Moving on...

People have actually started calling me love guru, after reading my posts… ironical to say the least as I have never been in a long committed relationship… but I have known people who have been… and I guess I emit some vibes that make people come and pour their hearts out to me (with no actual prodding from my side mind you.) So I have heard a lot of stories… personal experiences of my friends being in happy relationships (when everything goes according to plan but that is very seldom), being in on-again-off-again relationships (mostly indecisive couples who like to go through the same motions over and over again with sadly the same person), completely useless ones (this is the maximum number where there is no past, no present and no future), one-sided affairs (girl likes guy or vice-versa and surprisingly there are a lot of cases of this one as well) and then there are also flings (having fun… no strings attached kind of affairs). That’s all my knowledge base… people around me. Even if they don't, i certainly learn from their mistakes.

This time, I thought I would live up to my recently acquired pseudonym of love guru… make it relationship advisor (:P)… (speaking of which, I remember one of my close friends was also ready to design a website for me...don't know what happened to that. Admiral, u reading? :P)
and write something about the end of a relationship.

Recently, I spoke to one of my friends. He was in love with a girl. They broke up for various reasons (let us not get into that) and now it has been two years since they last spoke. He says that he has moved on but he just dedicated a song to her… perfect strangers. The intention presumably (if we take it in the literal sense) was to tell her that he has moved on and now they are just strangers...perfect strangers. (SIGH!) if life was so literal. But if you really have gotten over someone then do you need to tell the other person that you are not thinking about her anymore? And doesn’t sending her a sign that you are not thinking about her just defeats the whole purpose?

So, what is actually moving on? Is it when you stop thinking about her / him? When you don’t remember the date you stopped talking to her? Or when you don’t feel like talking to him… or when you don’t bother talking to her? When u just stop caring if the other person exists or not? When little normal everyday things don’t remind you of her? or is it all of the above?

I think you have truly moved on when u can talk about the other person with a detached frame of mind. When it doesn’t bother you if you will ever see her again or not... When you can look at their stuff without getting nostalgic… when you go to the places you went to with them and u don’t wish the other person to be there. It would be foolish to actually believe that you can erase the other person, who has been a constant in your life for n number of days, out of your consciousness and believe me the more you try to wipe the slate clean the more mess you create. I have seen people trying their level best to forget the time spent with the other half who is now not here and they just get more entangled in the web of memories. While trying to forget everything, they remember every minute detail so that they wont think about it again (seriously don’t understand the logic!) so I think you should just let it be… sooner or later, you will get over that someone special (who is not special anymore. Granted you would rather shoot her between the eyes…listening Popeye… but u will get over the urge. trust me. And yeah don’t act on any of these impulses even if you get them) But how long does it take for someone to move on? Days, months, years… lifetime. No one knows, I think it is different for different people. Some people move on in a blink of an eye, and some take several blinks. it doesnt depend on the level of intimacy you shared with that person (it does matter though) but most importantly it depends on your desire to move on.

To truly move on, you need to believe that you want to get out and getting there is the hardest part. Many people live in denial, believing that this is just a phase and the other guy would sooner or later realize that they still love you and everything would be rosy again. it is then that you need to remove those rose-tinted glasses and see the reality as it is.

Getting over a break-up is a five point process - DENIAL (when you can't believe that this is happening to you); REALIZATION (when the gravity of the situation finally hits you that the other person is not coming back); HUMILIATION / SELF BLAME (when the break up seems like your fault. this is a dangerous time when you would feel like calling the guy and begging him to take you back and that you would do anything to make it work); ANGER / HATE (when you blame the other person for everything wrong that has ever happened to you...ever) and finally
voila... you dont care anymore. so give yourself this time to go through all these five stages.

Sometimes, you wish there was some kind of a college that had special courses to make you get over that girl / guy. You complete the course and you have moved on. You are awarded some kind of a certificate that says something like… this is to certify that Mr. / Ms. So-and-so has finally forgotten Ms. / Mr. so-and-so and has truly and completely moved on. Now they are perfectly stable to enter another relationship.

