OH! THIS LOVE
One day, many years ago, my friend came to me and announced jubilantly that he is in love. It is a most wonderful and unbelievable feeling, he said with a flushed face. “And who is the unlucky girl!” I asked. The girl’s name surprised me for I also knew her quite well. She seemed to me a nice, normal girl. “My God! You have known her for so many years and now you are telling me that you have fallen in love with her,” I expressed my surprise. “Love is a strange thing,” he replied smiling, looking lost in his own world. It turned out that the two lovers had not yet confessed their feelings to each other, but my friend felt confident that the girl too was in love with him. He started speaking about the girl with such intensity that I began to wonder whether a screw has got loosened inside his head. Believe me, you can never be sure about these lovebirds. I once knew a guy who had quite a collection of his girl’s pens, pencils, rubbers, hairpins, handkerchiefs and several such items. He would look lovingly at all these inexpensive things as if they were priceless treasures. Then there was another chap who would toss a coin and catching it in mid-air would mutter, “ If heads, Sonya is mine. If tails, then also Sonya is mine.” This man was not leaving anything to chance, probably believing in the famous quote, “Everything is fair in love and war.” So next time when I met my friend and found him still raving about his girl, I had to interrupt him. I informed him that I too met his girl the other day, and talked to her deliberately for half an hour on variety of topics. But I could not find anything extra-ordinary about her. She looked to me just another girl. I reminded him of the exaggerated claims, he was making about this girl on our pervious meeting - ‘Her eyes are irresistible, simply mesmerizing’, ‘When I look into her eyes, my heart beats loudly and the sound gets as loud as that of tick-tock of a wall clock’, ‘she is very kind, very sincere, very tolerant, very selfless’ etc. “Just to verify your claims,” I told him, “I looked so deeply into her two eyes that I could see my face’s reflection there. But the blacks of her eyes just failed to have any impact upon me. I didn’t see anything irresistible or mesmerizing there. Even my heartbeats remained perfectly normal.” As a further check, I even tried to concentrate on her eyelashes and eyebrows, but again, my efforts met with total failure. She must have felt rather odd at my behavior and I suddenly realized that she is clenching her fists and glaring at me in a dangerous way. Before any untoward incident could occur, I bid her a hasty good bye. My friend then patiently explained to me that as he is in love with this girl, she has become a special girl for him alone; for all other persons she would remain just another girl. The logic made some sense to me. Very soon it became apparent to me that the girl too was madly in love with my friend. Her face would lit up like a 1000 watts bulb on seeing him, and when he was around, she would give those toothpaste-ad-like smiles to no one in particular. The smiles were, of course, indirectly directed at my friend. My friend would often tell me that the girl’s eyes are like shining stars. I too tried to stretch my imagination to its limits, but somehow, it was not my cup of tea. Her eyes always looked like eyes to me, and never as shining stars. Then one day there was some misunderstanding between the two and the two stopped talking with each other. Their egos began to clash. If the two were coming from opposite directions, they would turn away their heads at 90-degree angles while crossing each other. One day the girl even took a quick U-turn when she sighted my friend walking towards her. Just to show off, my friend would chat happily with his friends in presence of the girl. However, the moment the girl would leave the scene, he would loose all interest in everything. The anguish on his face was there for all to see. The girl too behaved in an identical fashion. When my friend was around, she would pretend that everything is fine with her world and she would chirp happily with her friends. All other times, she looked intensely tormented. As I was the common friend of the two lovers, I had to unite them before it got too late. They felt truly grateful to me for this, and said that when I would die and God take stock of my good and bad deeds, this good deed of mine would secure me a ticket to heaven. As this didn’t satisfy me, they gave me a good party.
It is said that romantic love is only temporary, and it comes and goes; for love to culminate into a lasting, happy marriage the two partners should have intrinsic goodness. Fortunately, the two lovers possessed this quality in abundance. I don’t know where they are now. But I can bet that wherever they are, they must be leading happy lives and also contributing their bit in making this world a better and happier place.
;) MAXIM
