This ‘thing’ called love

It’s not every day that you find the love of your life. Though many may disagree with the statement, it sort of holds good for the majority.

My life too seemed to go through this phase a couple of times. These were times when I as an individual felt deeply attracted to a person of the opposite sex.

This, I later found out the hard way, was nothing more than a simple infatuation for the simple reason that my feelings for the same girl would change after a couple of months or even days in certain cases.

Notwithstanding, I continued to allow these feelings to creep in and out and was quite content with the state of affairs.

Things sort of took a turn when I encountered this phenomenon called maturity.

It was like a clean-up session within my heart and brain wherein I learnt that these feelings/infatuations were something that were a part of my teenage and that at my age, I need to either live a single, carefree life or look for that special someone with whom I could possible live the rest of my life.

It was all hunky dory till I reached an age when this deadly virus called marriage started coming into the picture.

Friends and family were getting hitched and it was sort of scary. I too was fast approaching the ‘marriageable age’ and for obvious reasons, I had to decide what I wanted from life.

As my star suggests, we scorpions are meant to be passionate and caring lovers who have that extra ounce of possessiveness when it comes to our partners.

In my case however, I never seemed to have the passion nor did I have a partner to shower her with love and care.

These issues never bothered me. I seemed to be pretty cool about the whole thing and just wanted to experience life as it came.

But again, I was a man at the end of the day and cravings for love or to be loved were bound to come back. I did not have anything against an arranged marriage but always dreamt to falling in love and getting married to that perfect someone.

Maybe it was frustration or loneliness, I cannot be very sure, but I signed up on this very promising website that seemed to be created for people like me who did not completely believe in the traditional rituals of an arranged marriage.

The signing in was simple. Key in your personal details, mention your likes and dislikes, state what you want from a partner and some more related information. Oh and yes, the most important  piece of information, a photograph.

The process was simple, based on the information that you provide, the website pulls out like minded profiles from the opposite sex and lists them down for you to select. If you like the profile, you say like. If you don’t, then just ignore.

Privacy and confidentiality of your selection was maintained at all times and the other person would never know that you liked their profile unless and until they reciprocated the interest.

I think I was sort of lucky since I managed to pull up quite a large number of matches. Not that these matches meant anything but for a guy, its motivating.

The initial set of messages and greetings would be exchanged but further to that nothing seemed to happen.

And then the magic happened. I was matched with a profile of this one girl who seemed to be pretty good to be true. Her interests were exactly what I was looking for. She looked pretty, did a lot of writing (which by the way for me was a major turn on) and in general seemed to be a perfect match.

In this case too, we started off with the usual hi hello business but there seemed to be a spark. We sort of clicked. It didn't take time for us to share our numbers with each other and then move on to an easier way of staying in touch – Whatsapp!

From here the situation only seemed to bloom with both of us getting to know each other better and with time, we became pretty close.

Since this was not a fairytale story, the twists and drama were bound to make an entry into our otherwise happy relationship.

The parents of the girl in question were already on the lookout for a suitable match and our little relationship could not take shape since we had not even seen each other in person. With 21^st century technology in place, the most we could do was get a glimpse of each other on Skype but that was it.

With time running out and nothing working, like any other relationship, we began to drift. Now, I'm not implying that we stopped liking each other but the pressure of marriage for the girl and the fact that we were located on two different continents posed a concern.

We still spoke. We still tried our best to maintain whatever it was that we had and basically we kept our hopes high.

To make things a whole lot more complicated, I declared to her that I was falling in love and that I had to make this work. Call it her denial or simple logical thinking, she hesitated to reciprocate.

We had decided a long time ago that we would not date since we were both unsure of where this would lead and were both equally afraid of a heartbreak at the end if things did not work the way we wanted it to.

It wasn't until recently that she too, in all our little chats, sort of admitted that somewhere between all this caring, she had also fallen in love with me.

Normally, I would have jumped with joy on hearing something like this but here I was, thinking of what to do next.

It was like I was in some sort of complex ‘Math Olympiad’ where I was required to solve an impossible equation if I needed to clear the round.

All said and done, at present, we still chat, we still try and console each other and still have this hope within hope that something will work out.

Strangely enough, the fact that to make a relationship a reality, both people must at least see each other in person and spend some time together, has not yet been worked out.

Since time is not our best suit, things are a little tricky. But when it comes to love, logic doesn't seem to have any value.

How things shape up from here are yet to be seen and experienced. For now, it’s this ‘thing’ called love that’s holding us together.