People could frame it and hang it on their walls just like degrees. Some people would have multiple certificates too. (obsessive compulsive daters or breakers) So when u meet a guy / girl and you are not sure whether he is actually over his ex, u would just have to look at the wall!

But sadly this is not the norm. (not here, not anywhere)

Paro... the invisible heroine

Today i was talking to one of my friends (girl talk) and during the course of our chatting session she suddenly mentioned that she is no paro... that started me thinking... why is it that when a guy is spurned in love, he is labelled a devdas but a girl doesnt like being called a paro?? infact, paro showed more gumption (i always wanted to use this word but never knew where :P ) than devdas anyday but no one sees that coz their love story has always been shown through the eyes of devdas... and even though people see devdas as the loser guy, they dont see the strength of character in paro who instead of crying about lost love, took charge of her life and moved on.

Recently I had the pleasure of watching Dev.D. well, I am being sarcastic... it was not pleasureable. I don't feel it was a bad movie coz it is not. It was a nice movie but I just don’t get what all the brouhahaha was all about. I agree it was well made, great music, good cinematography (after a point of time you felt you are actually drunk as well) etc etc but in the end it was yet another take on the classic devdas albeit a modern one. We all know the tragic story of devdas, the poor little rich guy, but for the uninitiated I’ll give you a quick recap - Rich guy (that’s devdas) loves poor girl (Paro). Poor Girl loves rich guy too. Rich guy goes abroad to study. Poor girl waits for the guy for 10 years. Rich guy comes back and the affair resumes. Misunderstanding (because of class and status) crops up which results in trouble in paradise. The trouble is because of family (the family’s got to do something too right?). Guy abuses girl. Girl’s ego is shattered. Girl in turn marries rich older guy (with kids mind you). Guy realizes he messed up. Guy turns to alcohol. Guy meets another girl (bechari chandramukhi). New girl falls in love with the guy (God knows why?!). Guy still loves poor girl (who is no longer poor but is infact as rich as Devdas now). Excessive drinking kills guy. The End.

Dev.d, coz its a modern take, does have certain twists (but it doesnt deviate much from the Classic) such as in the original devdas it was devdas’ family who were against the match but in this one it is paro’s dad who plays the villian (god knows why again?!). this time chunni babu is not dev’s friend but chanda a.k.a. chandramukhi’s pimp. And in the end, instead of drinking himself to death, dev gets an epiphany and realizes that he doesn’t love paro but is in love with chanda and decides to give life another chance. Happy ending for all you might say? coz dev gets chanda, chanda gets dev. but what about paro? she gets to marry a rich man. i dont thinks so. It was not a hppy ending for paro who ends up as a second wife to a much older man who she doesn’t even love.
This is what happens in this particular movie, in the other movies and the book, devdas dies. that's the easiest way to run from a problem. he couldnt face life so he gave it up. but what was left behind was paro who chose to live rather than escape.

That is why I have always believed that instead of a tragedy of devdas, it was a tragedy of paro. In the book, in the movies, it is always paro who had to suffer and maybe that's why people dont want to be like her... coz who would choose a lifetime of suffering right? what they dont see is that even if she suffered, she didnt give up.

Whatever happens to Dev and Chanda is the result of their own actions… they are the reason for whatever happens to them…good or bad. Devdas was weak… he could never take a bloody decision and stick to it. Whatever happened to him was his own doing…well, almost. He was the one who chose to believe others than the person he loved. He was the one who created the barrier of class between himself and paro. He was the one who left paro in the lurch. He was the one who forced her to move on and get married to someone else. He was the one who happily died and left all his worries behind… and in dev.d he was the one who ends up with chanda. So basically, he had his cake and ate it too.

