A few days back, I came across an
article in the newspaper which talked about a new, yet paradoxically named
concept: ‘LAT-Living apart together’, yet another new age phenomenon which has
stemmed from the notions of a so-called ‘developing’ society. Allow me to
elaborate a bit on the concept of LAT. Those who want to marry but are not
willing to compromise on their privacy and freedom form the greater portion of
those who subscribe to this ideology. The article was quite clearly mechanical
in stating the pros and cons of this concept, as if explaining the side effects
of the latest pill to hit the market. I was astonished to find marriage or love
being discussed along such technical lines. I am of the belief that love and
care are rare examples of things which are not bound by hefty scientific,
empirical and statistical relations, but are amongst the purest and simplest
things conceivable to man.
The four letter word LOVE has undergone
drastic changes from its simple form in the olden times to the highly
complicated stages of relationships as defined nowadays by the Facebook
generation namely, ‘Open Relationship’, ‘Complicated Relationship’ and ‘In a
Relationship’ and so on.
I want to ask all of you a simple question:
Does love need so many definitions?
Let us recall the olden days: Couples
voiced their emotions on paper, brimming with the colors of love and warmth of
care, treading together on a thread to each other’s souls. Even the hours spent
waiting each other’s calls at the only telephone booth in the locality were
moments to be cherished. Distances, in the era of letters and postcards, didn’t
have the strength to deter love but then, now we are ‘developed’. Today, we
have not just phones, but smartphones, online video calls, etc. which have
supposedly shortened distances, but we still can’t bridge long distance
relationships. No need to look elsewhere, I personally have a friend who
separated with his better (in this case clearly) half, just because of a small
matter of 900 miles. If you are going to ask him WHY, then
even he does not have much of an answer.
Why is it so that a single letter every
fortnight was enough to forge the bonds between those souls but these days,
hours of phone calls, chatting over WhatsApp and not to forget Skype are not
able to achieve the same? One possible answer is that we have ‘developed’. We
want everything to be according to our own terms. We don’t want to compromise on
our space for anyone else. The other explanation could be that we are so
engrossed in the process of minting money that we are not even able to find
time to look at the invaluable beauty of life. We don’t have enough time to
spend with our wife or girlfriend. Also, not to forget the highly decorated
general, Gen. Globalisation, who has made us, his army, dance to his tunes. We
have opened our doors to the world but in due course, have ended up closing the
doors to our dear ones. We are very firmly in the driver’s seat, but love and
romance have taken the back seat.
Is it that we have forgotten how to
love or is it that our approach to life is more technical?
Those who view life in technical terms,
I want to remind them that the Heart is not just a blood pumping machine. It is
much more than that. And for those of
you who have forgotten how to love, I would request them to consider Romance.
Romance is the essence of love. It neither requires you to be a scholar of
literature nor does it require you to invoke Newton’s laws of motion or
Faraday’s laws of electrochemistry. Little surprises, witty one-liners and playful
teasing is Romance. Of course, it needs time. So those who want to mint money,
and store that heap of paper in their bank accounts, Romance is not for you
because you don’t have the time for these apparently illogical but lovely
things. But kindly let me remind you that there is no happiness in having a
lonely dinner in a corner of a five-star restaurant. There is no happiness in
coming home with a trophy in hand but not having anyone to share that success
with.
We have plenty of time for going out
on a dinner in some lavish hotel whose walls are decorated with masterpieces of
art and craft, but we can’t spare the time for cooking together. It is possible
that such food is found lacking in taste but it would have the taste of love in
it. To sit with each other, savoring that creation of yours is Romance. To be
the reason behind the smile on the face of your lover, that is Romance. There
might be a lot of ways for the same. You may probably find a million books
bearing titles like ‘100 ways for making your lover happy’ in the market but no
need to go for that, believe me it is much simpler.
In the race for bettering our
lifestyle, many of us have ended up forgetting how to live. For those of you
who took a break from ‘making love’ to your girlfriend on Facebook to read this
article, I urge you to spare some more time to find happiness in your life
because those are the moments that make life memorable.
-Prashant Kumar Singh
