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In my work, I deal with a lot of teenagers and people in the prime of their youth! So, the scenes of two-together are not new to me…

I have seen many types, in various poses, sharing different equations – She holding him tight on a bike…he holding her close to his deo-rich shoulders! She sitting in the class leaning towards him…he caressing her foot with his! They sitting on a bench silently brooding on the future of it…they animatedly discussing the disillusionment with zaalim-zamaana (read parents)! He pursuing her to come to his house when no one is there…she pursing him to come to her house when everyone is there (to meet the zamaana) etc. etc.!

I thought I had seen it all, until…I saw those two…

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I was driving to work… it was around 8:20 am and the song playing on the radio was the title-track of Ishaqzaade! It is a beautiful melody… romantic yet with a tinge of sadness, determined yet with a shade of despondence! Touching lyrics, woven into a tune that goes from mild to mad to mellow, backed by the percussion hugging the piano-guitar combination at the peaks…And every time the ‘Ishaqzaade’ word would be sung in resonance, I couldn’t help but get Goosebumps!

…It was during those Goosebumps that I saw from distance a couple on the road side… Seemingly from lower -middle class (must be in their mid 20s), they were holding each other’s hand! Given the backdrop of the song playing, it brought a smile to my face… But as I approached closer, my heart sank for a moment… something started moving upwards inside my chest… my throat got choked and not until I crossed them that I realized…I was crying!

…I had just realized that… both of them were blind!                

Attribute it to what I saw, or what I was listening to, or their coming together at a crescendo…after a long time, I experienced such catharsis… But at the same time, I also got reminded that there is no ‘more divine’ sight in the world than two persons really in love!

Real love doesn’t excite…it assures! It fills you with calmness of a quiet lake lying cozily in the lap of its hills…no restlessness, no ripples…Sheer serenity, born out of a faith deep-down-inside that now nothing could go wrong!

Closeness is beautiful…And to me, the ultimate form of closeness in love is not ‘two persons looking at each other for eternity’ or ‘embracing each other aloof from the world’ or for that matter taking it to so-called ‘the next level’! To me… the gesture which epitomizes it is two hands holding each other – feeling in that tender touch the coming-together of two souls…finding in that firm hold an unsaid promise of a lifetime…

I am sure that after watching those two together…Love would wish that it remains blind! …always.

They say ‘World loves heroes…but more than that…it loves to see heroes falling’! It’s true, ‘Excellence can be a punishable crime’…

…Last night…I watched ‘Phenomenon’… 5th time!

Some movies are not to be watched with friends & frolic…they are to be steered into, alone, one fine evening and to be mused upon…It is one of them! As usual, it touched me deep inside… In fact, if it wouldn’t have, then I would have rushed to a neurologist…fearing that either my neocortex (seat of intelligence) is working too much, or my amygdala (seat of emotions) is working too less!

The movie is about an ordinary guy who accidently gets blessed by an extraordinary ability. Suddenly now everybody wants to exploit his prowess or dissect him as a case-study for future generations. Nobody thinks about what he is going through or wants. Finally, he discovers that he is not going to live for long and rest of the movie is all about his effort to restore his right to die peacefully.

The movie is one of the most serene & calm movies I have ever watched. Its pace is its USP…Cinema at its soothing best! You seldom find the subtlety of emotions and the nuances of neurons which this movie captures in its climax. Actors are characters… location a canvass and… background-score a miser’s delight! Nothing melodramatic & clichéd…Sheer softie, melting effortlessly!

John Travolta is so lovable that I have begun to hate him for it! His restrained yet soulful portrayal is magically matched with his murmuring voice-modulation, whispery smile and that Godly shine in eyes! In the end, you don’t feel sympathy for hero’s death; you feel great love and a sense of relief that at last the man left peacefully…

Irony, when not satirical or cynical,… is heartening! … If you think the vocabulary was too complex, just watch the movie…you won’t need a dictionary to know the meaning!

After all, Feelings came first…words later!

