Wannabe Love Stories

“Love, a quaint feel,
Love, rags to glories,
North to south, East to west,
Everyone likes love stories”

Right from the childhood we are told stories of a charming prince to the rescue of the cursed princess, the frog prince kissed back to human form, Cinderella’s shoe etc. Even in our Indian culture, who would not know of Heer-Ranjha, Shirin-Farhad? Even Satyavan-Savitri and Ram-Sita are eternal love stories.

A common thread to all these is the struggle and sacrifice through the journey. The princess had to be cursed, the prince had to fight the dragon, Cinderella had to go through the hardships, Ranjha and Farhad are replete with tragedies too. In fact, it’s this very element of tragedy that makes love stories all the more eternal. Nature has perhaps intertwined a tinge of pain even with lovemaking for that very reason.

All this makes a good read, doesn’t it? Love stories are cherished by all. But love can’t be plotted/planned/forced. It just happens. But since we have grown up being fed these ever romantic tales, we want to have our own love story. Here is where things go awry. We try and force a love story. Peer pressure perhaps. Love does not mean having a trophy to show around and a background story to talk about. Sadly it has been reduced to this very thing.

When one really falls in love, there is no explicit need to convey it. It’s felt. But when we try and initiate love so as to make a love story, it’s devious. Here is what happens and why it twitches with time. One tends to portray oneself so as the other person will like him/her. This charade can go on to an extent but no more. One tends to make compromises with a lot of things just for the sake of a story. These things keep on accumulating leading to an eventual blowout.

It’s always nice to have a love story but it’s not pertinent for being a romantic. Be with someone only if you like the company, or perhaps for obvious needs. But to try and enforce love to chart out a love story will only result chaos and nothing else. Wait for the sparks to happen. Artificial sparks is never a good option.