>What’s love got to do with it?

>

When two people fall in love and (maybe) decide to get married, how much of their lives and themselves are they willing to share with each other? At the very obvious level, couples share their thoughts, their feelings, their emotions. At another level, they share the space they live in, the bed they sleep in, the bathrooms they use. But there’s some bit of the sharing that goes beyond the essential. Like sharing parts of your life you wouldn’t let anyone else.

I guess every couple just draws their own line of what’s acceptable, what’s not. I think that where the line is drawn depends largely on how much space you need for yourself, how much of it you’re willing to give up comfortably. Like some people are totally okay with sharing all their passwords with each other – for their mail and FB accounts, ATM cards, e-banking stuff and what have you. But sharing a Facebook profile? Not okay with me. What, you don’t know a couple who actually has a single FB account? Yes, they exist, and leave you wondering how to treat their profile like a couple!

Me? I wouldn’t give up being the individual I am, even if it’s online, to be just a couple. And no, I don’t think it’s a deficit of trust, or a desire to conceal. It’s just that I need to be myself before I can start being someone’s wife, daughter, whatever.

I do know of couples though who totally (and happily) eat into each other’s space like they didn’t exist as individuals before. They have the same friends – if you can’t get along with both, you can’t be friends with either. They eat out of a single plate, share the same opinions, the same sense of humour, the same sense of outrage – you get the drift. And that’s because they’re so much in love with each other. Because by some inflated notion of love, that’s what lovers do – cease thinking independently, start mirroring each other’s reactions and think that any voice of dissent must mean that they’re out of love. Really?  No, seriously, is that it? Because that would mean I’ve never quite been in love. Do you have to have an identical other half in your partner to be certified ‘in love’?

You may find it a little difficult to convince me that the answer to that question is ‘yes’. So tell me, how much of your space are you willing to give up for your partner? How much isn’t too much for you?

>My driver’s love life

>My driver is in love. He’s having an affair. With a girl he was to have an arranged marriage with, but the engagement was called off. And why should I be blogging about this? Because if he doesn’t get the family approval to marry that girl, he plans to run away. From home, from the city, from WORK. And that’s when we hit the panic buttons and begin to take active interest in his love life.

So here we are trying to convince his father, an orthodox Muslim, to let the young fella marry the girl of his choice. Of course, we’d do it for him even if he were not threatening to quit the job, because he’s been working with us for over four years now. But what makes us pray fervently that he be united with his Lady Love is that threat. Seriously. And it just made me laugh out loud when The Guy and I, lying in bed last night, realised we were discussing our driver’s love life!

Don’t get me wrong. We are not one of those heartless, slave-drivers who wouldn’t care what happened to all the domestic staff if we were assured they were bound to us for life. And are only interested in getting our work done. Far from it. But when you start discussing your driver’s love life, it’s just an awkward, self-conscious situation. It’s not like helping someone get their daughter married. Or get medical aid for someone’s father. This is their love lives we’re talking about!

Which reminds me of another torrid love affair that bloomed between a maid and a man servant at our place a few years ago. Now both of them were just the kind of domestic help no one ever wants to part with. The girl was smart, quick and hardworking; the boy doubled up as the errand boy at office, because he could read English as well, and did just about all chores you can think of doing at home. When the two of them hit it off, and got romantically involved with each other, we don’t know. But at some point my mother-in-law started keeping an eye on them. Not enough though to prevent them from having some unsafe sex. Oh yes! Right under our roof, God knows where (it’s a big enough house, there’s actually no dearth of unused places about here)! And pronto, the girl got pregnant and the secret was out. We were in a state of shock for days after the boy confided in M-I-L, wept in repentance, but too late. They were chided and reprimanded and all that, but M-I-L, being the messenger of love that she is, asked the girl’s mother to get the two married off. But the mother would have none of it – no shaadi for my daughter outside the biraadari, she said. The pregnancy was aborted, the girl married off to someone else in a month’s time, and the boy, well, he was so embarrassed and ashamed of what he’d done (it was consensual sex, so the girl was to be blamed just as much as him) that he returned home. End of the story. And so, not only did do pyar karne wale get separated, but two hardworking helpers were also lost forever to the household.

What’s the moral of the story? In order to retain good domestic helpers, ensure they have a happy love life!

>A word can say a thousand things

>Like when The Guy SMSes me this:

Baby

And I’m left peeling layers off that message: what it could mean depending on when it’s said.
It could be a happy exclamation of love.
Or an expression of longing.
Or an admonition.
Or a reminder.
Or nothing at all. But even then, it’s speaks to me so much than ‘Hi’ or ‘Hey’ would. Because it’s ‘our’ word.

>"And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain…"

>This one’s for The Guy. Because everything is alright. I like my job. I don’t mind the long hours, like I said I wouldn’t. And I don’t mind the food flaws, like I said I wouldn’t. I like Delhi, despite the pollution and the traffic jams and the long hours spent on the road. But I miss you. You should be here. with me, like you always used to be. This doesn’t feel like home just because you aren’t here. You are the only reason I want to go back.

