FALL IN LOVE, ONE MORE TIME

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain. (T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland)

Eliot believed April to be the cruelest month as it brought hope in its wake and hope can only be followed by disappointment and heartbreak. However, for me April has been the sweetest month ever since my second daughter was born. It was the month when I fell in love all over once again. The moment I held her in my arms I was smitten by her cherubic face, her round as marble eyes, her button nose, her dainty fingers and her fragile yet doughy form. But then this was not the first time I had fallen in love!

I keep falling in love every day, every moment, at every step and with every breath I take. I am a ‘Die-hard Romantic’ for I fall in love easily. I fall in love with the trees around me when they are in their prime verdure. I also fall in love when the red, rust orange of the sky stoops down to tint the foliage of these trees in a similar rusty orangish-red during autumn and fall.

I fall in love with the lyrics of the songs which touch my heart. I then play the song on the loop countless times till my being is submerged in the verses. Even now my heart skips a beat whenever I hear Cliff Richard’s sonorous crooning in ‘You are my theme for a dream.’ The first time I read Pablo Neruda’s poem ‘Tonight I can write’, I was moved to tears. My voice still quivers whenever I read out the poem to a new batch of students. I was 17 when the movie ‘Lamhe’ hit the theatres. I was love-struck with Anil Kapoor’s salt and pepper look and suppressed many a sigh at the fate of the star-crossed lovers.

As soon as I grasped the concept of love I had innumerable crushes. I have been in love with the innocent and shy looks of Rajendra Kumar in Mere Mahboob; the rakish and mysterious airs of Dev Anand in Tere Ghar ke Saamne; my heart skipped gazillion beats at the dimpled cheeks of Rajesh Khanna in Aradhana; the brooding-poet Dharmendra stole my heart in Anupama and the roguish anti-hero persona of Vinod Khanna gave me many a sleepless night.

With youth came the cynical concept of ‘fall-in-love-only-once-in-life’ propagated by Shah Rukh Khan in the movie Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai:

Hum ek baar jeete hai, ek baar marte hai, shaadi bhi ek baar hoti hai … aur pyar ek baar hi hota hai

Well, that’s an altogether different matter that the hero himself fails to stick to the maxim by the end of the movie when he not only falls in love for the second time but also ends up marrying a second time. Time is the best teacher and time taught me that I should not go against nature. Nature teaches us to fall and rise in love, not once but again and again through its bounteous beauty.

Driving on a busy road, a sudden sweet gesture by another driver or a rickshaw puller often makes me smile and fall in love, not with the driver of course, but with the gesture. An auto rickshaw driver right ahead of me suddenly swerved and took a U-turn making me pull brakes really hard. I was on the verge of giving him a piece of my mind when he suddenly smiled, touched his ears and later joined hands in apology. The unexpected gesture touched my heart and I couldn’t help letting him go by.

My latest amor is none other than Korean dramas and their sweet-enough-to-kill-you heroes. I am now in love with half a dozen “oppas” (a term of endearment for an elder man in Korean) and as the K-drama fans proclaim, “You don’t fall out of love with an oppa when you like another. You just keep on adding more oppas”. I too keep on adding to the long list of things, people, moments and memories I love.

So, open-up to your surroundings, listen to your heart, leave behind your apprehensions and fall in love one more time. Nay, fall in love again and again and again…