Lack of belief...

We were watching a movie, a Hindi one of course and a sudden and vehement reaction caught my notice…..

That’s the introduction, I cannot think of a better one presently…

Take a flat of five Indian boys (boys are always boys and rarely men, especially to writers hating creeping age) in a foreign land and you’re bound to find chicken cooking and beer or a Hindi “Phillum” on the menu on any given weekend. Its cheap, it’s effective and universally acceptable at any given time, like it or not. Smokes are an optional extra, though usually and invariably present only with the smoke detector disabled in the local area.

Take my situation for example – with a mixed bag of engineer’s, software geeks, MBA’s, economists and lawyers, the group is about as good as it gets. We’re ready for almost any and every contingency as can be envisaged and pretty much sick of “phoren” land with all its amenities and facilities, not to mention assignments and exam preps.

The chicken was being cooked in Dal, my innovation on the usual curries concocted by us. I mean, half the buggers were yelling for chicken and the other half for plain rice and dal, so economically speaking, I optimalized the given factors and resources available. Trust me, it works beautifully.

The beer and vodka stocks had been raided the night before, the facts of which I’ll get to later on, so it was “phillum” night for all of us.

Shantanu, my mild mannered Maratha who’s an absolute berserker hacker in his dual life had just ripped the latest “phillum” from the net with active collusion of a similar mercenary, the even milder raghu (better known and absolutely feared online as rags) who lives south and a window below me, literally and metaphysically

Anand, the management guru was smoking his beloved B&H’s and framed against his more beloved window ledge and Khan the ferocious afghan was poised near the bloody lappy screen as if ready to just leap into the lush flowing homeland shown on the movie. Khan is homesick and the rest of us are just sick of it all.

I am stuck in front of the stove, my usual spot and peering over the pots as much as following the predictable plot unfolding on screen.

The movie was “Salaam London”, the latest release from the movie factories of Mumbai and depicts the eternal questions of love, as our hero so eloquently states to his leading lady.

Barely as the hero utters the fateful words, gazing deep into the heroine’s eyes with bass and viola solo’s in the background getting into fourth gear, and there’s a sudden eruption of snorts and expletives….

As I grin in collaboration, I wonder at the state of the guys and maybe most guys of our ages when confronted with the issue of love, its proclamation thereof and the derogation as well.

A while later, Jassi turns up sleepy eyed from the catnap’s on which we are all subsisting on these days and I ask him his opinion on love. He in turn shows me all his teeth and asks if that is answer enough.

Suddenly my world is full of men who deride the very idea of love and its associated situations. Jokes, anecdotes and stories abound of others who were in love or are and is usually followed by a heartfelt expletive which is shared with equal emphasis all around present company and usually the punch line is about how stupid they were.

In consideration of this and much more, I am forced to ask myself the question; have we become fanatically cynical and pessimistic about love and has this occurred while we were sleeping?

It seems that Love with the capital L, is for the idiots, it doesn’t exist……or does it?

If you get it good, if you don’t, better says Jassi between sips of no sugar juice. Is he being smart or merely realistic?

The ages in the group range from early to late twenties, a generation by itself, unmarried except for Anand and is as diverse as you might wish for, location wise, experience wise and even career or interest wise. So, considering that this is a good cross-section source of data, I base my analysis on their views;

Has love or the feeling in itself that a man can feel for a woman, become redundant?

Love for parents is necessary as all agree and live up to. The frequency of calls and the huge bills run up by all of us, in that regard give hard testimony to the same. Siblings, friends and family more or less fall in the same category with classifications and is acceptable.

What of that between the sexes?

We have all experienced the same in one way or the other and my surprise is the fact that all are embittered by its contact. Even me

Do I snort when I hear another lovesick swain asking for advice? I do.

Do I give him advice on how to play the game? I do.

Do I think him an idiot when he leaves me? I do.

Am I the idiot or him?

Can we exist without love?

Is it wrong to deride the very concept of love just because it’s a case of sour grapes, embittered memories or even fear of consequences?

Do we even qualify to understand love?

Our grandparents and their parents had it easier perhaps. They just went ahead and made babies and made their way into each other’s life as unobtrusively as possible. Perhaps in the years between the production of babies and the eventual end of the lives, they achieved a form of companionship which could be the closest possible definition of love.