As I drove to work in the morning, the world looked heavenly…

Open & vacant roads enjoying their solitude… Smiling Kids waving at me from the back-glass of their school-bus… A vegetable-vendor’s children who are jubilant because he has offered them a drive on his handcart…

…A boulevard with that special greenness which comes only after the trees are bathed in gentle rains… Foggy horizon with a hint of mystical-shade of morning-orange… Breeze flowing with mildness & shyness of someone who has just come to know she is in love…

…and Roshan-Saahir combination playing on radio in TajMahal’s eternal melody “Paaon chhoo lene do phoolon ko inaayat hogi”… Simply Bliss….!!

I am lucky to have this kind of a path to work every morning…Isn’t it???

No!!!!

It is just that I was in a good mood today.  (…for all these days, I spotted none of these…)

………….

Well! the truth is…the world is simply a reflection of what is going on within you!

So! If you aren’t enjoying the view…Check!! May be it is time to change the point-of-view!

“What went wrong between you and Reena?”… Journalist asked him on Walk the Talk…

Aamir paused for a while… and said (based on my memory) “Well! Just the way you can’t access a Joint-account without both the signatures, how can I talk about our relationship to any third person alone! It’ll be unfair to her if she isn’t present while you and I discuss it!”

…this conversation took place years back; after Aamir Khan and his wife decided to go their separate ways ‘gracefully’…! I remember it discretely, because it wasn’t just a thought…but a school of thought!

………….

Nothing takes more toll on a person than the emotional-toil of a close-relationship melting down! Be it a romantic…friendly…familial…or professional one, when it fractures, it hurts!

But what’s surprising is the fact that the moment it’s down…people want it out! Now everything about that relationship starts looking ugly…! All that is left is…the bitterness of betrayal…the hostility of hatred… and the cry of victimization!

It seems that there weren’t ever any good moments (if so, then why the hell were you there in the first place?)… And even if you recall a few, it just worsens how you feel! It is simply amazing how, when relation ends, both sides feel ditched, exploited or ignored!

This is sheer injustice to the relationship…

No child is ever illegitimate…parents can be! (I love it when Masaba – daughter of Viv Richards & Neena Gupta – calls herself a ‘Lovechild’)! Same is with relationship. Fine! It did not work out! But that doesn’t prove ‘all that had gone between’ worthless! How can a ‘bad end’ erase all the great beginnings and good midst? With due respect to the pain, you should still be proud of what you shared…and lived!

In fact…You need to understand that people enter into relationships for their own reasons…and exit for their own! Most of the times, it doesn’t have much to do with you…! I know you would ask that why then are you being victimized for it…? But then…didn’t you enter the relationship pretty well knowing its integral feature…Vulnerability!!!   

So now… hold yourself in high self-esteem, pick the flakes delicately and walk out with dignity…being proud of what you gave and got!

………..  

Aamir was right…Relationship is indeed a joint-account, with the only difference that it can’t be closed overnight! So until the time completes the formalities, maintain a balance in that account… It would give you emotional-funds to invest in the next relationship…!

Else… you would end up hating, not just that person…but your ‘own self’ that you shared!

The problem with decisions is that… although ‘you’ make them, but the world owns the deployment!

There is a toll-booth that I cross daily…Yesterday, as the lines in both the lanes were equally long, so I randomly chose one and was waiting. Suddenly, I realized that the car ahead of me started coming back speedily (in reverse), and my yelling and horn-honking ended only with a plastic-sound of both bumpers colliding…

I stepped out and expressed my anger in the most controlled way possible… (I am sure it would have been different if the driver hadn’t been a lady in her mid 20s)! But when she kept repeating “I thought there was no one behind”, I, in sheer exasperation, ended up telling her (at the risk of sounding chauvinist) “I know women have strong 6^th sense, but why didn’t you use the first-five first?” (…even amidst mess, it felt so good to deliver such a well – ‘timed & placed’ punch-line! A trainer’s delight!)

After the dust settled, while I proceeded with the journey, a thought kept coming back to me…what if I had chosen the other lane…?