>Teach me the Language of Love

>I’ve always wanted to write a whole post on how much I love my husband but it’s never been written. I plan them – on anniversaries, on Val Day, on days when I can feel the love. But those posts never come out. I can never say how and how much I love him. I can never say how much it means to me to have in my life. I can never begin to tell you about all the small and big things he does for me because I don’t have the words to say how they affect me. I’m a poor writer, looking for words, finding expressions which can tell you how much I am in love. And how silly I look being so incurably in love the last 13 years! I feel horrible that while I have metaphors and similes for just about everything else in my life, I have none for the love of my life.

I wonder if my readers will think I have nothing to say about him except in passing (?) Because that’s not true! I have so much to say but no words to say it all with. And my words belittle my emotions when I try to write about The Guy.

Of course, I don’t need to say it for his benefit. He knows. He knows all too well what I feel. But teach me the language of love I can speak and you can understand. Because love is in the air and I want you to know that there’s this man in my life who means the world to me.

>Dead or alive?

>I have been in love for 12 years now and there are days when I feel totally out-of-love. Those are days when I wonder why him and why me? They are the same days when I wonder why I live with this man. But most days are better. Most days I tell him I love him and that he’s the best. I tell him I can’t live without him. And he nods his agreement.

But being in love for twelve years isn’t easy. It’s bloody difficult, if I tell you the truth. How do you love a man (or a woman) if you know all the flaws in his mental, emotional and even physical make-up? (No, I’m not blinded by my love.) How do you want someone when you can have them every waking minute? How do you not get bored of living with the same person all these years? Where do you get new things everyday to talk and share with each other?

Falling in love is so much easier than staying in love. While the former is easy, the latter is not. And there’s a school of thought that asks if you have to work on being in love, what that could be worth. But there’s another school of thought that says love isn’t something that can sustain you; you have to sustain it.

Or perhaps, love is not the right word for it. It’s chemistry. Or spark. Or that special something that keeps two people going. Perhaps, love can exist without much effort, but the spark can fizzle out so easily. And all you couples out there reading this, testify for the rest that that spark is ever so important!

The Guy and I used to have a lot of it – the spark, that is – in the five years that we dated each other before we got married. Don’t ask me how I know it, but I do. And somehow, one fine day – the day after our wedding day, to be precise – that spark disappeared. It vanished without a warning! And two very-much-in-love people were left clueless about what to do with all the love that was stored within their hearts for each other. Without the spark, how do we ignite the passion? Of course, we learnt later that we weren’t alone. There were many like us among our friends who had been excited by the chase and fallen into complacency at having got the prize. And that’s when we learnt that the spark wasn’t self-sustaining; it needed to be kept alive, it needed to be worked on, needed to be stoked to create a warm fire that will sizzle and crackle once in a while! I guess there is some chemistry involved there – how to mix the right ingredients to produce the right results.

Don’t ask me what I do to keep the flame burning because honestly it doesn’t burn as brightly all the time as I would want it to after reading enough Mills & Boons. But I also know that Mills & Boons is no realistic benchmark! But tell me if you agree that there is no eternal spark that can light up a relationship. Tell me also if you agree that love is no different and that both need to be kept alive. And if it’s not too much to ask for, share with me how you do it…

>13, they say, is lucky for some

>I’ve spent the last 13 years loving you. As a friend, as a lover, as a husband.

I loved the gawky teenager that I met 13 years ago and I love the man whose first grey hair makes my heart flip. I love his li’l paunch just as much as I loved his bones when they were pressed against me. I loved him when I thought he loved me more than I could love him and I love him more now than he can ever love me.

It’s just a very warm feeling to see the boy you love grow up into a man and to grow up with him from a baby-fat-faced girl into a woman.

This one is for you, My Love, and to the years we’ve spent together.

>The Greatest Love of All: Self-Love

>When you’re done with sending pink chhadis and they’re done with reacting to it, we can do this: celebrate February 14 as Self-Love Day as this blogger has suggested.

Why I’m doing this is simple enough: if there’s anything I truly love, it’s myself. And I couldn’t resist the temptation to indulge in a little public display of self-love. Also, because I know there are lots of people out there who don’t love themselves enough, that I think this is such a great idea. It’s important we learn to love who we are. When we look around too much for love and approval and such stuff, we make ourselves miserable because we don’t always find what we’re looking for and where we’re looking for it.

Finn says this better than I can and though I just did a post on how much I want The Guy and me to spend a typical pink and pretty Valentine’s Day, now I think I’ll spend the day loving myself.

Here’s what I’m expected to do: I have to put down one thing that I love about myself and get you, dear blogger, to write one thing that you love about me. Easy? So here goes:

What I love about myself is my positivity. My optimism has made life so much easier for me than what it would have been. It makes me see the silver lining in the clouds and that silver lining is a lot when your sky is full of clouds. I love myself for being able to sustain that optimism even when I’m surrounded by negativity.

Now your turn. Tell me what you think is lovable about me. Also tell me, what’s lovable about you.

