Realizations Part 2 - The anatomy of love.

July 2008

“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” - Samuel Butler

I know better. I had my first crush in ninth grade…. and lost it. The girl was senior to me by a year and the goddess of my world. I never let her know. We went our own ways. She is probably the mother of four kids by now. Kompaani’s story seemed to be similar and hence I cud relate. But my friend’s story gave me an insight in human emotions. I realized a few things. Not that all the realizations were new to me. I knew some of them anyway. But my belief in some was reinforced.

Love speaks the same language all across:
Whenever I recall the chain of events from that day and some thereafter, I find that the thread of emotions is the same, whether in feel good movies or in the somewhat unglamorous lives of simple people like my friend. Just like most other people wud have behaved, my friend’s behavior was very predictable and human. He too nurtured hopes in his heart, worked hard to give them shape, was shattered when they din work out the way he desired them to, tried not to let his suffering overshadow his happiness for his love, camouflaged the turmoil in his mind with a fake smile and u get the drift…. U can more often than not, see a common pattern in most people when faced with this situation. I guess love knows no boundaries as far as emotions are concerned. It’s the same in everybody.

It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return, but what is more painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let that person know how you feel:
We are probably the most hypocritical lot on earth who wud rather prefer incest than agree to let our kids marry someone from a lower or different caste even if he or she may be otherwise suitable.
But even otherwise it's tough living with coughed up emotions

Love is the biggest motivation on earth: 
Bobby Fisher to this day remains the only American to have ever won the World chess championship and considered to be the greatest chess player of all time. At the age of 16, he dropped out of high school simply becoz he cun stand everyday, his crush going around with some other guy. Years later, Fisher had enough name in the circuit but still wasn’t the best. In 1970 at the age of 27 he met his girl again in a Jewish ghetto. The girl was impoverished, and after many failed relationships, lived with a man who wasn’t her husband. There Fischer for the first time expressed that she was his crush since childhood. The lady said it was too late in life as she had cancer. But before dying all she wanted, was to see this man as the best….. And as they say, the rest is history. The girl died six months before Fischer’s world championship match with Boris Spassky. Folklore had it (courtesy the bellboys assigned to his hotel room) that Fischer quit smoking four months before the match (1972) so that he cud improve his concentration, lived alone in a hotel room for those four months with a girl’s pic on his desk where he practiced his moves day and night relentlessly without letup. He did it not to impress the girl as she wasn’t there anyway, but all the same he did it only for her. None knew of this except his manager and his best friend and practice partner in whom he confided who let the word out after his death early this year. Even in his pics from that time u wun find any hint of the fire within this man. He camouflaged it with his smile. And as for the reason why he hid it, it was becoz he din want the world to know of the impoverished state of the girl at death and her checkered past.

U know u have found love, when u want to be ur best, when u push urself harder to live up to someone. And that someone is the person who is gonna make u a better person than what u can ever be by urself. Someone who builds or breaks ambition inside u by his or her presence or absence. Maybe that was the reason Fisher quit smoking for four months. But if u still wonder why I wrote all this here, well maybe that was the reason why my friend worked eighteen hours a day.

You can close your eyes and ears to things you don’t want to see and hear, but you can’t close your heart to things you don’t want to feel:
Emotions can pierce through our hearts without making a hole in the flesh. As I said earlier, hope is eternal. We live in it. Although my friend knew of the caste problem, he still saved for her in the hope that something works out.

Someone can walk into your life and it is not until after they walk out that you wished they were back:
I had heard somewhere that sometimes we get so busy gathering stones that we miss the diamond. We take people for granted. Its only when they go, we realize that they have left an indelible mark in our lives.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love:
Someone should sue Disney for planting the ideas in little kids’ heads that every girl or boy has a prince charming or a damsel and everything ends up happily ever after. Sitting in that room all I cud do was watch helplessly as this man cried his heart out. I guess he din have much choice either.

Love is sacrosanct:
The wedding happened. Days went by. But never for once did Kompaani speak ill of the girl or blame her for his state. You know you love someone when you want them to be happy even if their happiness means that you're not part of it. People we loved always remain sacred and holy to us. We stand by them when someone speaks trash bout them. We go to any length to maintain the sanctity of our emotions that once prevailed in us.
It's amazing how someone can break you heart or tread on your dreams and trample them underfoot, but you still love them with all the little pieces that remain.

There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go:
There are things in a past that u hold on to. Things that can’t be denied. Emotions that are irrefutable. Images that remain a treasured memory forever. People who will be ur last thought when u die. But at some point of time u have to let go and live for other people and not urself anymore.
Trying to forget someone we love is trying to remember someone we never met. I guess moving on is easy. It’s just that what we leave behind, that makes it so difficult. But then again the saying goes – ‘Love will find a way’. When the mind is healed completely, the wounds on the body don’t hurt anymore……Or on second thoughts, maybe they still do.

Kahlil Gibran once said “Life is a bridge. Cross it, but build no house on it”.
We don't stop loving someone. We simply learn to live without them.
Kompaani lives on. But he doesn’t work eighteen hours a day anymore.