"रहिमन धागा प्रेम का , मत तोरो चटकाय |
टूटे पे फिर ना जुरे , जुरे गाँठ परी जाय ||"
On a pleasant Sunday evening years ago, I remember working on an assignment for my Hindi class when I stumbled on this Doha, and fortunately (or not), it has tarried in my memory bank since. I was a teenager then, having no clue what love feels like. Indeed, being a die-hard fan of Bollywood Rom-Coms, and an unapologetic subscriber of the Disney channel, I thought I had a pretty clear idea of what my DDLJ/Cinderella story would be like. As if this was not enough, I was brought up in a household where my BIOLOGICAL parents had a love story of their own to brag about. Hence, my hopeless romanticism began to bloom.
Coming from two distinct family backgrounds in an early-90s Indian town, my parents had found love right where they were. In an era with no Internet, no mobile phones, and definitely, a society continually policing them morally, they had gotten lucky with love, for my grandfather had already picked my mother out to be the perfect suitor for my father. While my parents were busy cooking their love story, the elderlies were planning their wedding without them knowing. Soon after, their big day arrived, and thenceforth, they had put their foot forward in their own magical world of Happy Beginnings.
On the contrary, I have seen the transition to a new Millennium while growing up. Thus, as ironic as it can get, I kept oscillating between the ideologies of the 'romantic' Jane Austen and the 'fearless and feminist' Virginia Woolf. I belong to the day and age where all the utilities and resources are available at my disposal. While Bumble and Tinder have enabled me to simply swipe right on my prospective partner(s), I, in fact, feel the void within me. The void that yearns to be filled, the emptiness looming over me on the darkest of days and the loneliest of nights. I would be worried if I were the only one feeling this way; however, talking to my friends and fellows and diving deep to get their insight on this perspective, I discovered that most of us were dealing with the same chaos.
On comparing the two scenarios portrayed above, while lying in my bed at nights, I try to interpret and analyze and decipher some open-ended questions: When all of us are longing for that 'one' love to arrive, why are we, as a generation, so afraid of putting our cent percent into our relationships? Is the concept of 'one love' actually real, or are we just fooling ourselves, mistaking the craving for companionship for love? Has the idea of 'just one call away' assassinated the worth of people in our lives? Is it the backup plan, either of finding someone new if the existing courtship fails or falling prey to our defence mechanisms to cope with the supposed heartbreaks that we hold at the back of our heads, which latently prevent us from falling for someone entirely? Why are we so afraid of wearing our hearts on our sleeves anymore? Are we a generation gone altogether wrong?
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