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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Highlights of an abysmal love-life

I don’t really know if my love-life can be called a love-life. This is mostly because my love-life has been, well, one-sided. Yeah yeah, unrequited love, unreciprocated love, etc. etc. – whatever you’d like to call it.

And yet, it’s amazing how committed I have been to choosing some object of affection or the other on whom I would “invest” innumerable mushy thoughts and imagined conversations.

It's mind boggling, the number of crushes I’ve had in my short life of 24 yrs and 11 months. (I turn 25 next month.) Perhaps I am fickle – chanchal, as they say in Hindi. Eh. Let’s stick to fickle.

Or perhaps due credit can be given to my over-worked imagination that tends to go all haywire and beeping with excitement at an incident which would hold absolutely no significance if observed with a rational mind.

Like a random compliment – “Nice ear rings!”, “You’re looking good!”, “This shirt looks nice on you.” etc. etc. – or maybe a recollection of something I had said earlier – “Hey, isn’t that your favorite song?”, “I saw your favorite novel in the stores.” etc. etc. – or maybe something as vague as , “Can I drink water from your bottle?”!

But what’s really amazing is the variety of men I have “fallen” for – the rowdy in school, the sports man, the self obsessed Narcissus, the musician, the gentleman – I’ve liked and mulled over them all, not to mention the many others who I liked for God alone knows what reasons, for as little as an hour, a week or a month.

Sadly, however, in hindsight, none of them seem to have deserved all the attention that I so lavishly showered on them. However, I harbor no regrets. At least it felt good at that point of time!

And I never went out with any of these “crushes”.

Heck, now that I think of it, the only one guy that I actually went out with was the one I never had a crush on. No wonder we were together only for exactly 7 months and 27 days. Maybe a crush would have helped!

But who were these guys that I fell in “love” with so easily and fell out of it as equally if not more easily? Let me try and recount the stories!


The Rowdy in School – the first of the lot!

He had very curly hair and unnaturally red lips. He was in the 9th Std and I in the 7th. *sigh*

My friends used to call him “chidiya ka ghosla” – bird’s nest in English.

The only thing that attracted me to him was his hanky which he would tie around his neck, inside the shirt collar. That was his style statement. For me, it was a sign of defiance. He was never the one who respected authority. He would talk back to teachers and even to the Headmaster.

He was everything that I knew, at that point of time, I would never be. He was my symbol of freedom and independence. Sadly, he fell in love with my neighbor.

I have never seen him since High School. The last I heard about him, he had forced another girl from his locality to marry him. Thank God for small mercies!


The Sportsman

In the summer of ‘99 I fell for a basketball player.

This guy was, well, athletic. He could sprint from one end of the court to the other and score baskets after baskets without missing a breath. Again, he was all that I wasn’t. He was fit, flexible and amazingly fast.

I spent a glorious summer attempting to play, or rather, prance around the basketball court, trying in vain to keep up with him.

With the end of the summer, my little tryst with him ended as well. I have never heard of or from him since.


The Self Obsessed Narcissus

The first observation that I made about this one was his weirdly parrotty nose. He was almost grotesque to look at. Now that I think of it, I wonder how he had managed to become so full of himself! Or perhaps that was his way of confronting the world.

He would speak with a forged accent and an amazingly irritating monotone. He was bossy, dominating and basically an ar*e.

What began with irritation soon turned to intrigue and, me being me, I fell yet again! I would get him lunch, offer him free lifts on the auto, cover up for his mistakes…. Arggh! I totally hate myself for all of that!

But he was one of a kind.

He has now moved to another city and every time he tries to converse with me online, I stealthily decline. I have stopped taking his calls. Good riddance!


The Musician

He’s the only guy in my list who sported a moustache. I generally hate facial hair because, thanks to my over-worked imagination which I have mentioned earlier, I have already seen in my mind’s eye what a pain it can be to kiss a man who sports a mousche.

So, clearly, I have no idea why or how this one caught my fancy. Probably his guitar skills did the trick. And he was a good singer too. Still is, I hope!

He was an extrovert to the full extent. He would easily strike up conversations with strangers, speak his mind in the most awkward of situations and remain in control at all times.

He was the perfect rock star that I had always dreamt of. But, as luck would have it, he also turned out to be the biggest rock star flirt I have ever met.

The last I checked, he was still at it.

We still smile at each other if and when we bump into each other. There is usually nothing to talk about.


The Gentleman

This one was straight out of a P.G. Wodehouse novel. Tall and wiry with gaunt cheeks and eyes, not only was he built like a typical Englishman, he also had a demeanor like one. I abhorred him the moment I saw him.

However, I saw him at a party, holding his drink in one hand, completely drenched from the rain outside, groove to some sh*te music. And boy, did he look hot!

And that’s when, of course, another story began.

He has moved away now. The last time I tried to get in touch with him, there was no response.


So, basically, these are the highlights of my abysmal love-life. I have mentioned only five “crushes” here because if I took the trouble of writing down the personalities of and experiences with each of them, it would be a little cumbersome not just to write, but to read as well.

The truth is, I hardly remember all of them! But perhaps someday I’ll dig up my old diaries and do a proper research on all the men I have admired/adored/worshipped and write a book about it!

Maybe I’ll hunt each of them down and re-visit them – coerce them into telling me why all of them chose somebody else and never me!

Till then, may my heart still continue to “fickle around” and may I have many more crushes! :D

I think I’ve finally lost it.

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