Blame it on my lack of courage or conviction or capability, during my entire college life and beyond that also in my bachelorhood, I never had any crush on anyone, let alone love! Well I could have had with at least 3 to be honest if not more, but at the very initial stage of any such thought occurring I turned all sage Vishwamitra to Menaka, closed my eyes and went back to my penance and resolved myself to pursue my goals – which were to clear my engineering with decent score and get a job first to support the family.

Don’t get me wrong and think that I was an unromantic nerd! In fact one of my gainful extracurricular activities those times was to help some of my friends seek their love interests and get them to seal the deal, fix break-ups and turn them to fevicol ka jod, ghost writing love letters and all! A sort of self-styled “love guru” who used to get mostly paid in kind and never took cash for the sake of love! So much so one such interest of a friend soon found out the “out-sourcing” behind his romantic (mis)adventures, so left him and soon started chasing me instead! It took a lot to convince my friend that I had no such interest and somehow rescued my “friendship” from sinking!

During the third year of B.Tech, while on an Industrial tour in Bangalore, a few of my friends wanted to test my field skills too, so egged me on to flirt with a beautiful teenaged girl sitting under a gulmohar tree in one of the parks there. A much senior and loving couple were cosying up to each other not too far away from her under another tree. I took up the challenge, approached her and did not do too badly for a start as she responded to me quite warmly enough. Encouraged and emboldened, at a critical moment I told her – “Honey, let’s be like ‘em”, gesturing with my eye at the intimate couple. She coolly smiled and replied “They are my parents!” as though I had forgotten to pull up the zipper of my trouser fly!

After getting the job also, the penance continued, though I was a bit more relaxed than I was in college, since I had started to earn. Besides, the official tours always allowed ample opportunities to hit on many single girls travelling along or in the new places that you go where you feel a lot more comfortable to open up as there were no one “known” watching you around! Yet I was mostly restrained and often my curt replies to any casual small talks, my general impatience and “tough and serious looks” were huge deterrents to most girls even if they wanted to approach me. Once while attending a Role and Identity Lab as part of our Corporate Induction Programme in Kolkata, the coach told me that – “You are like Bheema in Mahabharat (read bull in a china shop), a bundle of energy and enthusiasm and highly impatient. You know what you will do when you are in a house-boat in Dal Lake on a moonlit twilight with your love and she looks deep into your eyes and tries to communicate through that? You will tell her – “Hurry up, what’s next?”

I tried to remember this piece of advice he gave me when I first met my wife to see her, and did sufficiently soften up while interacting with her. In about 5 minutes flat, she told me she is interested in me and would be happy to marry me. I asked her how could she decide such an important thing so fast in just 5 minutes to which she replied – “Well to me, you look easily manageable, so that is fine!” and smiled. A few years later after my marriage and while I was in the B-School, I happened to meet that Trainer who gave me that piece of advice and walked across to him and told him about that which he fondly recalled. He asked me with great interest, if I followed his advice and what happened. I told him, “Well we did not go to Srinagar, but went to Kodaikanal, it wasn’t Dal lake, but some lake, it was not a house-boat, but a small pedalling boat, and neither was it a moonlit twilight, but a sunny afternoon, yet I remembered to remove my sunglasses and looked deeply into my wife’s eyes and tried to communicate through that and she told me – Hurry up and tell me, what’s next?!”

To her credit, I continue to be “managed” by her all these 18 years since then. My whole concept of love is that it is a verb and not a noun, so it is about “doing” than “feeling or happening or falling into” and so it is a choice we consciously make. It is in what we choose to do and how we choose to do that we experience love. Even in such small things like making a coffee or applying a pain balm or asking – “did you eat something?” before we take the first morsel. Love is all about the care that we take for putting the person whom we love ahead of ourselves in everything that we do. As Mother Teresa said, “We can’t do great things. Only small things with great love”.

Mellowed by the years, while I continue to believe in my concept of love, I have also realised the other point of view that love can also come in sometimes like the early morning breeze that caresses the wind chimes at the doors of your heart and make them dance. Like an unexpected sudden drizzle on a sunny afternoon and you look up to see a shimmering rainbow. And turns your world upside down! Most importantly, it leaves you with no choice at all. Like it left Daisy with no choice, in the latest book that I am reading, as I read those lines sitting back on my couch.

“Life was empty but for the two hours she spent with him each evening. The rest of the day was anticipation; and the night was recollection. He was the pillow she put her cheek on. He was the towel with which she patted her breasts when she got out of the bathtub. He was the knuckle she put into her mouth and sucked thoughtfully.

She had believed that love was something she could bestow upon whomever she liked, and that her main responsibility was to choose cleverly. Now she knew that was all wrong. Cleverness has nothing to do with it, and she had no choice. Love was an earthquake.”............

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