Am I in love? For beginners

Ah yes I know. You’re either laughing or rolling your eyes at the title: I’m probably falling in love, not learning Excel, what do you mean beginners??

But hey! What would call the fall in love disaster: the almost-adolescent just-starting-to­-sprout-facial-hairs college freshman who’s right now feeling ready to write off his young life for this sassy little female batch-mate of his who, fortunately or unfortunately for him, had given him that honey-dripping, heart-rending, impossible-to-put-in-words smile on the first day of college?

What would you call the fall in love catastrophe: your twelve year old daughter/niece/cousin who’s saving her virginity (both physically and mentally) for this tall dark handsome (and fifteen year old) super sports hero (the captain of the school cricket team)?

Or maybe it’s different. Maybe you’ve been in and out of about ten relationships already. Maybe, unfortunately for you, you’ve been married for the last seventeen years and have two kids but never “felt” in love. And then one day your luckless, Luckless eyes fell on this completely ordinary person with two extraordinary eyes and you felt exhilaration, sorrow, regret, pain, fear, epiphany all together and… That’s the fall in love tragedy.

And now all of you are wondering, “Am I in love?”

By this time you’ve already taken some of the zillions of “Am I in love” quizzes available on the Net and read the “Top 50 signs that I am in love” articles. And while you’re a little embarrassed to admit, maybe you’ve used some sort of a love calculator too. But you’re even more confused now than earlier. And that’s because while some of the symptoms you’re reading about matches with your own, others don’t.

And hence this post. I’ve decided to save you all the confusion and information overload by sieving out only the three surefire signs of being in love. I can guarantee that if you’re in love you’ll have each of these.

So what is love? Each of us can write entire encyclopedias-not blogs-on this topic and yet not be able to solve this eternal riddle. And then fall in love again.

The “Love fall”

Wait. Did you say “fall in love again”? I’m sorry, I think I missed the last definition of love that we agreed on-could you repeat?

No. We didn’t agree on “love”, we agreed on “fall”. No two love stories are the same. The only thing that’s same across love stories is the “fall”. Isn’t it funny that almost in every language of the world, two people getting together is described as “falling” in love?

Eureka! We’ve got the first one! Of the “symptoms” of being in love, I mean. The fall. You’re surely in love if you’ve felt the whoosh (mind you, not the thud, but more about this in later posts). A general feeling of exhilaration to wake up every morning, thinking, “Oh! I’m in love!” The feeling of being swept off your feet the moment you see him/her. A happy blush every time you speak of him/her to others. Being literally incapable to thinking anything else for the first one week…Did you say all of this is happening to you? Congratulations-You’re in love!

Missing you

Sheetal was telling me how much she loves Rahul-how she loves going out with him and spending time with him, how they have almost all interests in common, how she even likes his parents and they like her…But she gets mad at him only in one occasion-when he calls her and irritates her while she’s spending time with her family or friends. Or when he calls her more than once a day. It’s already been three months that they’re seeing each other and Sheetal’s getting weary of Rahul’s continued “lovestruckness”…

I think you get the point. If you’re in love, you can’t be enjoying other people’s company more than his/her. It’s not possible. Well, after all, you marry someone because you want to spend most of the time of your life with this particular person over anyone else in the world! It’s not about having common interests, it’s not about believing in similar ideologies (though these can certainly help). It’s about wanting to come back into the same arms at the end of every day. It’s about seeking out the same embrace every time in order to feel protected from the entire world…

Congratulations…and celebrations…

This point, I guess, doesn’t require any exposition. If you woke up one morning to discover you’ve magically become the owner of Microsoft, my bet is that you’ll not be “embarrassed” or “shy” about the news. True love is the billion dollar jackpot that each of us has the possibility of landing. And if you find yourself “embarrassed” of declaring it on Facebook, or of telling your friends about it, I’m sorry to break it to you buddy, but this probably isn’t “it”. Yes, you can save the “I prefer my privacy” excuses you’ve been giving yourself.

So what did you discover? Are you in love?

If you’re in love, my heartiest congratulations and best wishes.

If you’re not in love yet, I wish you luck the same. Finding true love is an exciting and enriching quest. Just make sure you don’t miss out the rainbow in your eagerness for the pot of gold at the end of it!