Once home the calls were far more frequent thanks to the falling rates of local calls. Ramesh hadn’t told his folks about his new friendship but his mom knew matters were fishy when his phone rang even in the temple of their family deity. Finally after heavy scheduling, Ramesh found a window to squeeze in a date with his new friend and a popular coffee place was chosen as the rendezvous point. The much awaited day arrived and Ramesh was as chirpy as possible all day, dressed in his lucky shirt and faded jeans he darted to the coffee shop. He had intentionally reached earlier so that he could go over the menu, talk to the staff and impress his date with his new found knowledge. His eyes lit up when he received  a text message reading ‘5 mins next signal, wearing red‘ as he quickly memorized the menu one last time, with some witty lines to say for every selection. His heart was racing and his breath grew heavy as he adjusted his hair and put on his ultra-cool shades to go with the spikes. He instantly recognized the familiar face in the red dress for they had exchanged pics earlier. Shruthi was quite a catch, wheatish in complexion, average height and she probably looked ever more astonishing as Ramesh was unable to get rid of the mental image of Kajol running across a desert in a saree. Quite expectedly she was nervous about meeting a guy for the first time and had brought a friend along. The friend was short, portly, wore thick glasses and was probably not as bad but Ramesh was unable to get the Kajol image out of his head. Shruthi was more reserved and silent but her friend seemed overtly talkative. The date didn’t quite go as planned as for starters there were three people as opposed to two, and secondly Shruthi wasn’t in the mood for anything and seemed disturbed about something.

On his flight back to the US, Ramesh looked back upon the fun times he had with his friends, parents and ofcourse his special friend. Shruthi had apologised for her cold behaviour citing being yelled upon by her boss at work and later having an argument with her mother prior to the date. With their differences resolved and having seen each other the chats and calls only increased and pretty soon love was
in
the airlove was in the air. They liked each other and they mutually agreed to take the next step devoid any filmy situations much to the respite of their respective roomates. Surprisingly Ramesh’s fellow stud friends were very supportive and more so because it meant that there was one less person in the competition. As soon as his parents brought up the topic of marriage, Ramesh told them about Shruthi and that he would not take no for an answer. Being the liberal kind and knowing that any resistance will be futile, Ramesh’s parents duly agreed. Shruthi was pretty excited at the prospect of marriage and regularly chatted up Ramesh’s mother over the phone. Since family traditions prevented them from meeting their daugher-in-law to be, Ramesh’s parents were content with the regular phone calls. Shruthi’s side apparently wasn’t as receptive and hence Shruthi sought time to talk things up and get matters sorted.

One fine day Ramesh received a call from Shruthi’s friend who was sobbing uncontrollably, turned out that Shruthi had met with a serious accident and was counting her last moments. She went on to add that the situation was pretty intense and advised Ramesh and his family to stay away else things may get complicated. Ramesh was heartbroken and collapsed in the arms of his roomates as he broke the news to them. Studs never cryStuds never cry and if they ever do it’s only when alone in the shower or some solitary place. Unable to bear Ramesh’s sorrow his friends offered to help and use their connections to gather information. The thing about fellow studs is that they all stick together while hunting prey and also in times of distress. Friends in India went to the spot of the accident trying to gather details only to be told by local store owners that there was no major accident in the area all week. Bribing the constable at the nearest police station also failed to throw any light. Considering the outside chance wherein the friend may have botched the name of the spot while sobbing, they began inquiring in all similar sounding areas only to hear the same. A last ditch attempt to scan all the major hospitals and knock the police control room also resulted in failure with no person as Shruthi being admitted. Now Ramesh only knew her name, number, email address and orkut profile which may seem weird given that someone was planning on spending the rest of their life with such a person.

Taking the most credible piece above which here was the phone number, Ramesh’s friends used their network to get into the cell phone company’s records to look for an address and other details. The number was registered to a guy and the address was an empty construction site, and adding insult to injury was the fact that the connection had pending post-paid payments for months. The phone was obviously switched off or even thrown away, the email account was inactive and the orkut profile deleted. The number from which Shruthi’s friend had called to break the news was a public telephone and hence virtually untraceable. With all routes going nowhere, Ramesh’s friends gave up reporting their findings and expressed their support. Ramesh still couldn’t believe what just transpired suddenly in less than a week as his life took a sudden dip from almost getting hitched to his soulmate, to laying in tatters trying to figure out the reasons for what happened. It still wouldn’t hit him how the person with whom he was talking about choice of wallpaper had suddenly vanished into thin air. The facts begin to hit him hard when asked by his friends what he was going to tell his parents. How could he tell them that their son had been taken for a ride, how would they take the fact that the bubbly girl they had been talking to was just a facade? With a million questions running across his mind, Ramesh almost had a nervous breakdown only to be restored to some extent bu his supportive stud-group. The following weekend while on the phone with his mother as he removed her of his messenger, he said

Ma, we broke up. She isn’t right for me……….

