Articles

The loves of my life

Life has been pretty kind to me. It has rarely given me a chance to complain. It has quite been a most charming hostess, catering to most of my whims. But finicky as I am, I do manage to notice the lone stain on the tablecloth. The French call it amour (and I am told, they are guys who invented it) and I am sure even the Greeks have a word for it (I mean it would look pretty weird to use your fingers to show what you mean, especially in public.), though I do not remember it. However, learned friends tell me that “Durex” suffices for most languages.

Not that I am a sex starved, wanton male in pursuit of anything that has a slit that drips: in fact, I am quite the gentleman Jeeves would have been proud to serve. But I have had this rather predictable end to most of my amorous endeavours.

I have always been an early starter- what with the healthy doses of Bollywood ‘entertainers’ I have fed on- and consequently, had my first real serious interest in the female of the species at the ripe old age of five. As I enjoyed the company of my beloved and her group, I realized that unless I give them a pretty solid and valid reason for wanting to hang out with me, I might as well count my romance as “having lost the spark”. Being the puniest guy around also didn’t help matters too much. Then there was also the problem of my friends indulging in the “Johnny’s got a girlfriend” chant and I had to make the right noises to please the brotherhood.

Acknowledging, that the subject in question- yours truly, is quite extraordinary and has been called a genius by people other than his mother, one still has to admit that the problems at hand were, shall we say, insurmountable in the wake of his years?

(Purely for the record, so that posterity does not accuse us of misrepresenting facts or concealing evidence, I feel it pertinent to state that I did try to invent some story about a rather dirty looking character called Ali wanting to thrash the living daylights out of my fair maidens. How much of it they bought, I cannot say, but it did provide my sinking ship with a few grammes of M-Seal. This effort sadly bombed when the bugger Ali refused to show any indications of his hideous designs. Having established our sincerity with history, lets move on.)

Then came the time when having reached nine years of age, I found myself another object of affection. This woman (I feel she, at age nine, justified my use of the word, particularly after having watched and admired Al Pacino in “The Scent of a Woman”) was most sought after, though these seekings were hardly advertised. I had a distinct advantage over my competitors in that I had the guts and the opportunity to speak to her. This was due to the fact that (at the risk of sounding immodest) being a reasonable student at school, my homework had a pretty impressive clientele. Even the most dimwitted idiots among you would have figured by now that I supplied my angel with my notes and that it didn’t do my chances any harm. Again, to be fair to history, I will have to mention that it was she who made the first ‘move’. On the covers of one of my notebooks, she wrote a little ‘Thank You’ note. After that, the notes became a regular feature. One of her friends was our sole confidante in the whole business. Not that the notes ever got round to saying anything more than ‘thank you’ (technically, this is incorrect as I distinctly remember a few of her notes mentioning that she was sending her eraser therewith, which I was to use to rub the message of gratefulness off) or I ever managed to pen my feelings in my most romantic fashion for a formal proposal. Like all sweet things, my little affair died of its own accord and was certainly not helped by the fact that my angel was shifted to another section and had no more use of my class notes.

Purely for purposes of maintaining the absolute truthfulness of this account, I wish to state that between the ages of five and nine I did develop an interest in another girl. This female was the class monitor -together with yours truly. This love story ended with her having caught chicken pox (The disease finally caught up with me some 15 years later). Like they say, out of sight, out of mind.

Coming back to my tenth year on the planet, this was to hold the most important learning of my life. This year I got attracted to another girl. The only difference was that she was a better student than I was. By this time I had committed the ultimate childhood sin of wearing high power spectacles which made me look owlish. Now, some people have gone on record to say that I have a predisposition to being owlish and some even say that I have a natural talent for it- but I choose to ignore such malicious comment: after all who the hell is writing this shit? Anyway, so this girl is smarter than I am and she’s the class teacher’s pet and I have fallen terribly out of favour with the same teacher pretty recently- now doesn’t that look good? But wait: now she goes and scores 709 to my 618 in the first term. That should have been enough to make me fall out of love with her but no: love makes us stupid and hence I persisted (I scored 714 to her 715 the next term) and learnt the most valuable lesson of my life. Never fall in love with a girl who’s smarter than you. With that I changed schools and left an entire choir of angels behind who, admittedly, weren’t singing paeans to me.

The new school was quite bigger than the previous one and again, running the risk of sounding immodest, I state –absolutely dispassionately- that I was noticed. Here I lay low for a year before hopelessly falling for a female who, for a change, was also attracted towards me. I know, because there were rumours about ‘us’ in the grapevine and if you cant trust the grapevine, what can you trust? She even paid me a compliment about my (school uniform) shirt (not that there was anything wrong with it: didn’t it have buttons and sleeves?) in the presence of a classmate who later dated her.

That was all about all the times that I have been in love. Having put everything on paper and in perspective, I guess theres no point complaining about the stains on the tablecloth when you’ve been spilling the curry. But let me tell you and you might as well call me an optimist, that theres always a chance of finding a vase of just the right size that covers the stain exactly. Until that day, let me wait in the wings for her to take my breath away.

P.S.: As most of you would notice, this account has no mention of a certain daughter of a certain carpet merchant cum oil baron in Dubai. This is because, she’s already married and pregnant and being the gentleman that I am, I will not let her name pass my lips. But I end the reservation there: at the name. For any other part of her, my lips are ready and waiting.