“All that you are is all that I’ll ever need” – Ed Sheeran
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies” – Aristotle
“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart” – Jane Austen
“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing” – Blaise Pascal
“Love is friendship that has caught fire” – Ann Landers
These are the words of people who are the sages of their time. They not only knew about love, but also felt it and experienced it. They were the ones who really knew what true love means. They knew how it feel to be loved. They knew what it takes to love someone. They knew the immense sense of pleasure and satisfaction that one feels when one is loved and cared for by someone.
But the thing is, Do we know these feelings? Are we aware of this?
Well, I don’t know about you guys, but my answer to all the above will be No.
Now, you may wonder.. why am I saying this?
Relax guys, relax…. You’ll get an answer to each and every question in your mind in the next few minutes. What I think of love has a valid reason. I have a very concrete reason to back up my stand on love.
What I’m going to tell you is based on my experience, a very, very bad experience. Mark my words my friends, everything that has happened to me happens in the rarest of the rare cases, so I highly recommend you to read this article till the very end. This article is going to be long, so please bear with me.
Before starting this, let me tell you, my friends, that I’m paraplegic since birth. This means that my lower limbs are dysfunctional, and I’m bound to a wheelchair for my entire life. The relevance of mentioning my disability here will be clear to you by the end of the article.
So, there is this guy who happens to be my elder brother. It all started when he had just joined a job at a bank, and we were about to start our lives afresh in our new place of residence because of my father’s transfer. We shifted to a rented 2BHK, which was enough for a family of four.
My brother had left for Nagpur to attend his friend’s wedding the very next day. So, apart from the job that he had landed just a few days ago, he had also reached a marriageable age. Eventually, the discussions of ladki waale, unka parivaar etc started doing rounds among my parents and hamesha velle baithe rehne waale relatives.
One day, when dad was on some business trip to my hometown,only two of us, that’s me and my mom, were there in the flat (the rented one). My brother, who was in Nagpur, was constantly checking in on us, which was kind of weird for us as it has never happened before. He was never a family guy, because he had been living in a boarding school since 4th grade.
By the time dad returned to our flat in Ranchi (my hometown) after completing his meetings, my brother also reached there, so that they could spend the rest of the day together. As I mentioned earlier, since mom and dad were of the opinion that they should start finding a match for my brother, my dad had started having a conversation with a potential family in this regard when my brother dropped a bombshell. Yes… you guessed it right. He was having an affair… My brother was having an affair.
Surprisingly, my father reacted ‘normally’. To be honest, we was happy and praised him for this. It was honestly very unexpected, because Indian families mein aise Papa exist nahi karte. But, to be honest, I sensed something like this way too early, as he was checking in on us that day every now and then. Now, my brother’s girlfriend comes into the picture, and gradually started dominating the whole atmosphere. And the worst part is, he used me, his own younger brother, who is disabled, in this.
Here, let me clear one thing friends. I also played a major role in the whole drama. But, I also made a huge mistake in the process. Actually, my parents didn’t like the girl at all. There were some reasons for this. Firstly, he started a relationship without the knowledge of parents, keeping them in the dark, which is still forgivable because: who does that? Who starts a relationship after asking from parents?
Secondly , they simply didn’t like her because she was actually not good at all.. like.. at all. Thirdly, my brother and his girlfriend themselves took the decision of taking the relationship forward, against my parent’s approval. Parent’s approval didn’t matter to them at all. So, when he revealed that he is in a relationship, he asked me to send a friend request to her on Facebook, which I obeyed unarguably. So, the mistake I did in the midst of all this, which broke my family and my own image in my family, was that I started chatting with her over phone and messenger. This is the biggest mistake I made in my life. This incident broke my image in front of my family forever.
What actually happened was that since my parents didn’t like her, presently my bhabhi (yes, you read it right, we eventually had to agree to them getting married), my parents mistook our chatting as something else. They thought that I was leaking out confidential insights of our family’s discussion and preparation to her. This whole misunderstanding happened because my parents were against this alliance, and they thought that I was the one playing the role of an undercover secret agent for the couple-to-be.
Trust me friends, I didn’t have any malafide intentions against my family, but my own elder brother used me for his evil intentions, which tarnished my image in my family forever. Alas! I was even falsely accused of all these without being allowed to put my point. My own parents were accusing me of all these. And despite knowing the fact clearly that he (my brother) was the one responsible for all this, I was being accused of breaking my own family.
Both the parties, my family and the girl’s family, also had a tussle during the prenuptial, for which, again, I was being accused for no reason. And all this, just because I accepted from her a mobile phone as a gift, which was misunderstood as a bribe that they had paid me for my job. It’s just that I was casually trying to break the ice and bond with her, and I casually used to share random things occasionally, not anything which could land me in this situation. But unfortunately, I had to get punished for their mistake. Despite knowing the fact that his younger brother cannot even stand on his feet, let alone walk, he used me for his so-called love, actually just a calf love.
So finally, after several rounds of arguments, hurling abuses, rants, ego-clash and accusations, they got married. After that incident, my mom has accused me in front of guests on several occasions. And one thing that I learned from this whole drama is that no one has anything to do with you. All these relations are a big lie. It’s a big rumour that we consider our reality because of our conditioning. A point of time will certainly come in your life, after which you won’t be able to differentiate between your own ones and others.
So, in my experience, what stops one from loving freely is family situations.