………..

Well! I have always believed that life is nothing but ‘A set of sheer coincidences, shared between randomly-running entities’! All that is happening is random… and we just feel a pseudo sense-of-control by locking ourselves into a chosen orbit (our attempt to bring predictability)! Step out of that orbit and you will realize how arbitrary everything becomes (is)!

All the time, we are living coincidences…We ignore 90% of them because they have neutral impact on us, we name the 5% of favorable impact as ‘good luck’ and the other 5% of unfavorable impact as ‘bad luck’! But, in reality, there is nothing such as luck…it’s all coincidental!

…………

So, while I was thinking “what if I had chosen the other lane…?” I suddenly recalled that…the last vehicle in the other lane was a truck! And I shuddered on mere thought “what if its driver would have had similar plans…and an equal trust on his 6^th sense…?”!

Well! In that case, either you would have been spared of future blogs…Or…I would have been crying foul over a thing called bad-luck…!

…Opinions …Opinions!! They are so fragile…! It’s idiotic that we hold them so dear!

PS: Everything has an expiry-date…and a decision expires the moment you take it! So, the only way to move on is… to focus on the next one! (as now…world owns the last one)!

Yet another person falls prey to this sin-to-self! …

While driving to work, heard an RJ talking about a person who committed suicide because of an unreciprocated aka one-sided love…I have always found this emotion very intriguing…

My first encounter with it was in my school days…I and Samish (name changed for sanctity) were great buddies. More so, as we were not only school friends but also lived in the same colony. Incidentally… we both liked a girl who was a year junior to us and lived in our colony (Champions start early!!).

Our idea of falling in love was pretty innocent – Waiting for a glimpse of her… trying to find (or create) occasions for the same… reading her gestures as clues…and listening to songs that justified & endorsed our emotions! And interestingly…we neither talked to her… nor talked to anyone else about her (somewhere we respected our emotions even at that age)!

This went for a couple of years, and when it was time for our farewell, we decided that we should now at least talk to her. I, being the smarter one (although he was more handsome), was given the responsibility to walk to her in lunch-break; while Sam would hang around the place (proving that he was also the smarter one)!

Now…this is how the conversation went (actually in Hindi)…

I: Hi!

She: Hello!

I: How are you?

She: Fine!

I: Well! Can I talk to you for a minute?

She: I am getting late!

I: Just wanted to ask you something.

She: What?

I: Do you know that two boys look at you?

She: Yes!

I: Who?

She: Well! You and Samish Bhaiyya!!!

 …and she walked away…

I don’t quite remember what happened in the next few minutes, because I was laughing like nuts…rolling all over the ground…pointing at Samish…while he was trying to figure out why I was laughing out so hysterically…!!!! Well, what caused it was not the disappointment that she didn’t respond well, but comical-irony that she called Samish ‘Bhaiyyyyyyyaaaaa’!!!

That day, although I was consoled that at least she had spared me of that ‘cruel’ word and had crowned Samish with that unenviable glory… we did realize a fact that we didn’t really matter much to her (at least, certainly not in ‘that’ sense…)!

Moreover, we also realized that ‘love’ is essentially a mutual emotion! When it is one-sided then it means that either you lack “a vision for yourself, to dedicate yourself to” or have “a poor self-esteem, desperate to be uplifted via someone”! The same feeling is immensely beautiful, positive & supportive, if both persons share equal intensity, faith & commitment!

Well! So while one-sidedness is alright (and natural) if you like, appreciate, admire, idolize or even ‘have a crush on’ someone…yet, when it comes to ‘love’, “Someone…Somewhere is made for you! So wait…!”

Remember! Just the way it is perfectly acceptable for you to have feelings towards people (and even to express them dignifiedly)… it should be perfectly respectable for you if they don’t have the same…

Give people all the reasons to be with you…and respect their right to still reject! (…and remember! they are rejecting the reasons, not you!)

PS: A lot more happened after that school-incident but that’s a different story…By the way, let me confess! In the heart of hearts, I know…she liked Samish more!