But, where did that leave paro? She kept waiting for dev when he was attending parties and getting drunk in the UK or the US. She was ready to leave her family for him but instead had to bear his rebuke. She was the one who had to abide by her parents' wishes and get married to a gentleman who was not only elder to her but also had kids as old as her. Devdas dies but it is she who lives the decisions that she had to take... sometimes because of her family and sometimes because of her lover. I believe that she is the strongest character of the trio, she didn’t drown herself in alcohol. She didn’t take the easy way out. she had too much of self respect to run away with devdas after being made to feel like a fool by him but still no one wants to be called a paro now-a-days.

Devdas either dies or lives happily ever after with chanda / chandramukhi who also has had a tough life…granted… but in the end if she doesn’t gain anything, she doesn’t lose anything either. She can go back to living her life the way it was before the sudden arrival of dev at her dooestep. In the end, it is paro who has to live the life that is somehow goeverned by the actions of others.

Inspite of all of this, it is still dev who is hailed as the ultimate tragic lover… more like a tragic loser, if you ask me. And believe it or not I actually know some people who idolize devdas and wouldn’t mind living a life like that…well, my advice to them is – get a life first!

So, even if dev.d attempts to present a modern outlook to the whole tragic love story, it ends up being just that - another take on devdas. i mean how many different ways can u tell the story of a man who loved and lost. I wish someone would make a movie on paro… from her point of view. Her wait for dev, what does she feel when dev tells her that she is not worth him, what goes through her heart and head when she decides to marry the other man, what was her life after the marriage. Did she have a happy married life? Did she ever forget devdas? Did she ever forgave devdas? Did she have children? No one knows, and maybe no one will…

i just hope girls today instead of turning into a female devdas would try and turn into a paro. Agreed hers was not a very happy life but it was much more degnified and respectful than devdas. i also know it is pretty clear from the movies, that he is someone who shouldnt be idolized, but he still is. i just wish that for once, paro would occupy the centrestage and would not be left as just one of the character actors. is anyone listening?

Recession... Money and love

this entry is about two most important things in life... Money and love. Unfortunately, the sensex is falling and so are people and funnily enough also their bank balances... the reason could be the falling economy or their falling in love. :)

The whole economy is hit with recession... I am sure all of you know about it and if you don't I would seriously recommend picking up a newspaper or switching on the news. Recently, I got a mail that had an article from New York Times. According to that article, 5 jobs are lost every minute!! This is a bad time for you if you are an employee… three things could happen - 1. You have been fired in the recent past; 2. you are going to get fired in the near future; or you will be made to feel grateful that inspite of the economic slowdown and in the face of cost cuts, you still have a job! The third one is the worst coz then you would be expected to work from 9 in the morning till 9 in the night (if you are lucky thats is otherwise you could end up working way past midnight!!) and even after working your a** off, you are not expected to even complain about it. And God forbid, if you get late by 10 minutes after comleting a 15 hour shift, you can very well be prepared to listen (as one of my friend's boss put it very articulately), "Leaving late is no excuse for coming in late." So, if you ask me this is not a good time for employees... except for those who actually love their work and boss. but how many of such people are there actually? one maybe two?? i only know one and she loves everyone. (yes, yes i mean you only, you ice cream loving freak. Stop smiling now)

And then there are some people who had already left their jobs thinking that the recession would not effect them. But were they in for a surprise! (and people who actually know me will fully understand the implications of this statement and what i truly mean by this)

It is not only the economy that has hit a slump, it seems love and romance is also going through a tough time... or rather the people involved in them.
All around me people are in such dysfunctional relationships that it makes you think why are they in it? there is a couple who know they cant be together but cant leave each other... there is another in which the girl thinks she likes the guy but is not sure if she does and the guy, on the other hand, is making wedding plans. then there is this couple who keeps on breaking up and getting back together. then there are also couples in which the guy treats his girlfriend like s**t and in another the girl never fails to remind the guy that he is so lucky to have her in his life so he must do as she commands. These are just couple of examples... and what is unnerving is that these people (who are in these wonderfully problematic relationships) are the first to point out the absurdity of being in such relationships when the same is happening to others...

