Wednesday, January 20, 2010

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.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am really tempted to give you a lecture on what is love, like and lust.
BUt no use. You cant jump with your parachute closed.
May be some day you will realise the folly of your reasoning.
By the way , why use so many "F..." to express your views?
I thought you could be more gentle in your narration:)

Jay

Preeti said...

hmmm... interesting.. I think people give too much importance to any emotion they feel at a particular instant... 5 minutes later it may feel different... even 'like' keeps fluctating.. we are not made to like/love/hate/ disliek anyone with the same intensity forever in the first place... so I guess what really works atleast for me is just chilling out. The acceptance of what i feel today may or maynot be the same intensity tomorrow solves a lot of things I guess :)

janani sampath said...

the perception of love differs with people.... for me, I guess, I love someone because they make me happy... and I want the other person to be happy, even if it means that Iam not in the picture. Sheer happiness for the fact that the person whom you love and care for,is happy.
Maybe love marriages break because each of them is jostling with their happiness and fulfillment without giving the other person their space..i think people in love should deal with their partners like they would deal with their parents and siblings... you can quarrel at your wits end, but you know that they are the ones you will go back to...no egos there...once you get that right there is no reason why ur relationship or marriage should end... heard that when relationships or marriages end, the emotional damage is huge

Soumya said...

"In my opinion, there is nothing called love ---" reminded me of my mother! She would say that whenever the topic arose.

Anonymous said...

Absolute trash written by an insensitive, unreasonable,selfish man.

Venky said...

Man...this was bold! Not sure if I agree with all of what you have said but admire you for having the guts to write what you felt is right...

and the analogy of pen...just so happens in Tamil (language spoken in Chennai where you live) pen means girl :-)

Oreen said...

absolutely agree with you.
love is seldom mature. the kind of "love" we see all around is overrated, asphyxiating, and for the desperate ...

the only love, unadulterated, that I felt is for my son. it doesn't ask for anything in return. strangely altruistic and pure...

for ALL the women in my life, the basic premise of attraction has only been lust. anybody who tries to term it something else, is either trying to fool himself, or trying to coin some words for the OED.

Sandhya said...

Is there something wrong with lust, you wonder, while our whole wonderful epic mythology is rampant with unbriddled, unashamed lust. So why have we taken on the morality of another culture and why do we layer what we feel with what we ought to feel?
As a society I think we don't have the courage of our own convictions or culture - we are apologetic for the way we are and what we do.
It's like the way a 'religious' man displays the trappings of his 'holiness' in some way - Bish you are so right - people(not men alone, let's be fair), like to display the trappings of what they feel they ought to for the moment.

Unknown said...

Beautiful post, Biswanath.

Feels like you've put my thoughts about the matter into words.

Sp^wN_0F_S^T^N (yeah, this is my new address - deleted the old one - if you remember the guy who used that nickname in the first place :)

Anonymous said...

i think that you say all this to express your creative side..actually you do not believe in anything which you say or do...

Anonymous said...

i am being led believe that this post was written in a drunk state...guess you do not have enjoyable compaany, hence you take the help of a drunk state to gather your thoughts..however idiotic,prententious,and false they might be...

Amrita Sabat said...

hey........this is sch an honest post. i love it(nt like or lust fr it[:P]). i agree wid most of the things written by u. no one knows wat's love. its mostly disguised under lust in 2de's fast paced materialistic western values-driven wrld. fr some, it so happens that they fall in 'love' aftr dey've had sex the first time & thus decide to marry('an attempt to cleanse your Indian soul of guilt' lik u say) without exactly the likeness fr each oder rather the xpectation dat d sex will b gr8, & some jst giv in 2 the lust only to walk confidently away the next morning, with no expectations from d oder n no ill feeling.
growing infidelity cases among young married couples is a pity really. 'likeness' is very important here- more than love n lust 2geder.

Unknown said...

I Liked it,and I dont think I will agree wit all wat u have said,,I liked the abt the fools u have mentioned..Nice post,,thanks

vivek said...

well, it sounded like me a few months back. But these days things are different and I have tried explaining them here:

Hope it helps you understand love at first sight etc..
http://vivek-myindia.blogspot.com/2011/01/love-first-sight.html

Zachattack said...

hmm...interesting post though a little too cynical for me.You see, with human feelings nothing is really cast in stone. Love is insanity of sorts perhaps..but then again insanity is a spectrum not a border, nah????

Anubhuti said...

Mr Ghosh, look at it this way, even if all this is true, can ppl go to each other & say " listen darlin ! I lust you, lets make lust ! " At least love sounds romantic or we'd become savage. I'd rather someone says "let's make love rather" than "let's have sex" - ishhhh not nice !!

Anubhuti said...

Have been thinking about this, a few questions for you -

1. If love happens eventually, then what is the heady feeling when you can't think of anything but about the other person?? It may be purely asexual longing. Is that lust ?? It surely cant just be liking.
2. By this logic of love, childhood lovers should be really in love & not like or lust, yet most such alliances fail.