ḳhabar-e-tahayyur-e-ishq (revelation of the wonder of love)

I, for one, absolutely believe that two persons loving each other is a thing as rare as it’s beautiful. It’s very rare and beautiful for two people to get married after having dated each other for 9 long years starting in school. Every relationship seems infinite at its peak. I have known a plethora of relationships that hoped to culminate in marriage crumble under the tough test called high school. I have seen people date for all years of high school only to see each other as just friends in college. It’s a strange thing, something you don’t know whether to feel good or bad about. Bad because you hoped to attend the wedding of two of your closest friends who also happen to be high school sweethearts. Good because maybe we change a lot through and throughout high school and it’s not unusual to feel totally different about your past decisions. But the thing about everything is that life goes on and if you are someone like me who struggles with getting over people and things, past-dweller is how you’d describe yourself. At least, that’s how I describe myself.

Falling head over heels with the wrong people has cost me a lot in my life. It has forced me into some of the most miserable situations of my life. It has stripped me of my sanity and self-esteem. Clearly that ‘rare’ and hence, ethereal event is the story of most residents of this planet. Lata, in Mira Nair’s polarizing adaptation of Vikram Seth’s magnum opus A Suitable Boy quotes Clough’s two kinds of human attraction to describe her dilemma, one that merely excites, unsettles and make you uneasy and the other, the calmer, less frantic one which helps you to grow where you are already growing. I haven’t read Clough but it’s easily something that has stayed with me from that show. I have experienced the former kind over and over again. I feel it’s time we all experience the latter.

Even if two people do fall in something otherworldly and love each other, how often do we see a toxic, unhealthy version of them? Very often do we see people being in relationships with problematic power dynamics. Is it really worth it if it drifts away from the normalcy of your life? Are normal relationships effortless or do they require tonnes of confrontation and fixing?