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Listen to the mermaids sing
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Make a commitment to romance your dreams this Valentine's Day, writes MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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TODAY IS Valentine's Day and the city is a sea of pink and red. The telly is blushing and beaming daylong love-ins. Have you ever wondered why you need an outside agent to prepare an emotional template? Why should a film, book, a card or a music company tell you how to feel? Is it just that we have gotten too lazy to listen to the mermaids singing? Are we in this state of inertia, which can only be broken by the right cue, provided with the right market research? It sure is a sad day for Generation Next if emotions need to be packaged by "Them" to gain currency.
Poet, lyricist and filmmaker Gulzar says romance "in the sense of idealism has died out today." There is a romance in following your dream - it could be love, music, poetry, rights, wrongs, a sport, whatever. If you decide not to give yourself that chance to eat the peach, you would be a permanent Prufrock, measuring out your life in coffee spoons.
Gen Next has stepped into the millennium with loads of super positive attitude and will not be caught dead confusing hormones for emotion. Like Suman doing her B Com in Villa Marie College says, "romance works in theory but practically it is all bakwas."
There is a fear of getting hurt, of investing too much in an emotion that seems too ephemeral. "Ninety per cent of love marriages fail," Jahnavi comments flatly. C'mon guys you are too young to be that cynical. If being young is all about experimenting, then why not plunge into this crazy little thing called love and if it does not work out - darlings write a book, sing a song to unsuccess (Yeats did and see where it got him) and you would embark on a thrilling voyage of self-discovery.
Right attitude
And Jahnavi, love marriages do not fail generically. It is all in the attitude. Doing the right deed for the wrong reasons invariably leads to spectacular failures. Raghavendra Rao and Kalpavalli have been married for 21 years. "We dated for seven years before we married," Rao comments. "Of course I believe in love and naturally the perception of romance is different through generations."
"I do not believe that the present generation is less committed," Kalpavalli chips in. "It depends on the values that we as parents imbibe in our children." Daughter Pujitha, who is doing her Architecture, is a staunch believer because, "I see romance in my parents everyday."
Then there is Imran an engineer with Oracle and his wife of six months Muzakkir, also an engineer with Reliance Infocom. "Ours was an arranged marriage and you want to know about romance? Dig this - Muzakkir needs to be in office at 9 am and it is 11.30 and we are celebrating our six month anniversary!"
"I never had a girlfriend, but I know that Muzakkir is the best thing that has happened to me," Imran says. It is not that Imran had no romance in his life, "before we got married I romanced the road as part of the Wanderers Club."
Marriage did not mean the end of the road for the spirit of romance for the two as "last week I went with him on a 300 km road trip," Muzakkir says with a laugh. Before marriage Muzakkir made a "conscious decision to give romance a miss. I cannot relate to that kind of thing. I feel it is perfect for Yash Chopra films you know what I mean?"
Precisely the trick is to find your own romance quotient - it is not in heart-shaped balloons, chocolates, lace or mushy music. Cut through the information overload and do what works for you. This V-Day choose to fall in love with yourself and follow your heart. Happy Valentine's Day!
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