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One of the best quotes I have heard on love is “If in love two become one, then the result is…two half people!”

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He said “It was so beautiful in the beginning…and now it has all changed. It is as if…something has come between us! I don’t know what?”

I asked “You really want to know who came between you two?”

He exclaimed “Who?” …

I said…“You!”

Well! In love, your identity gets dissolved. And by definition, whenever you lose yourself willingly…you feel good! It happens when you dance heartily, sing with your eyes closed, watch an engrossing movie, read a romantic novel or look at the scenic beauty on a drive.

Falling in love is no different from any of the above. The same thing happens…just slightly more intensely and lastingly. That’s why you see love-birds mouthing dialogues like “I forget myself when I am with her”, “Time flies when I am with him” or “when he looks at me, I feel totally lost” etc.

But then…there comes a time when your sense of self returns! And that’s when the euphoria starts diminishing…

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…And then, for the first time you can actually add an ‘I’ to ‘love you’; and see if you can live with the two pronouns surrounding one abstract noun 🙂

“When you are in love, every sacrifice feels like a pleasure…and when you fall out of love, every adjustment seems like a sacrifice”.

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Yes! ‘Giving’ is the only surest sign of being in love, and estimation of what you ‘got’ is the surest symptom of falling out of it. This holds true for every domain in life. Oh! Let me explain how? Well! When you are in love, the center of your life shifts outside you…

And then one day, it returns. And then starts the calculation – of what is gained and what is lost. And interestingly, eventually everybody finds out that overall he made a loss. So then he thinks that he has found the reason why the relationship did not work – ‘because he got very less and gave a lot more’.

Well! What he forgets is that, all that while when he was happy in the relationship, he was actually making losses…

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…It’s the calculation that caused the problem. 

“If an emotion comes and goes then its reason is outside you; but whenever an emotion stays for long then its reason lies inside you”.

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Anger can be of two types! First type is the one that comes intensely and goes. It is normally directed towards events, and it is only just a side-effect that a part of it spills over to the people involved in that event. Second type is the one that stays. It boils inside at a temperature that lets you neither vent it out nor gulp it. Such anger is normally directed towards people.

But what helps it stay inside? Well! The answer is ‘you’. You provide it the energy needed for its sustenance. And you do it because such anger constantly pumps your ego and after some time, you unknowingly start enjoying the perk of the ‘sense of importance’ that comes with it. And then begins the masochistic pleasure of fueling the very fire that is burning you…

Yes! The fact is that “nothing is more pleasurable than a ‘simmering anger’ inside. It makes you feel alive, strong and an object of significance”.

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So, stop blaming others for what you are going through; because it began as a chance but…has now turned into a choice.

“Someone wished me ‘happy birthday’ today. Actually it is tomorrow”!  

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But how does it matter? As in fact, in my birth certificate, it is actually day after tomorrow 🙂 ! And why should my birthday be special for anyone…? Well! Technically speaking, I am at best a coincidence. My parents didn’t know who was coming until I came.

Well! No voice from the sky announced my significance, no guru left his adobe in the Himalayas to come to see my feet, no prophecies were made by some bearded astrologer, and none of my birthmarks was stylish enough to qualify as holy. Ironically, I was born days before the date given by the doctor, at a government hospital surrounded by the opium crop and with an abstract-art of a birthmark just above my butt.

But today, a lot of people think that they know this guy. Well! What do they know about me? I am surely not the traits I have, as I have picked them along the way. I am surely not the roles I play, because I am simply bound by the standard expectations for each one of them. And I am surely not the wishes I make or the goals I set, because they have always kept changing.

And still, caller said “Happy Birthday my unique (trait) mentor (role). What’s your wish?”

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Well! Here is everyone wanting to figure out next aspiration of the man I am…

…and here I am, trying to regain the completeness of the child I was 🙂

“Strip people off their success, and what remains is their real ‘self-esteem’”!  

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He came back home and everyone was waiting in the dining room. He winked at her romantically and gave a half hug to them, looking in their eyes with all the affection.

Then he made a dash to the washroom, came back in a jiffy, and there he was at the dining table, regaling them with his anecdotes of their choice, and squeezing her hand softly while passing the dish. They ate their favorite dessert glued together to the primetime comedy, and then followed a drive in the silence of the day-long shrieking by-lanes.

As they were coming back, she suddenly got reminded of something and asked “Oh! And how did that crucial meeting go?” Well! He looked in the rear mirror at those calm faces that dozed off on the backseat, and said “Ya! We lost that one.”

She put her hand on his hand…and passed by a minute’s silence.

Then she said “A good enough reason to miss tomorrow’s movie?”

He looked at her…

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And both said “Naaaah!

…and their laughter resonated in silence of the night 🙂