Many of us never get the flame burn of actually seeing someone explode into their vision and complete obsession in that self, so elaborately portrayed by the Hindi “phillum” industry. Some of us do and come away from the experience much shaken and none the wiser as to what the hell just happened to them.

Anand is married and got married at an early age. He even has a son and misses him. I miss my bike, he misses his son – would that signify as love?

For me at least, if not many others, love is the spark that occurs between a man and a woman that causes them to believe in each other to the exclusion of all else. That spark may not last much more than a heartbeat, may last for a lifetime. However, the fact remains that it was love……or maybe it was just lust. After all the highest form of lust is love as quoted my eternally cynical buddy, Rahul, who recently got married and yes, it was a love marriage and the bastard is still as cynical as he always was. He wants to go back home for “legitimate sex” as he calls it, but I think he is in love and unwilling to accept the fact.

Love has many forms and shapes and is whatever you want to make of it. The poets say it better perhaps, but I still prefer the bollywood lyricists anyway. And in someway or the other, we all want it. Black or while, brown or green, we all seek the comfort of its shade in the burning sun of the lives we lead.

If we all want it so much, why are we ashamed to admit to it?

I love to watch romantic comedies in private, as do a lot of guys, perhaps most of us. I always root for the underdog which is exactly what the producers and directors want.

It’s stupid, its predictable, its safe and its what we all want. A happy ending, kisses et al and yet it somehow makes sense……well at least to me, when I want to unwind.

A good hug and kisses would also do the same trick, but isn’t available on my DVD store’s shelves.

Two days ago, the gang went to a Friday night party and I didn’t as I wanted to catch up on my preps. About 11 pm, the whole drunk horde came back with an inebriated female in tow. The gang were followed by two ASR’s absolutely bewildered as to what to do and finding me, the usual ringleader and patron saint of all the drunks of Winton Drive, dumped the collective responsibility on me. After levering out the biggest lummox of them all, I set about feeding and kicking the rest of them into bed, but the bloody female was another problem in itself.

Khan switched on the music on my over-worked lappy and started dancing with the lady and it was more of a vertical demonstration of his horizontal intentions than anything else. The rest of the gang refused to budge while getting a free show, so eventually realizing that it was a hopeless cause and my studies being done anyway, I unlimbered my hidden stocks of vodka and beer to the gang’s delight and joined in.

To make a long story short, the lady was soon in my t-shirt and track lowers and tucked up in my bed and I was using my jacket as an improvised pillow. The morning after was pleasant enough (especially as an ego booster and I was probably insufferable to my roomies and chat buddies alike) but the whole scene merely served to explain to myself how hungry I was for some “touch-therapy” as an old pal in law-school defined it.

The ensuing morning post mortem after the lady was dispatched to her own rooms was enthralling to say the least and especially with Jassi and Khan attempting to open up the Kargil hostilities with Jayant chewing on bread, perched on the counter and playing the male version of Barkha Dutt.

The whole scene was hilarious to me and like all funny situations had its roots in bitter truth which is made more palatable by humour.

Which in essence brings us back to my original question; who are we fooling?

Ourselves…..

We deride the very concept of love because we wish we had it in our lives and since we don’t, we pretend that its stupid and idiotic. The love of a woman makes a man sometimes try to be something more than he is, aspire to greatness even…..even unto the issue of personal hygiene and tidying up of rooms and shaving.

I do admit that I have a morbid belief in love and an endless fascination for the madness that it engenders and I do think that people haven’t stopped believing in love nor have they stopped wanting to be in love. They just don’t believe in a happy ending. They still believe in love and falling in love, but now they know that romances almost never end as well as they begin….and hence they are scared of accepting the sheer fact of love actually existing.

And more than nuclear holocaust, more than global warming or natural disasters, this is what will kill us…..as a generation, as much as age, cancer, cholesterol and liver cirrhosis.

The past twenty centuries have led us to an endless cycle that each generation goes through, with the same questions and the same hopes and shattered dreams and cynical attitudes and know it all belief’s.

The truth is that we all want a part of it and till we don’t get it, we are all in a position of flux and too egoistic to admit that we need anything or even that we hope for the same.

I too want to be in love, to be loved and caressed and hugged and kissed……

I too want to believe…….but I think I have forgotten how…..

And I’ll probably still laugh with derision and snort the next time I watch another Hindi Phillum with the guys……..but I wish I could watch it with someone’s hand holding mine and keep silent……