Like, Love And Lust

This post is inspired by the present state of mind of a friend. Once upon a time, she was in love with someone. It wasn't exactly the kind of love in which people did things together and also did things. It was the kind of love in which two people know they love each other and feel warm and secure in the presence of each other and are unable to do anything more than steal glances or exchange a shy smile.

She was in this state of love for a couple of years and then they got talking. Love began to be expressed in words. But soon after, circumstances led her to move on. The man her parents had found was likeable; also, she too had grown ever since she had first set her eyes on him. The parting of ways was amicable. For the four years she has been married now, they have been in touch. And then, the other day, he got engaged. My friend lost her sleep. "The whole idea that another woman will control his life now is killing me. I am plain jealous," she confessed.

So love, eventually, does not figure in the picture, even though it was love that it all started with. If you really love someone, you would say, "I am so glad he is moving on too. I am so happy for him." You would not ponder over your dwindling importance in someone's life and lose sleep over it.

In my opinion, there is nothing called love. There is only like and/or lust. And I think 'like' is a far more strong and honest and worthwhile emotion than 'love', a word that has become hollow and meaningless because of prolonged misuse. You are sitting in a coffee shop and there is something about the girl on the next table that you like. It could be her eyes that you like or maybe her nose or her lips. Or maybe her shapely breasts or -- when she goes out to take a call -- her shapely butt. Whatever the case, it is either 'like' or 'lust' that are at play in the coffee shop. Where on earth does 'love' come from, when you don't even know her? And yet they use expressions like 'Love at first sight'. What a fucking sham.

Even logically, you first got to like a person in order to love him or her. Or do you first fall in love -- whatever that might mean -- and then go about liking a person? To tell you the truth, I get great sadistic pleasure when I hear about love marriages breaking. Couples who wait for each other for hours on public benches or in restaurants end up waiting -- individually and alone -- in the premises of the family court. Where did all the love go? There was no love in the first place, only lust -- not just in the physical sense but even in other aspects such as money and good life. Only that you misread the lust as love, or at times deliberately mispell lust as love.

Liking is not only an honest emotion but also the solid foundation for any bond or relationship. If you don't like something, how can you love it or even lust for it? If I am not a pen person, but still claim to have "fallen in love" with a Mont Blanc foutain pen in the showroom that looks good and costs Rs 42,000, it is not love speaking but only lust. Once I acquire the pen, it would be no different for me than the ballpoint pen they give out for free in Kingfisher planes. Alternatively, I would be so conscious of the price of the pen that I would keep it locked up and never use it. But if I am someone who likes using fountain pens, then I would like to acquire that Mont Blanc someday and after acquiring it, would fall in love with it someday depending on its performance. I wouldn't fall in love with it just because it is good-looking and costs Rs 42,000. What if it doesn't write smooth enough?

That's what happens when you fall in love first even before you like something. What if the pen doesn't write smooth enough? What, then, happens to all the love -- doesn't it become meaningless? That is why couples, madly in love only till recently, head for the family court: they never get to like each other, they only masquerade their lust as love and when things don't turn out to their liking, they choose to call it quits.

Love is something that is earned or built over a substantial period of time. Wanting to bed a man or a woman is not love, but only an attempt to cleanse your Indian soul of guilt. Which is why you will find people telling each other "I love you" when the sex is good even during a one-night or one-afternoon stand. I mean, till the intercourse happens, you don't even know the other person from Adams, but the moment penetration takes place, the bedroom reverberates with orgasmic "I love you" screams. Love, my ass! Why can't one just say, "You are quite good at it. I like you. Maybe we should do it more often" instead of trying to clothe lust in the cloak of love?

If you like someone, say so. If you want to sleep with someone, say so. Why fire from behind the sandbags of 'love'? I love my wife today not because she is my wife or because that's politically the right thing to say. I married her not because I loved her, but only because I liked her. But over the last four years, after liking the various small little things about her, I have begun to love her.

But the human mind can be crazy and behave in strange ways, and that is what keeps 'love' still in circulation. I have known many fools who can kill as well as die in the name of 'love'. But such people, who I can only consider as mentally ill, are driven only by the fear of their dwindling importance in the life of their so-called lovers. They never spare a thought for the happiness of their loved ones -- which they would have had they been true lovers.

There is one particular breed of people whose psyche I fail to understand and who have corrputed the meaning of the word 'love'. These are people who, in spite of being so much in love with their respective spouses once upon a time, get swept off their feet by some damsel or dude at some point in life and dump their happy homes in order to set up new ones.

If it is a genuine case of 'liking' making amends for 'lust', it is fine. But most often, at least for men, it is lust that leads them from one partner to another. On the face of it, they might say, "My present wife understands me much better than my ex-wife." But what they actually mean is, "My new wife fucks much better than the old one." Obviously so, for the 'old wife' had had many family responsibilities to fulfil other than good sex, and it is just a matter of time before the 'new wife' too acquired her own set of family responsibilities.

It really escapes me how people can dump their wives for a girlfriend. If they can dump the wife today, they can also dump the girlfriend tomorrow. These are men who easily get swept off their feet -- men whose balls are weaker than their soles. It is one thing to like a beautiful woman, and quite another to fall in love with her just because she is beautiful. If beauty is the only parameter, then there are many women waiting down the corner with a beautiful pair of eyes or boobs. But when it is all about liking, even the smallest of bottoms becomes shapely and highly cuppable.