Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am back again with grandma’s bag of stories, if I have the liberty to call them so (sly laugh).
I think I do not need to say it again. Today is Valentine’s Day, a day of hyperbolic rhetorics, a room full of promises and a truckload of expectations and disappointment.
Now, ideal lovers can really frown at my ramblings, but hey, how do you know that your love is ideal? Has your love been authorised by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, or let’s say the All India Federation for Love to be the “ideal” kind of love? If so, then you are mai baap, and I am your unfortunate disciple.
I think I’m being way too trivial with a serious subject. All through the ages, the “ideal” lovers have fought for their love, and some of them have even died for the cause (a good cause, I would say).
But how does the state memorialise them? Forget the state; not even the families bother to commemorate their rebels. What they pass off as the one-hundredth tendencies of a wayward kid is what we know of as a fight for love.
So much for love then. But before we talk about heroic love (a compound word of heroism and love), how many of you have been proposed in a very innocent and ideal way? Not me. I rest my case at the very beginning itself.
But I had a very ambiguous experience of a proposal some years back, which still makes me think whether it was for me.
Back in class nine, I was a very well known Prefect. I was a terror to my class and a benevolent figure for outsiders. The not-so-democratically chosen boy Prefect was simply a fool. He did everything else other than doing his duty towards his class. And I had to shoulder all the responsibilities.
Meanwhile, my friend got infatuated with him and would often ask me to approach the topic on behalf of her. What a nice adjudicator she chose. So, once, this boy Prefect had my friend photocopy some things and he owed her ₹10.
The following morning I went to collect the money on her behalf and he gave me a ₹10 note. As I turned the note, I was astounded to find “I love you” written in red ink on the back. The fool that I was, I immediately let the class know what I saw on the note instead of contemplating it in silence.
As soon as my friend came to know, she started to cry like a baby. To this day, I wonder why of all the emotions, she felt like crying. Was it that she felt like her love had finally been requited? Clearly no, because after a short while, he apologised to us.
When I asked him who had written “I love you” on the note, he said it was the shopkeeper from whom he had received the note. Such was the glory of our Indian shops that they were smuggling “I love you” notes to customers without the latter knowing. The logic appeared a bit flatter than a Karan Johar movie.
I said that the note could as well have been for me. I am saying this because this boy Prefect of ours was infatuated with me, and every other girl that came his way. Clearly, he was a born Romeo. Having said that, I often go back to this incident because it was indeed a sweet gesture from him and because no one else has said “I love you” to me in such an innocent manner.
To say those words to the person you love is, in my opinion, the most beautiful feeling on earth, and it also requires a great deal of courage. So, how many of you have proposed to your beloved in such an innocent manner? Let me know in the comment section.
And wishing everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day. Please don’t sing me those cliched romantic songs. I already sing them a lot.
Bye for now.