Its all about the Imagination!

Love is one of the most famous word on this earth in every language. Everyone speaks about it but no one really knows what the word actually means. I am not indulging into the age old debate of defining love nor shall I endeavour to find the meaning of true love. But I shall make an effort to elucidate the feeling which we all try to relate with the word love. The feeling that encompasses our mind with a melancholic circle that soothes and hurts us at the same time. The feeling which we all know is perfidious to our rationale but we can’t seem to block the thoughts coming in our mind. We curse ourselves for not being strong and giving away to our weaknesses which our brain constantly reminds us to be futile and caustic to our heart, a feeling that might just tear us apart if we are not cautious enough. But is being in love so bad?

Personally speaking, though I have suffered cruelly at the hands of this particular age old emotion, I am not averse to the idea of falling in love, or better – Imagining to be in Love ! Yes that’s what I want to gabble about, the necessity of being in love or at least thinking that you are in love.

I have long wanted to confess something very strange about myself. Right from my childhood (if I remember clearly its from class 2) I have been liking girls and thinking that I love her. I developed liking for someone in a particular year. And the next year or maybe after two years I fell for another girl and this went on happening for years with more or less a uniform time pattern. Or maybe that depended whether the girl continued to be in my section or in my tuition class. And it is still happening now! And I always wondered whether I actually love the person or it is just another youth infatuation. Because every time I liked a girl, I thought maybe she is the one but after she left my tuition or my section she suddenly ceased to be important in my life.

And I have been in two relationships, the first one – well I wanted to know what a woman’s body is like. And the second one, I suddenly developed a strong emotion for her so I left my first gf for her(Please don’t judge me). And my newfound love suddenly became my only obsession in my life. And our relationship with her continued with all the good and bad days until one fine day, after two or three months of turmoil rising due to the acquaintance of her family with the knowledge of our relationship, it ended. And what followed consequently was the darkest phase of my life. I tried to win her back in many ways. But then she was immensely devoid of any intellect. And when my attempts were futile I started counselling myself. I tried to convince myself that I never liked her and it was just mere youth ignorance and stupidity but I couldn’t believe myself. A lot of sleepless nights, talking to myself, roaming around randomly in Calcutta….I was three quarter to absolute lunacy. (Karma is a BITCH!)

But as my name suggests(its Yudhajeet..it means someone who wins a war), I am here to win it. I knew I had two options left, one, I can be where I am and blame everyone for my failure, second, I have to get up and fight my way back to glory. I chose the second option. And right now I have landed up in a National Law University. Not really bad, given my mental condition just a year and few months back.

But lets chuck the past, you all might be wondering why I am beating about the bush and am not cutting down to the chase! But believe me, if you want to know the gist of what I am writing, you need to know a brief history about my past.

It has been two years since those events ended. My mind was less susceptible to develop any form of weakness for any member of the fairer sex for the first year. Maybe because it was the healing period and I was a bit too afraid. However, the moment I entered my current university, the ‘occupation of the mind’ disease restarted. Once again I began feeling attracted to new women at an interval of every two or three weeks(yes the time interval has changed from years to weeks). But this time I am matured. I just know its not love but mere attraction. So whenever I felt anything for any girl I just sat idle for two weeks and automatically my feelings subdued. Everything was going just fine until two days before when I talked with my best friend after a long time. He said something very interesting that filled my heart with an extreme level of exuberance. That the girl for whom I lamented so much for was stalking me! And shockingly, the one or two reminiscences and regrets of my past relationship just managed to leave my heart. I wondered what was the reason behind this. And the answer I found out is really lurid.

From a very young age my friends, relatives and everyone has considered me to be arrogant. Even a nice friend of mine tells me that everything from the way I walk to the way I talk reflects the extreme amount of ego which I have in my heart. And, thus, when my gf left me, I realised something that it wasn’t me who was hurt but it was my ego! The very feeling about how can anyone leave someone like me just seemed obnoxious to my heart! Now that I think I have realised something very important I am appalled even more. Something about myself.  I have always had a not so bad taste for art. Maybe its because of two avid literature lovers in my home. When I was in class 6 I had already read A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Anthony and Cleopatra and many more novels. I had already watched Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Aranyer Din Ratri(Days and Nights in the Forest), Casablanca(a big thing by Indian Standards because its not the mother tongue). And I didn’t just read them or watch them, I understood them and patronised them as well. I could always appreciate art more than most of my friends and that is why I have always been slightly eccentric than most of my peers and sometimes I have been subjected to many forms of ridicules. But that’s not the cardinal tenet persisting here. Being a freelance writer and a poet myself, a strange thought popped up in my mind. I think I never had any infatuation or crush. It was never purely inadvertent. I guess it was partially intentional. Don’t you think the sound of the rain would be less rhythmic and a rainy day less melancholic if there is no girl in your mind? Don’t you think the sun would be less bright if you aren’t craving her? Don’t you think songs would be less melodious and monotonous if you’re not feeling the feeling of being in love? Don’t you think every speck of joy any form of art enriches you with shall slowly fade away? I think yes!

Don’t we find it queer when we hear the great poets, writers, musicians who enthral us and inspires us to be romantic and love others indulges in numerous affairs? Why do you think Alexander Dumas, Amrita Shergill, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Sir Mick Jagger, Diego Rivera had so many affairs? Or coming to a more recent and much more inferior example, why do you think Taylor Swift needs a breakup to write songs? The reason they don’t want to confine themselves to one relationship is the motive to write better, paint better, and create more melodious music. They know that if they restrict themselves to one woman or man, the artist in them shall cease to exist. Inspiration needs to be many and varied. I personally believe writers, musicians, painters aren’t actually that imaginative as much as we credit them to be. They are just smart enough to create imagination to keep on working!I am certainly an ordinary person but I want to have the image of that beautiful woman in my head just to be more alive, so that I can love the nature and all its blessings in full glory. So that I can love art to the optimal level that my idiosyncrasy allows me.

I have developed a strong feeling for a woman and her memories are haunting me night and day. But since I believe in the concept of ‘Karma’, I don’t want to end up hurting her. And neither do I want to lose her. Am I just another frustrated crazy guy who needs a break and a bit of help or does my thought actually contains very strong substances or is it a very common way of looking at things? Is my love pure or just professional? Let me know.