RULES OF THE GAME -I

IRC is an atheist! He is an Eklavyan disciple of the formidable DD (Richard Dawkins to the uninitiated, author of the seminal best seller, The God Delusion). Now I haven’t read DD’s books and though ‘I believe’, and it would take more than a mere book to shake my faith, I fear I might like him. But that’s not the point of this story. The point is DD, I’m told, is a much married man and any man who finds it difficult to stay in love would also find it difficult to believe in love. And only a man who does not believe in love would, therefore, refuse to believe in God. This argument has been my fig leaf whenever IRC has me cornered with loaded logic and I feel the weight of cold unfeeling science on the delicate fabric of my faith.

Love and God are similar concepts, not in the Bollywoodian sense of one leading the seeker to the other but because both are a consequence of personal experience; impossible to prove to others through the pseudo scientific process of experimentation, extrapolation and observation and yet either is as clear as Diane Kruger’s complexion under the soft light of a setting South African sun to the believer and the beloved. It’s a bit like the way Cartier-Bresson saw poetry etched in his maid’s wrinkled hands, or the way Patty Jenkins had the temerity to find an Oscar winning monster in the angelic eyes of Charlize Theron. If you don’t have the eye, or the heart for it, you just wont see it.

DD might say that like God, love too is a mere delusion. But someone would only say that if they haven’t really been in love. And love is not just lust. It isn’t a crush. It isn’t a habit. And it isn’t that rush you get every time you see him/her walk past and flash a smile, or whatever else, that makes your heart skip a beat and makes you wonder, ‘what’s he/she like in…?’

So what really is love, you ask? And how might I know, you wonder? So here are my answers. To begin with, like God, love too is different things to different people. So I can only tell you about love as I see it. DD would tell you why he does not believe in ou his God and I can only tell you why I believe in my love.

If you are happy and fulfilled, you already know what I have to say. You needn’t read a word more. But just in case you are wondering if the person you’re with is right for you, or not; is someone you never really loved, or maybe you did; is someone you cant live with because you married someone else; is because you are head over heels in love, or are matters a litter more basic; is someone who gives you that same tingling feeling that someone else did long ago but doesn’t anymore, so what does that mean, then read on, for I might have answers to questions you are too scared to ask.

There are six rules, or conditions that need to be fulfilled before you can truly claim to be in love. And all these conditions need to be fulfilled simultaneously and the absence of even one would suggest that what you share/ or hope to share could be a lot of wonderful things, but it sure ain’t love. So brace yourselves folks, for here comes the truth, as I know it… Rule 1: Am I inspired enough to want to become a better man (or woman)?

Robbie Williams was a little vague about this but I’m going to spell this out for you… If a relationship doesn’t make you want to be a better person, then it really isn’t meant to be. And it should consistently remain so all through your life together, for love to last. Otherwise, you are just together because it has become a habit too tough to kick, or because of the kids, or because you don’t have a better alternative. Whatever it is, it isn’t love.

Allow me to explain this… I’m not just talking about the day when you struggled to hold back a burp on your first dinner date. No, no this is about things far deeper. I’m talking about waiting for someone you think you love for half an hour during the hour long lunchbreak in college… Waiting till you wonder where she might be and so you walk into her class room. You see her playing HOLLYWOOD (you remember that silly game about guessing movie names..) on the black board with the coolest guy on campus. Standing there watching her laugh and play, you realize you have choices to make… you know that she loves being with you but today she forgot about meeting you. She didn’t mean to, but this guy was making her laugh and he seemed to have so many interesting things to say. She’s obviously having a great time. She only has to look at her watch and realised how late it is and she would run outside to meet you. And then she would see you there… And that’s when the multiple choice question pops up in your head. Do you get angry and blame her for keeping you waiting? In a fi t of jealous rage, do you suggest that she was perhaps being unfaithful? Or do you sulk and act hurt and mope about like a wet puppy, hoping that her guilt will keep her away from that Don Juan and that dumb game? Or do you just smile and hug her and tell her how happy you are to see her (which of course you are), and then make a mental note that says “I’ve got to be the wittiest, most interesting guy she has ever met so that when I’m not around, and DJ wants to play Hollywood, she could play to humour him a little but all she wants to do is go back to her book so she could day dream about me, waiting to run into my arms when I show up!”