PS: Writing fiction is darn hard, I have new found respect for those who do. Regular bakwas will resume pretty soon.

(Images courtesy: Lavs Mohan and Hotel Lyric)

***UPDATE***
Owing to some threatening messages over IM and public request, I explain the thought process behind the post. I had come up with 3-4 different ways to end it and each seemed connected to the set pieces.

Here’s one

Theory 1: Shruthi was not the one Ramesh thought she was but her portly friend instead. Her ebullience in the coffee shop should have been an indicator to Ramesh. Blinded by infatuations he failed to smell a rat, but once pressure for marriage grew stronger Shruthi chickened out. With diminishing confidence to pull the bluff till the last moment and fearing getting caught and humiliated she played drama that unfolded. Having played safe with the phone number, wiping her online traces was no biggie.

With a couple of other ways to end, I chose to leave it open ended with everyone interpreting it on their own.

Thank you for the inputs!

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• The Father/Mother/Uncle on either the girl or boy’s side (depending on who is richer of the two)
• A jealous lover of the girl (since 2000 even guys are allowed to have jealous lovers!) or a drug lord/gangster who wants revenge from the hero or has killed the hero’s parents/sister

There is rarely a different permutation to this equation, but this is generally your love story. Coming back to the reason for this post, is what I described above called as love? Is this what love really is? If yes then how does it become divine? If someone has all of a sudden found a lot of willpower or confidence or dedication or motivation or inner strength or whatever you may, it is usually assumed to be the by-product of love. Anybody care to elucidate? Let us go by the assumption that the above is true and love does make people care and gives them strength, but then what is love? You’ve told me what it does and what it can make people do, but what is it to begin with?

There are a few who will read this post and immediately rattle an offline message or leave me a scrap saying that love can’t be defined and has to be felt! Oh yea, I know that was coming. Going by that assumption, if it is a mortal feeling that can’t be defined and only expressed then what is so sacred bout it and why is it divine? Anger, Greed, Pride are also feelings but then they aren’t weighed in the same balance! Why is there a bias then? Shouldn’t all feelings be treated with the same amount of respect or is it convenience?

If you are just shaking your head thinking that it’s high time someone fell in love then I have a question for you. So far we stuck with the argument that love is a feeling but now the term ‘falling in love‘ brings up a whole new discussion. I know it doesn’t mean falling on someone literally not to deny that it has been used in many Indian movies. There are scores of movies where an actor has to go through the harsh experience of a heavier co-star falling in love ON them! One would have to agree though that love is a much more favorable feeling as we shamelessly ignore other feelings in our bias towards love.

I realize that I fail to make sense, but then I have another question. Any one like to tell me what is true-love? After having watched close to a thousand movies and having seen almost all my friends act weird under the pretext of love, I dare not talk about it any more. What bothers me is that if there exists some thing called true-love then what about it’s antithesis? Is there a false-love as well? There is a long list of such contrived terms associated with it and ‘commitment’, ‘soul mate’, ‘relationship’, ‘break up’ etc are just a few. What surprises me the most is that you can be in true-love today with someone, and next year the feeling still stays just that it’s a different someone. So it’s true today with someone and true with some other person next year, which means that it was false with the person today!

I know I’m getting nowhere with this as I attempt to summarize. Hormonal fluctuations and infatuations are often mistaken for love as young and vulnerable people then go ahead and mimic the screenplay of their favorite movie(doesn’t matter which one as the concept remains the same) which goes on for a few weeks and months in most cases as gift shops, coffee shops, malls and cinema halls make a killing. Then they get bored of each other and now we get to the interesting world of break-ups. This is followed by a heavy intake of booze for men and fatty food for women depending on who claims to be hurt the most and thus returning to the vulnerable state. Once again hormonal fluctuations and infatuations…….

The cycle endlessly continues till people learn the hard way and grow up……

ps: With inputs from Hari Bajjuri

Tags: love, failure, break up, movies

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