Valentines Day: The Things We Do

My dear readers,
Unlike everyone else, today I would like to present to you the most celebrated day in an entirely different context.
Love, when sprinkled with some humor is the best treat.
Tell you what… these quotes are real life incidents… a life that I am a part of, that is. Some of these incidents are the you-have-to-be-there moments, nevertheless, they are bound to bring a smile on your face.


“I don't understand why Cupid was chosen to represent Valentine's Day. When I think about romance, the last thing on my mind is a short, chubby toddler coming at me with a weapon.”
-Chris, on analyzing Valentine’s Day


Alyson: What are you guys doing for your residents at Valentines?
Rob: I suppose I am going to give them some candy with heart-shaped cards
Adhira: and condoms!
They will need it more than they'd need the candy... :-)
-Worries of a resident assistant


Raaji: Honey, I know you love my sweet, sweet voice but you would have to be satisfied with my fingers now
-Hanging up the phone and getting back to chatting.


Brian M.: You're gay.
Chris: Make me!
Joe: What do you say to that?! It's flawless!
-Normal conversations


Raaji: I have a big news for you!
Nishan:(very excited) You broke up? YES!
(pause)
Raaji: No (serious face)
Nishan: Oh! (sad face)
-abrupt changes


Raaji: Megs, can I kick your boyfriend?
Megs: oh, please go for it.
Raaji: thanks.
*bang*
-Normal conversations in all seriousness :-)


“Hey I have standards too when it comes to dating girls. I would like girls from tan to brown”
-Nishan, on dating standards


"Imagine all the worst parts of the Bible that you have ever heard, multiply these by ten, and then pretend it's real."
-Justin, on the wrath of his girlfriend


Raajii: So, how is your lady?
Nishan: I don’t know, she likes me but we are still just friends.
Raajii (seriously): Don’t worry, its just a matter of time.
(I don’t know why he just cracked up and after laughing for a good 5 min...)
Nishan: I love your confidence. Bless you!


Sarah: Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight...
Jess: You can stop right there. It's not going to happen.
Sarah: Why not?
Jess: Because that's Saturn.
Sarah: DAMNIT!
-During a walk, a night before Valentines


Raajii (While eating ice-cream at 2am and rambling): I am not going to call. I am sure he can make a lousy phone call on one lousy day. Like come on now, how hard is it to remember that!
*Pauses*
(making a face) Hey, there is no other flavor of ice-cream in this thing. He said there would be more flavors!
Faz (listening patiently): Ahh... the things that bother Raajii....
*sigh*


"Come for the coffee.... stay for the ladies...."
-on the board in our 7th street Cafe :-)

-Raajii.blogspot

Laws Of Attraction, did they say?

Well, there are none. And I'm not adding an 'I think' or 'according to me' because that's just the way it is. And not all things need surveys and analyzes to prove them. At least this one doesn't. Feel like arguing? Ask yourself. Today, someone makes you feel nothing. The next day, you feel you're nothing without them. And he/she isn't the super hottie or the perfect person you always dreamt of, and still so much better than that. Whether for a few months or years, or even mere moments. Its just the 'connection', and if you thought you could attribute it to similarities in interests or philosophies, you are wrong... in most cases, your subject of admiration and adoration thinks very differently from you in every way, perhaps.

Seduction, courting, impressing, splurging... they don't really work in the end, do they? Nor does converting that one-off fling into a full fledged relationship. Just like the 'perfect' match you find on that matrimonial site often fails to arouse the tiniest spark, no matter how 'cultured' and ideal in theory. The brands on the body and the words on their lips also fade out after a point. Make-up wears out. The macho mask falls. Magazine tips and 'expert' tricks don't seem to work.

Because in the end, love isn't about being smart. It isn't about trying to answer questions. It isn't to fit in or fill in. It isn't always an evolution of friendship or the assumption of its impossibility. It isn't about mind-reading or heart-feeding. Sweet nothings have nothing so sweet about them, after all.

You have been loving since years now. Still, there are times you feel totally devoid of that very feeling which built the life you're leading today, with the very person you know you can't lead it without. The next moment, your minutes old 'important' preoccupation seems all insignificant and meaningless. And you're surprised at how you just can't get yourself to feel equally passionate about that person and your prized profession at the same time.

