Love is Overrated

Or let me put it this way, the popular definition of love is overrated. If you have seen enough Bollywood movies and if you have actually been in love (or at least in the notion of being in love) for more than lets say 6-18 months, then you probably know what I mean. Let me break that up for you to explain my point better.

How does Bollywood or lets call it ‘the romantics’ define love? They portray it as a magical, mystical, ethereal feeling where everything is idyllic and the mere mention of your lover makes you ecstatic. This could be true for the initial few months of a relationship, where you just see the positives of your lover and the few negatives you see, you see them positively. Then there is another notion of un-conditional, never ending love which in some cases even lasts for several lives. As clichéd as it may sound, the truth however, is bitter (as usual). Love is NOT (yes in capital letters) un-conditional and NOT (yes in capital letters again) everlasting. But the point here is.. why should it be this way ?

Why should love me un-conditional? Think of any thing in life that you have achieved un conditionally. If you wanted to go to school (for studies or for friends) you had to sacrifice friends, if you were preparing for IIT-JEE, you had to sacrifice partying, fuck I can’t even remember the number of excruciating hours I have spent watching silly movies because my friend wanted to see it. So if everything else in life comes with a * (Terms and Conditions Apply), why should love be different?

Why should love be ever-lasting? I can't recall anything beautiful in life which hasn’t withered away – spring, flowers, fragrance, smile, laughter and life itself, all of them come with an expiry date so why set so high expectations for love.

Please let me not in any way imply that love will die and will always come with some sacrifices, but my point is that, it is the effervescence of love, which is romanticized about, that comes with a shelf life, and this is the only phase of love which will be unconditional, lets call it the honeymoon period. The typical time frame for this period, from my experience is 6-18 months, depending on the quality of exposure you have had. I don’t understand how can Karan Johar call it 'true love' when in fact it only a trailer, where you only see the best parts of the movie. The meat or the masala is what happens when this fizz goes away… and what happens after that… lets talk about that later ;-)