People (or some very faithful friends) have always come to me with their problems. They say i give very rational advice. Maybe because i see it as an outsider. i have always believed that to solve a problem you need to see it objectively. but the same logic and reason fails to prevail when you are facing one because to see your own problem from a third person's eye is very difficult. that is why it is very easy to give advice but very difficult to follow the same advice when the problem is your own. Maybe that explains why people in these relationships cant seem to get out.

In the last couple of months i have come face-to-face with people who know they have a problem but can't or rather don't want to do anything. While listening to them two point of views came in front of me regarding how people look at relationships. one was the cynical view when the person (one or both) involved in these relationships dont believe in love and treat it just as a relationship of convenience. they are in it for various reasons. The other one was when the people just love the idea of love.

while listening to these differing point of views many questions came up...of which i couldnt get any satisfactory answers. I failed to understand how can people be so dependent on others that they cant seem to imagine their life without the other person? Is it love? Or is it just a fear of loneliness? When someone breaks up with you and you cry your eyes out. Is it because you miss him or those are the tears of rejection? One of my very close friends would say, who by the way would like the world to believe that she is a recent convert to love cynicism, that there is nothing called love. Its just a temporary insanity that people go through from time to time to just liven things up. She knows that she is in a dead-end relationship but can not walk out on him. Why, you might ask? not because she loves him too much but because she has got used to him being around (that are her own words). So then, is love merely an addiction? Is falling in love same as getting addicted to alcohol or cigarettes? does it give the same high? and can you just get out of it by going through rehab or by using a love patch (like a nicotine one)?
But there are also love-hopefuls who believe that their prince charming is just wandering around with their glass slipper in his hands unable to find the rightful owner of the shoe. they believe that love makes the world go round... love is like walking in the clouds... it is like eating your favourite blueberry cheesecake every day... it is the feeling of happyness you get when you want something bad enough and then finally getting it... it is like dancing in the rain (if you like that)... its like getting happy high, like when you are drunk but not pukish drunk... its when eveything seems all right... they believe in romance as descried in the books and shown in the movies...

What i realized is that both are two extremes… one is too pessimistic and the other is too optimistic. if you ask me being in love is indescribable... you can't put it into words... it is not being addicted to the other person and neither it is going on candlelit dinners... and thats what makes it so special that you cant explain it... the most beautiful things in life are the ones that dont make any sense at all

you...take your pick… :)

Starting over...yet again

Yesterday i found something that i had written long time back...

Sometimes...

Sometimes i wish i can wipe my slate clean and start over...Tabula Rasa
but will i be able to go through life again? who knows...

Sometimes i just want to run away from it all...
but there is nowhere to run...

Sometimes i just want to shut out the world...
but the quiet scares me...

Sometimes i want to turn back the clock...
but to what time? i dont know...

Sometimes...
what u think and what happens is not the same...
Sometimes...
what happens is not what u thought about...
Sometimes...
u wish...but dont want ur wish to be granted....
Sometimes...
u dont know wat u want...
Sometimes...
it's just so difficult to say the most simple things...
Sometimes...
the memories just dont go away...they keep coming back to haunt you...
Sometimes...
u dont want the memories to fade...
Sometimes...
i wish u would come back...
Sometimes...
i wish that u would never look back...
Sometimes...
time moves so fast that everything seems a blur and
Sometimes...
it drags on and on and on...

It is funny, that when i wrote this poem (if we can call it that) i was upset, which is quite evident from the tone, but now those very reasons that made me (someone who for the life of her cant write anything resembling poetry) write a poem ceased to exist... they are not even a part of my life anymore or rather they dont occupy an important place so as to effect me tragically. i read somewhere that matters which seem like life and death at a particular time are not even part of our life equation five years down the line... How strange, but does that hold true always?