Maybe there are some out there whose hearts, minds and bodies are perfectly synced, in absolute harmony with the subconscious and unconscious, but for the rest of us, this puzzle will always remain unsolved.

And if 'laws of love' indeed exist, why is it that they are impossible to follow? Why are most affairs clandestine and perfidious? Aren't laws supposed to make life easier and more organized in the end? Why is it that these norms, mistermed 'laws', always seem to oppose and kill? Why is it so difficult to discipline love? Simply because it isn't meant to be!

Why else does a lover, suffering in unrequited love, come out and love again, even in betraying a love he thought he could never forego for anything else in the world? Not because he allows himself that, but because there is an inexplicable combination of factors that allows him to allow himself that liberty.

Anyway, questions & questions everywhere, without an answer to find, for love is not to deliberate upon, but to free the mind!

Somehow, these lines (originally written for cinema) from one of my favorite magazines, First City, quite sum up what I wish to say...

Maybe it is best left a mystery. Why look for logic in magic? Surrender. Let the show go on.

What's Love Got To Do With It?

A New Year is around the corner and one of the first western festivals that we will be celebrating in the New Year (apart from New Year’s Day itself) will be Valentine’s Day. Now this has long been the eyesore for a multitude of Indians and they have been worried about immorality and the western concept of love infiltrating our culture. Of course, all Indian love stories are exempt from any compliance with morality (as defined today by the masses – dating included FYI) and are above and beyond all verification. Why don’t we begin with the Mahabharata – the book most Indians will swear by:

While on a hunting trip, King Dushyant of the Puru dynasty meets the hermit-girl Shakuntala. They fall in love with each other and, in the absence of her father, Shakuntala weds the king in a ceremony of 'Ghandharva', a form of marriage by mutual consent with mother Nature as the witness.

Today, the concept of being in love and love marriage is looked down upon by our society as they cry foul for the loss of culture. Would they care enough to look into their past and realize that we inherited that tendency from the supposed foremost ancestors – Dushyant and Shakuntala – whose son gave this country its name: Bharat.

What’s this got to do with Human Rights, you ask?

In a series of incidents in the city of Nagpur a few years ago, the city’s self-proclaimed moral police – a bunch of hooligans professing to be saviours of Indian culture (read Hindu Culture) – went on rampage in the city’s parks. As part of their crusade for culture, they would catch hold of young couples sitting in these parks and abuse them both verbally and physically. The boys were beaten more than once. The girls were insulted. And the city was entertained/horrified (as the case may be) as the newspapers carried a chronicle of this drive.

What was worse was that the protectors of the people – the Police Force – were playing privy to these hoodlums (so what’s new about that?!). They would go about in those Khaki uniforms (now more a symbol of terror than anything else) driving away or abusing these kids who had probably come there to have a quiet conversation or watch a sunset together over the beautiful Ambazari Lake. In fact a few days later, there was a notice in the papers that the Police will not appreciate seeing couples in parks and public places anymore and they will be dealt with stringently.

I now want you to read the following articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -

Article 5
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.

The behaviour of the moral police and the police force was in direct violation of Articles 5 and 12 above. Even girls were not spared. And the fact that visiting parks and public places together was prohibited for those out on a date came in conflict with Article 13. In addition to being a mockery of human rights as recognized by the United Nations, this whole episode came in the way of an undeniable need of man as a social animal – to love and to be loved. It is the absence of this emotion – love – that causes all violations of Human Rights in the first place.

If a person is stripped of the basic right to love someone and spend time with them, if one has to undergo physical abuse and indignation as punishment for loving someone, if love becomes an embarrassment for the way you are treated in public by hardly educated hooligans and not a principle to uphold, no Human Rights Charter can save humanity.

And you ask, What’s Love Got To Do With It?


You can access the Human Rights Charter here: http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.pdf
Sources: http://hinduism.about.com/

About the writer: Anupama Kondayya is a software consultant by profession. She is a writer by passion and has utter faith in the power of the spoken and written word. Her other interests include reading, singing and travelling.