise above all your own interests and have only one focus- to make that person happy, and the happiness you get from it. A strange kind of boldness and “don’t- care” attitude grips you and you look upto Romeo & Juliet, Heer- Ranjha for inspiration.
It goes through all these cycles, but the last phase may differ. It may continue forever or it may end, due to many reasons. The problem is when it ends. You realize that you have been a fool all way and it was the wrong person. He was simply not worth it. You feel hurt, stupid, angry and disgusted- all at the same time, not a great feeling at all. You curse yourself and all the books and films that had put all such fancy ideas in your head, about things that perhaps don’t exist. You come very close to regretting it, but then that is where I think we should stop. Why should we regret loving someone truly, it will be an insult to the pure and unadulterated love you have in your heart. End of a relationship does not mean that the love has gone wasted; I read somewhere that love creates positive vibes around you and that contributes to the positiveness of the whole universe. I am glad I contributed a great deal :). For a few days, I was happy; I rose above myself and thought about others, I was a better person. Relationships end, love does not. Keep that love in your heart forever, nurture it and let it grow for everyone. Be proud that it chose your heart as its home.
As they say, it’s better to have loved and lost, than to have not loved at all.
And it’s true :)

Load shedding and Moonlight

I grew up in this small town called Dhubri. On Assam’s map, you will find it as a tiny dot on the left corner bisected by the river Brahmaputra on its way to Bangladesh. Night descended very early in the sleepy town where people returned from their offices and retired for the day, coming out for only buying groceries or catching up with latest tid-bits in nondescript tea shops. Students with big dreams slogged out at home or tuitions, making notes, and hungrily lapping up every word and understanding nothing. Load shedding would be the order of the day and the children would strip off their clothes ( keeping the minimum required) and continue reading by the flickering candlelight, making a low humming sound ascertaining their parents that they are reading, their torsos violently moving back and forth. I remember doing everything except study. I would drop the molten wax on my books to make haphazard designs only to find I could not see the words anymore. I would then try to take the wax out by rubbing with the pointed nib of my pencil, only to find that that spot was a gaping hole. I also tried the humming trick only to invite a smack on my head from my father after sometime because the humming was by then a full fledged hindi song. I would also give in to other sadistic pleasures like roasting an insect or two in the candle flame by picking it up on my pencil, resulting in my pencil being burnt sometimes. I need not tell you how my parents reacted to my study time antics. They are kind folks but did lose their temper sometimes.
But sometimes, when baba ( father) and Maa would be a in a good mood, the heat too unbearable to stay inside the house, we would toss our books away happily and gather in the courtyard of our house. Ours was a small family, my parents, my brother and me. My parents would settle on chairs, I would either sit on the compound wall or hang from the gate, and bhai on the ground chasing insects. On such nights, Kishore Kumar, Mohd. Rafi and Yesudas would visit our humble courtyard, as my father would sing his favorites one by one, sometimes accompanied by a mouthorgan. My mother would request her favorites and hum in between and I would be all attentive. I was a different student now, not the one finding ways to escape my lessons, but absorbing as much as I could, my ears all open and my soul free. A strange kind of happiness would overpower me, would fill me and consume me, as I welcomed each note, each word, each rising pitch of that loving voice into my soul to be embedded forever. I would clap, I would sing, I would dance in sheer ecstasy. And some of these nights would be full moon nights and a light breeze would blow. The sweat on our bodies would cool until a slight shiver ran through our bodies. Have you ever seen the leaves of a peepal tree moving? It looks as if two leaves are clapping in unison, happy and carefree. I just used to love watching that, as the moonlight bathed our courtyard, falling in abundance from the open sky, the stars fading away at such brilliance. The world seemed to be made of silver, intercepted only by the dark silhouettes of our bodies on the ground and the dancing shadows of the leaves. The breeze seemed to carry baba’s voice further away, and one or two neighbors would drop by.
I always cursed the load shedding, the plainness, the boredom of our town, but now I realize, if there was no load shedding, we would have never come out to feel the magic of the moonlight, I would have never noticed the clapping leaves, I would have never felt the cool breeze caressing my body. Today, I have forgotten all the discomforts that the load shedding and the boredom caused, I only remember the silvery courtyard, my father’s soulful voice and my mother’s constant warnings to my brother not to swallow the insects :-)
Moonlight, music and the love of dear ones- what a heady combination!