[ First ] Love's Labour Lost

“First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.”~G. B. Shaw

Disclaimer : As I am writing this i am under influence of alcohol , not that I am a Tea Totaler or something but this is for the first time I am writing a blog post after drinking . and fact that you can read it means that I can write properly and which in turn implies that i didn't took beer in excess.


So when was the first time you fell in love ? if you are like majority of Indian male population than chances are that your last love was your first love and it was an arranged marriage .( if this is the case than I suggest that you might as well stop reading this post here only. if you choose to continue than don't blame me that i haven't warned you beforehand .)

If you belong to the minority of Indian Male population than chances are that you have long since forgotten who was your first love . perhaps She was a girl you saw in train , at Biology tuition , your English teacher , head girl in your school, your elder sister's friend who used to pull your cheek every time she came home or distant cousin of a family in neighborhood who visited them once in her summer vacation and you used to play Satoliya with her (she promised to come back next summer. you cajoled your sister to maintain a correspondence with her till the next summer ,you happily parted with a significant chunk of your pocket money in doing that but that girl didn't showed up in summer break) .

Chances are that all of these damsels are married by now and YOU are the one who is single . while reading these words may invoke long forgotten emotion in your heart but truth is that those girls don't give a shit even if you die tomorrow . I have no words to comfort you other than
" Welcome to the brotherhood " .

After these two broad segments there is a third and last category of Indian males , who either had a serious affair with the female in Q or somehow managed to marry her . they are so rare that we can safely call them Mutant . and exclude them from the scope of this study .

if you are in "Brotherhood " its very much likely that you don't talk about her too often if you talk about her at all (Thats why you are enjoying this post , you think i don't know ? ) . You often tell yourself "I can't believe I was that stupid ". Well you were "That stupid " but thats only half the truth . other half of the truth is more disturbing than the one which shows your stupidity . whats that ?

Time Travel

Imagine for a moment that I throw you back to the place and time of your first love and I force you to see all of your so called stupidity . How will you feel ? you will feel embarrassed to death ?
well ....not exactly .you will feel embraced for sure but you will see the other half too . the more disturbing half .

It happened to me yesterday a random event somehow reminded me of one of my first love . I was checking out Youtube to download video of some songs . while doing that I stumbled upon music video of a song from a movie i saw in college time . there in that movie was that girl Her name was Neha , She was an Actress ,Kareeb was her debut movie . When I saw that movie for the first time I was spellbound , I was awestruck by beauty of Neha . She was so innocent that my mouth was more open and my eyes were more wide than usual . I still remember the words i said "She is fresh n innocent like a dew drop " .

I felt She is the ONE . What the fuck she is doing in the dirty world of Bollywood . I prayed to god that the movie should fail and she packs her bag and go home . When i will start earning i will go to her place and marry her . (Seriously, that was the plan and because I was the one doing all the planing so there was no need of Plan B ) .

I learned that I was not the only one who was smitten by Neha Bug , few more guys in my hostel were suffering from it . we were sympathetic to each other and used to say "May the Best Man Win " . Those were the days when a beer bottle used to cost 70 Rs and it used to last half of night . three beer bottle used to be enough for whole night . I clearly remember one such night in hostel when two of us who were suffering Neha Bite (Back then We were very good at coining new terms ) were drinking .there was a Giant poster of Neha on the wall . the other guy told me a little secret which he never shared with anyone . he was firm determined to marry her , and you can't fail to see the conviction in his eyes . He was hallucinating. He said he has been to that college in Delhi where She was a student . I was impressed i said " I am touched by your emotion man , if i happen to meet her before you I will tell her about it , even at the risk of jeopardizing my chance " he said " I know you will , We are friends and don't worry i will take good care of her "

Than he went on to his cupboard and brought a brown envelop . inside that envelop was a Yellow dupatta somewhat similar to the one shown in the video embedded above . He tied it to the cooler and place the poster in front of it than he switched on the cooler . dupatta was flowing in the air somewhat in the same manner like shown in the video above .

It was his room ,his cooler and his duppatta so I let him play the role of Bobby Deol . We also discussed a scene in the song where she plant a Kho-Kho Kiss ( A type of Touch and run Kiss ) on Bobby Deol's Cheek .Grand jury of Neha struck guys unanimously declared that it was just the way a nice indian girl should kiss , not the way Karishma kapoor kissed Amir Khan in Raja Hindustani . we were two steps short of issuing a fatwa against Karishma .

We were a bunch of guys 19 years of age ,studying in a professional college ,we had cleared a highly competitive exam . what do you make out of our action ? Elixir of Stupidity ?? Teenage madness ??

Yes but thats only one half , if you look beyond the surface you will see something else . you will see that we were not afraid to dream . we were full of possibility , we were convinced that exceptional things can happen to us . We were special . We believed in fair play , We didn't mind loosing grace fully to our peers . We used to listen to PinkFloyd and we didn't wanted to be another brick in the wall .

They're not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they're destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? - - Carpe - - hear it? - - Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.

John Keating in Dead Poet Society

Today I go out on road and see a top of the line Land cruiser and wonder will I ever be able to own one ? today we assume that growth in workplace is a function of your capacity to involve in politics . there is hardly any sense of fair play left and while we still loose to our peers but we don't do it gracefully .

I guess i am growing up . I feel that growing up is just another name society give to the act of learning to limit your possibilities , to limit your horizon , to be realistic and stop dreaming and even stop achieving . People who become big in life are the people who refused to grow up .

Thats the reason people don't like to talk about their first love . Not because talking will remind them of the other person but because the talking will remind them of them self . what they were and what they are now . facing that is far more painful than facing all the stupidity .

I believe that no one ever loose the capacity to love . we just refuse to admit it .our subject of love changes over a periode of time . a teenager has a more propensity to fall in love with someone of opposite sex , same as a guy in his 40's is more probable to fall in love with a professional challenge and someone in his 60's is more likely to search for meaning of life . but with unfailing consistency i see that folks in every age don't follow their calling and pursue their love .

I0 year after watching Neha for the first time I am writing this post as an obituary to my first love . Today I have more than one explanation / justification to believe that first love not meant to be realized .

As someone in late twenties (All right !!! 29) i have developed some more passions . the startup I want to do , The world tour i want to go on , starting a college,making a documentary. I am sure you too must be having some such goals . I hope that 10 year down the line we won't be having similar excuse for these gaols too . I hope that we will be among the third type . i hope that more us will be mutants .