If she really is someone you love, someone who makes you feel good about yourself the way no one else can, someone you respect and look up to then you’ve got to put a tick on option four.

Personally, I can only love those who inspire me. Whether the relationship is of a romantic nature or otherwise, an emotionally intimate bond between two adults is impossible without respect. It isn’t physical attraction or chance and circumstance or convenience that should’ve ideally brought you and your partner together. It should ideally have been respect and admiration.

That ensures that you are together for the right reasons. Approval from the object of our admiration is one of our greatest motivators that can inspire an individual to evolve and grow into a better person.

So if your partner inspires you to become better you have chosen to love well. But how do you know you are growing in the right direction?

Well, here’s the important aspect of rule 1. If you are always the one getting inspired and failing to inspire in turn, then you really aren’t growing much. Your relationship in that case has regressed into a master slave relationship. Instead of growing you are actually appeasing the one you think you love. You’ve been lazy about working on yourself and have only made changes on the surface. Deep down, you’re still the same and so you depend on pretence. It is unfair to you and even more so to your partner.

I’ve said this earlier and I’ll say it again. An ideal relationship is like a dance where one partner leads and the other follows, and then grows to lead while it is the other’s turn to follow and so they keep evolving, inspiring each other to become better partners, lovers, friends and human beings.

If that isn’t happening, you both have questions to ask of yourself. I would love to tell you more, but space, unlike in our hearts is a constraint. So work on rule 1 while I road test rules 2-6 before delivering them to you next week…

NO LOVE LOST REDUX

Oops…! As soon as last week’s promise laden love lore hit the stands, my friends, the few I badger to read no matter what tosh I write, rubbished the effort. Apparently I had narrated a similar tale of unrequited passion some time ago and promised to reveal the lessons of love, and then conveniently forgotten all about it. And so I rummaged through the bin of time and found the off ending article. Here it is to refresh your memories and mine, for the issue to come will hold the answers to both the pieces as promised… Answers I sought for your sake and mine. Not much left to bake; the truths of love follow in this story’s wake…

This one’s difficult… I’m going to be telling on my friends. But don’t worry; they’re ok with sharing a bit of their lives if those bits could help you out with yours.

It’s the story of two brothers, both good friends of mine, who met two exceptionally attractive ladies, and fell in love with them at a wedding. Today, all four are good friends of mine, but while one couple is happy, together and totally in love, the other couple has fallen out… of love, and with each other. So what went wrong? And what went right? Are there lessons to be learnt, or are all tales of togetherness mere puppets in the hands of fate and chance? Well, here’s a ringside peep into four lives, with insights that could help your loves and mine. And it’ll help if we approach their lives seeking not to judge but to understand.

Rehan and Rohit Gadgil played cricket with me in college. Their father was working with a merchant ship and spent a lot of time sailing. But their mother, a homemaker, has done a very good job of bringing up the boys. Blessed with sharp wits and kind hearts, Rehan and Rohit never lacked for company and yet, as far as we know, have always respected every relationship. Rehan is 29 years old today and works in Glasgow. Rohit is a 27 year old banker, currently living in Delhi but will move to Michigan any of these days. About three years ago, their cousin sister who’d studied with us was getting married to this boy from Kolkata, and celebrations were planned over ten days; wedding in Delhi and reception in Kolkata with parties and ceremonies sprinkled between the two big days.

The Gadgils are a popular family and had a long list of invitees. Since I also happened to be on that list, I took time off and hopped on to the wedding wagon. And there we encountered the other two protagonists of this story – Chhaya and Samaira, the groom’s colleagues and good friends. Rehan and Chhaya got along like a house on fire. They talked, they laughed, they danced and the evenings often found them taking long walks in the lawns. Rehan was mature, worldly-wise and elegant. Successful and suave, he had the bearing of a prince. Chhaya on the other hand had the irresistible charm of a child who knows she’s cute. When she smiles, her eyes would sparkle like diamonds under soft white light. Her bubbly eff ervescence was contagious. They were opposites that attracted each other with a strange playful intensity.

