Romance, True Love &Heartbreak – My Two Cents - part 1

In the very early hours of today morning (not too sure if it would be appropriate to refer to it as a morning in true sense though, I had not even hit the bed then), I was in for a pleasant surprise. It was a phone call from one of my long lost close buddies. She was one of my best friends during my tenure in Kolkata, until she decided to move to Bangalore to pursue her post graduation. I moved to Delhi shortly thereafter, and with the passage of time, the bonds of friendship thinned out. We had committed at some point of time to be the best of friends forever, but forever is a long time, much longer than the couple of blissful years I had spent in the city of joy. A galore of misunderstandings emerged (not too sure if she would agree with this:-D), a couple of verbal fights for nonsensical reasons evolved out of nowhere, thus leading to a reduction of one friend in my face book friends list.18 months passed by. I did try to get in touch with her more than a couple of times, but her bellyaching disgruntlement stood firm.
N then came her call. To be honest, it was not completely out of the blue. I wanted to wish her on her birthday, but I was on a trekking vacation with virtually no access to a phone – Hence I sent her a message conveying my regards once I was back. She could not figure out the source of the message, and gave me a call. And thus began our conversation. In the good old days, our conversation was limited to nonsensical matters of minute importance: matters which are probably less trivial than the hairs oozing out from the left side of your nose. But in the very first couple of minutes, I could easily figure out that the passage of time has evolved her into a graceful matured young lady, with a hint of sophistication embedded (I m not too sure if I can say the same about me though).We spoke for some duration, and about a plethora of things, but let’s leave that for another day. One point she made did leave a dent in mind though - when she spoke to me in melancholic detail about her boyfriend and their break up, on how she was cocksure he was her true love and how she could never find anyone who could match up to him, and how the impact of his affliction would never continue to evade her.In other words, he was her Mr. Perfect, and she could not come to terms with the fact that they were no longer together. He could not be replicated, she sensed…and I could figure out that she perceived that anybody she would get involved with would be a mere “compromise”, or so she thought.
You know, this is the problem with guys like me. I need to go to the toilet but I don't say 'Excuse me' and go away. Instead I start with a story about the time when a two year old me pissed in my aunt's lap so hard she almost suffered from multiple thigh fractures .Then I continue to talk about my aunt and her husband who worked in NASA and somehow the entire talk ends in stuff like 'Is there life outside earth' and I completely forget that I need to go to the toilet. So I will rephrase all that I have so stupidly said – Does True Love exists? Why are people not rational when it comes to romance? Is there actually a thing called Love?
Now for a guy like me, whose exposure to successful relationship is as high as the number of intellectually stimulating movies Salman Khan has acted in, I am not too sure why I am even penning this down in the first place.But if u ask me what is Love, Love to me is just another synonym for attachment.You love your parents because you are emotionally attached to them. You have been groomed in that environment where your parents had a major part to play in the way you shape up; hence a bonding evolved over a period of time. Imagine a guy who got lost in some Kumbh ka Mela as a kid, and meets his original parents after 30 years – Do you think he would have that attachment?.Probably he would be more close to his foster parents who played the part of nurturing him.In the developed nations, the attachment therefore is considerably less: - As kids are encouraged to develop a sense of independence right from a tender age. Our society is more built on the foundations of family orientations, hence a closer attachment gets inbuilt over time in the subconscious mind. The same reason can be attributed to the love towards one’s pet – U have developed a bonding, an attachment towards him over some time. Hence, after his demise, a void fills in...Something which can’t be replicated by any other pet. The moral of the story – There is nothing called true love. Love is an acquired phenomenon, an attachment your brain has got acclimatized to over a period of time.
Now let’s come to some other fundamental questions. Why then do people get really serious with some, and are only casually involved with some, at different stages of his life? What distinguishes between the two? .In 1943, a famous psychologist named Abraham Maslow came out with a classic paper named “A theory of Human Motivation”. This paper became the basis of development psychology as we know it today. More on his theory can be read here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs.
In his paper, Maslow segregated the most fundamental needs of human beings into four layers which are called “deficiency needs”, namely esteem, friendship and love, security, and physical needs. Human beings by nature are social animals, and feel the need of belongingness. This need for belongingness inadvertently results into two intrinsic requirements – 1) The need to be in accordance with the ethos laid out by society and family, and at same time meeting the peer pressure requirements of one’s social circle 2) The desire to be paid attention, care. Thus, in Indian society, though the desire to be attended to by a prince charming did exist even earlier, Love was considered a taboo….and the pressure of social ethos led to ladies of that era not crossing the so called forbidden line of indulging in romance. But as society evolved, the desire to be paid attention and care, and the cool quotient of being in “Love” sublimed subconsciously in the psyche of the present day urban Indian. Hence the rise in relationships.
(To be continued..)