The Reality Of True Love: Does It Exist?

‘I love you’ is a statement that we have started using for anybody and everybody. While it is good to spread love, we must also realise who is actually worthy of receiving this statement from us. 
In an age of cyber love and immediacy, Nisha JamVwal laments at the dilution of romance but provides hope for those in search of true love

New age love

iPads, chats, BBMs, virtual love, internet romances, dumping and lumping each other in the name of materialism – my question in this fast track scenario is, is there anything like true, everlasting love and ‘happily ever after’?

Justifiably, in an age of greater bandwidth of information, an influx of media, grander demands and larger sexual appetites, we do want more out of our partner than just the basics. If the spouse falls short, the desire to look elsewhere toward another thong-clad hunk or babe is more fetching an idea than the very prosaic ‘adjustment’ or working it out. But trust me when I say, that if it’s the real thing, you’ll want only your own lover – pits, flaws and imperfections intact!

How will you recognise the ‘true love of your life’? How does the real thing happen? I’ll try and illustrate it for you.

What is love?

Love can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. In today’s age of instancy, it may mean a transient sexual encounter that comes and goes; poof! Before you know it you’re in-out- disoriented disillusioned. And to regroup you’ve jumped into another quagmire. The urge for heady stimulation is just that. I’ve always viewed love as a timeless ethereal fragrance that lingers, warms, gives meaning to moments and stays with me forever – for a parent, a friend, a lover or even an army (for its General) – like a glow that enlivens, especially enervating in those bleak moments I’ve seen in a life of troughs and triumphs.

Love comes in various avatars. For my neighbour whom I want to meet, despite time constraints and no common social connectivity; my friends who make I want to make them laugh with weird stories – even at my cost; my terrier puppy who makes me want to squeeze him and eat him up with violent passionate love; my parents who draw the strings of my heart to near pain; for my man who brings that feeling of effulgence, luminosity and sunshine into my every moment.

When love is intertwined with romance and attraction, it is a heady mix that gives wings to your feet and makes you smile every time you think of your loved one. Countless movies, paintings, poems, songs have embalmed and eulogised this high note. It is indeed loved that makes the world go round.

Finding the ‘right’ one

My friend asked me on the brink of her supposed romance, “Nisha, how will I know if I am in love?” She tried hard to contrive the situation because she so longed to be in love with the right man, who gave her the right solitaire, lived near her parental home, who was rich and not too famous or too tall and who wore the right brands. Who just did everything ‘right’. Pretty much like fitting the right sofa into the right corner of a house. Inanimate and lifeless but perfectly fitting and ‘looking’ so ‘right’. She did find him, near her parental home, married him, had babies, does ‘kitties’ and lunches and her high notes are the diamonds and bags she brandishes at the ‘kitties’. To that, I’d say different strokes for different folks. We all get our happiness from different types of ‘loves’.

To me love is buying an impractical painting because you react to it; you cannot imagine another moment of life without it. It is unaffordable and you don’t have wall space in a city apartment, and it’s something you don’t really need nor really understand, but it hits you in your gut and you just HAVE to have it or nothing will ever be the same for you again.

When you’re most busy to engage in a romance or too ambitious, love just happens. Nature and life and the one sweep you off your feet. Impractically, untimely, un-‘scheduledly’ you fall in love. No, it’s not a Yash Chopra romance. It’s not Madhuri Dixit and Shah Rukh Khan in Dil To Pagal Hai. It is real life.

Romance in real life

I quote Yash Chopra who was a great friend and who had shared with me that he really did believe that there is some special romance for each of us. We just have to see it when it happens. When you least expect it, love rushes in like a tornado, swirls you within it and sweeps you away from all plans and strategy and takes you into the clichéd heady romance that Yash Chopra gave life to on celluloid. When it happens you have to give it its meaning with your value systems and longevity and staying power.