It was like a story unfolding out of a movie script. All of us friends would see them as they walked away, their heads tilted gently towards each other as they spoke, saw and felt what they thought to be the very essence of the other. Chhaya had a half smile that never seemed to leave her mouth. And her eyes… they danced and laughed and revealed a thousand secrets whenever Rehan was around. And Rehan, the quiet and reserved gentleman who was brilliant at his job, played golf to ‘contemplate’ and went camping on the weekends, had evolved into this live-wire who couldn’t stop talking animatedly. It was as if he’d suddenly found wings. He floated around all day, laughing and talking. And in the evening, when Chhaya was around, he was sweet and charming, and opened up to her like a tulip to the sun. That day on the terrace, those of us who saw their silhouettes disappear against the moonlit night on the eve of the wedding knew that this was a match that was made in heaven. In fact, we still talk about that magical moment… all of us but for two others…

Samaira and Rohit were there all right but they were usually just too busy in the kitchen to notice. No, no it isn’t what you are thinking… that came much later. For what was brewing between them in the beginning was not romance but intense competition. Samaira in her younger days, was, to put it plainly, rather obese. Looking at her statuesque proportions today, you’d never guess that she was once the rather grotesque, hulking figure in the photograph she carries in the flap of her phone (a reminder in case she drift s too close to the desserts). Since she couldn’t run around much with that weight in school, she picked up the shot put during her “games period (!)”. Eventually she got to be good at it. As her confidence soared, she started training for her sport. She’d always been good with books but the shot-put gave her physicality a new-found confidence. She could now hurl the put further than most of the guys in her class could and all that training in the weight room had sculpted a whole new person out of her.

Samaira now worked in publishing and was a supremely confident individual. Rohit was perhaps a little intimidated by her in the beginning. She was elder to him by a couple of years and though attractive and sweet natured, the two of them got off on the wrong foot. Actually what took off when they met was this little debate. You see, Rohit was once an aspiring fashion model. He’d sculpted his physique to a fair degree of perfection and done a few shows. He wanted to be the next Milind Soman, a male super-model, but alas it wasn’t to be; he wasn’t willing to make “the required compromises” he said. But he’s still passionate about the industry and his workouts. So when Samaira and Rohit got talking about their fitness regimens and Rohit tried to exchange notes, Samaira ribbed him a bit and said that male models were ‘pansies’ with ‘worthless bodies that looked too fluffy to be any good’. Sensitive and mild-mannered, Rohit was shocked and confused. He didn’t know how to respond without being rude to someone he’d just met. They were at a wedding after all. He avoided conversations with Samaira from then on…

But Samaira had meant no harm. So she apologized and invited him to join her for an early morning run through the city-forest. Things got a little better from there. They jogged and trained together in the mornings and played squash in the evenings. And they spent the rest of the day in the kitchen ‘experimenting’ with that rare and elusive (and some might say mythical) food-group called the ‘lick-a-licious health foods’. You could tell though that even when they’d run and made up, there was always this undercurrent of intense but cordial competition between the two.

All through the ceremonies, the families were happily speculating about a good time for a Chhaya-Rehan wedding, and at the same time bracing themselves for a moment when the veneer of cordial competition between Samaira and Rohit might collapse and they might have to intervene before things got a little unpleasant which might embarrass the families. However, the wedding week ended without incident and we went back to our old lives, richer and rounder for the experience. Chhaya and Rehan however picked up from where they had left off in Kolkata. And while we were waiting for them to announce their ‘next step’, like a bolt from the blue, Rohit and Samaira announced their engagement…

But all that happened three years ago. Today, one couple is still inseparable while for the other, love disappeared like dew in the desert.

What is the glue that holds one together, and which is the river that divides the other? The answers…? Next week….!