Love? -My left foot
What a shocking incident- A
male student shoots and hacks a female student of his own class in the
classroom and consumes poison, this happened in the prestigious JNU(Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi), a university where the supposedly intellectuals
park and grow their brand of intellectualism while the world goes by.
The incident as apparent from
the suicide note found in the boy’s bag stemmed from rejection in love by the
female and hurt the male ego a case of jilted lover. The boy has since died and
the girl might just survive although the scars will always be a pointer, a
question mark all through her life. It is intriguing to read that the boy
seemed to think that the couple was in love. ‘My left foot’- even if they were how could a lover hack his
partner even while professing that they were once in love. One cannot digest
the fact that people who truly love can hurt each other. Love is all about sacrifice;
it is about giving for the sake of love. Lovers sacrifice to propel their love
on to a higher pedestal where the world can watch but cannot touch it in words,
deeds or even thoughts of impurity.
Recently a couple got married
at the age when others think of retiring into the retiring rooms of their
lives. This couple was in love during their youth, but could not marry due to
family pressures. They individually married other partners and lived a
fulfilling live as doting parents caring over their brood. They tied the knot
when both their spouses died naturally and were left alone without the
pressures of family and society. True love saw them get together even when they
were well past their prime. An example of true love which goes to the grave
without a thought about destroying the partner through harsh words or deeds or
character assassination, forget actual brutalization.
What the boy professed as love
was anything but love, where a sense of attachment is born out of everyday
chores and utterances. Obsession overtakes you and even the thought of your
partner interacting with others of the opposite sex infuriates you. Love will
always remain in the heart, more than in the mind. To love a person would be to
sacrifice oneself and bear no ill will towards your once lover. In this case
the boy, if in love could have walked away from the relationship when the girls
refused to take it further. His love would have been etched in the annals of
history had he walked away with her embedded in his heart. To try to destroy
her or satisfy his ego is not a case of love. Even revenge or getting back at
her for spurning his advances loudly in the glare of classmates all in broad
daylight cannot account for extreme action. By that standard anyone who starts
a relationship should also sign a binding contract; there cannot be a walk away
route.
In fact what is apparent may
not always be inherent in a relationship. One may gradually find out that the
opposite is not tuned to his/her liking and may not be the ideal partner. In
that case the option to quit must be available and the couple should split
amicably as a true testament of their once professed love. I wish the boy had
read the below couplet and taken a cue from it, for then he would have been
able to measure his love and not waste a life trying to decode the word.
“If you love
something,set it free,
If it comes back, it is yours
if it doesn’t, it never was”
It is said that love is blind
and lovers cannot see- true, but one must not be blind to the meaning of love
and should qualify as lover only when this emotion tugs at ones heart strings,
because then there will be no backlash, no revenge, no failure, nor hurt
sentiments, and even harsh words or gossip exchanged will be entombed with
time.
Robin Varghese
1st August 2013
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