>Valentine’s Day (apart from the Pink Chaddis)

>How do you celebrate Valentine’s Day with a person whom you’ve spent the last 11 years with, like The Guy and I have?

We’ve shared friendship cards on Valentine’s Day when we hadn’t confessed our love for each other (perhaps, when we didn’t know we were in love).

When we definitely were in love and couldn’t hide it from each other, we went all out to make it a special day for ourselves and for each other. We did what seems like silly stuff now: waited in a long queue to have a heart-shaped pizza and get an instant picture clicked of it. Somewhere, that picture still lies with us. I would rack my brains much in advance to think what I would wear on Val Day when I met my boyfriend so that he’d think I was the most beautiful girl in the world. He would fabricate lies at home to come and meet me in Delhi. We bought each other plenty of chocolates, plenty more roses and still plenty more of cards for each other saying in verse what we couldn’t then in words. We wrapped our gifts in paper covered with a zillion red hearts. We said ‘I love you’ more times than we could count. And I don’t regret any of it – even the stuff that appears juvenile and cheap and immature now.

On our first Valentine’s after we married, I lit up our bedroom with as many candles as I could and waited for The Guy to discover me in my lacy pink things. We’d been married for two months then and I felt excited at last to be spending not just Valentine’s Day but also the night with the man I loved. He bought me a cute stuffed toy for the third time in our lives, and for the third time over I thought it was cute.

After some time we graduated to buying each other gifts that weren’t just pretty things but could actually be used. We graduated to more sophisticated eating places than a pizza joint, places where there would be candlelight and dinner and wine and just the two of us. I still took pains to dress up, not just for the dinner but also for after-dinner.

And then we grew up a little more and planned dinners together with close friends so that instead of just the two of us there would be just the four of us. Some time later, it became just the six or eight or ten of us – the more, the merrier. I hate this kind of growing up but I went with the game plan because I knew The Guy liked it like that. I knew he liked us to have fun with friends and I went along with it. Love had become a different thing for him. It wasn’t something he needed to talk of over candlelight dinners. He didn’t need to seek me out alone to express his love to me. He didn’t need to say it with gifts. He didn’t need the lace, the music, the romance on Valentine’s Day. His love had changed while I was still holding on to my old-fashioned ideas of red roses, slow dances and soft lights.

I will be celebrating this Valentine’s Day with a bunch of friends – all of whom I love a lot and have lots of fun with. But even so many years after we celebrated our first Valentine’s Day, I want to be alone with the man I love because the years haven’t changed my love. I’m still the foolish romantic who hopes her knight will come not once but always in shining armour and whisk her away to someplace beautiful. I still want him to look at me like he used to when we were younger and more visibly in love. I still want him to think that I am all he wants even though he has me.

I still think this day would be more special if it were more romantic than fun.
Did Archies Cards do this to me?

>Why he’s from Mars and I’m from Venus

> Or let’s say I’ve finally understood Coulomb’s Law of Attraction in the way my relationship works with The Guy. We’re perfect opposites in just about everything and that must be the only reason why we are attracted to each other! The only good thing about that is the thought that if were alike, we would repel each other.

I’ve read only a few pages of that bestseller book that gets quoted everywhere these days, so I don’t know if it’s really that men are from Mars and women are from Venus or if it’s just us. You decide:

• He’s a Piscean and I’m an Arien. I’m the first sign of the zodiac, he’s the last. I’m a a fire sign, he’s a water one.
• He’s a man of few words, I’m bordering on verbose. He could live in monosyllables, I would die with them!
• He hates books, can’t read two pages without dozing off. Me? I dream of a well-stocked personal library in my house, children who’ll know Dante from Virgil, Shakespeare from Marlowe..
• He luuuuuuuuuurves movies – all of them! Those that were made three years ago but reached the cinema halls only after much effort, those with bad music, poor direction and no story line, horror films with patchy SFX, films with Tusshar Kapoor in the lead… Films that have come on TV uncountable times will be watched uncountable times. If somebody’s made a film, he’s made it for The Guy to watch it! No seriously. As for me, well, let’s just say I’ve finally found the most comfortable posture to fall asleep in the multiplex chair!
• We both love playing games. He loves his football and cricket, I love my Scrabble and Pictionary. I can’t catch a ball to save my life, he’d give his life to get a good catch.
• He hates pets, hasn’t touched our golden lab except with his toes perhaps. I’m okay even if he chews up my arm!
• He’s never, ever been to the gym. Will not say yes to jogging even to humour me, hates walks – even the romantic ones. Everything opposite of that holds true for me.
• He’s always feeling too hot, I’m always cold.
• He’ll always procrastinate, I’ll always be hasty.
• He loves children only as long as they are infants, I love children only when they are not infants.
• He can lose himself in numbers, figures and stats. I can only get lost in them.
• He’s a beer person, I’m a wine person.
• He won’t lose his temper till you ask for it, spell it out. I’d have lost and regained my cool ten times over in the same time.
• He’s tall, I’m just not!
• Finally, the clincher: I blog, he doesn’t even read one.

I rest my case.