April – May 2008. I was seeing a working girl in Chennai. We went out for a month and made out with each other regularly. In fact, she has been the only one so far, with whom I have ever made out with. I had never even kissed anyone before her (I will not say that I never got a chance) and I haven’t even kissed anyone after her (I wouldn’t say, I am not going to do that very soon).
So yeah, this girl in Chennai – she was madly in love with me. And I – well, I just liked her enough. For a change, it was actually good to have things the other way round (those who know about my insti love life would understand). Even after a month of being with her, I still just liked her. I simply could not see her as the girl with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life. And so I finally left her – just like that. And I think she understood. I recently came to know that she got married. I feel good for her.
She helped me grow up and I can never thank her enough for that. She made me realize the importance of love over physical desires. I realized I was a seeker of love and not of lust. I am not saying that’s how it should be – that I am a nice guy – that being a seeker of lust is a bad thing and all that. All I am saying is, that’s how I found myself to be. She made me realize that jerking off was way better and convenient and satisfactory than getting a blow-job by someone whom you just did’t have feelings for. You never realize such things till you have experienced it yourself. I am extremely grateful to her that she helped me discover myself. Even when we never actually had “real sex”, we did enough naughty things together that eventually, by the end of the month – my physical desperateness had been choked and killed. For a while, I even wondered if I was gay. I concluded I wasn’t when I could never get turned on by any single guy – even while imagining. I concluded that I was simply weird. I decided to stay single.
Staying single is a wonderful thing, especially when you realize what being in a relationship is all about. Of course there are lonely nights and there are lonely days and there are lonely weeks even. But it’s still wonderful. You know you have grown up when you have realized that the solution to loneliness is definitely not in seeking a company. The solution to loneliness is in – not minding being lonely. When you stop giving two hoots to how lonely you feel at times, the feeling of loneliness itself fades and dies – faster than you had ever thought it would.
In spite of all the growing up crap that I wrote above, deep inside my heart, I was still waiting for a girl who would one day fall in love with me and for whom I could have feelings as well. Soon after dumping my Chennai lover, I found myself phone-dating a girl – RC. She was in US then and is still there I suppose. Because she was the one who called me all the time, and because she never failed to tell me that she was crazy for “my voice as it sounded on phone” and “my personality as it came out of my blog” (we had never met each other after all), I started assuming that she was falling in love with me too. And I felt the sparks myself. And then, just when all the spark had started errupting, she decided to return to her ex. I felt so bad that I stopped picking up her calls. It made no sense to me and she understood this. That’s how the romance ended. I was getting better at moving on.
By the time I found Miss Short Story (SS) in a bookshop in Bhubaneswar, the reasons behind my wishes to still have a girl in my life had turned very superficial. I was no more looking for girl-friends or for relationships or for future-wives. I was looking for friends with whom I could talk and eat and be happy about life. And though you don’t necessarily need a girl for that (a guy can get that job done equally well) I still liked being friends with girls more than with guys. I was looking for another LoLy in Bhubaneswar because LoLy – my best friend – was in Chennai while I was so far away. Everyone needs a LoLy in their lives. This is how I thought when I became friends with SS. I liked her company and it was obvious to me that she liked mine. Even when we remained just friends, I actually made up my mind that if she ever felt anything more for me, I was not going to run away – that if she ever proposed, I was not going to say no. Of course, she never did.
And then I dated Miss Psychology in Delhi in November. I fell in love with her smile, and her hair and the way she talked. I found her hot and beautiful. And of course I did nothing about it. It was only after meeting her that I realized I had become so totally incapable of desperateness, of ‘trying it hard for a girl’, of falling madly in love. I did wish that she start liking me so much that she could not resist from proposing to me. Of course, she never did.
And then one day – last month – mazaak mazaak me – I passed on my phone number to a girl whom I had been with in Banaglore for few minutes – a long time ago. I had a very nimbus memory of hers. But we started talking on phone – for hours. I started being awake all night talking to her and stopped getting up in the mornings and going for my 10ks. She did most of the talking and I mostly listened. I had no fucking clue why I didn’t mind that. And then one day, she told that she loved me – that she wanted to marry me. I knew I couldn’t keep talking to her anymore till I knew what I wanted to do in life. And I knew I didn’t even know her enough to love her. So I went to Delhi and spent one full day with her. I wanted to see if there at least were sparks between us. Delhi had suddenly turned extremely cold and foggy that day. She had a beautiful face and even beautiful eyes. And she talked like Basanti – on and on. When with her, I felt like Shahid Kapoor from Jab We Met and she appeared to be Kareena from the first half of the movie. I wondered if she was the kind of girl I didn’t mind being with for the rest of my life. My brain found it utterly stupid to decide something so serious in a week’s phone-chats and a days’ date. It made no sense. But I didn’t ask my brain. I asked my heart instead – and it gave me the permission to go ahead and say ‘yes’ to her.
I am in a relationship. Every day, when I speak to her, my brain’s opinion keeps swinging from one extreme to another. Sometimes I feel in love and sometimes I feel simply annoyed. Sometimes I feel like getting married as fast as I can and sometimes I wonder if this is all a mistake, an illusion that would soon break and leave me petrified. The brain swings, yes – but my heart refuses to budge from the decision that it took. May the heart prevail.