like all good things, the title of this blog has been ‘churaoed’… or you could say ‘inspired’.. for those of you who don’t know, the title is the same as the title of a movie… (and it is available for download in 8 odd parts on youtube)
it’s an awesome movie for those of you who haven’t seen… go and watch… i am no movie buff, but i have seen this one atleast half a dozen times.. it is about dil, dosti etc… most of the etc being a three lettered word starting with ‘S’…
enough of an introduction, the main theme of this blog is not the three lettered word, but a four lettered word starting with ‘L’…. sometimes destiny conspires for us to do something… why, i don’t know… but when too many arrows point in the same direction, you say what the hell, let’s just go there and see…
“Love is only a four lettered word. It doesn’t mean anything to me.” one of the lead characters in the movie said… that was the first of a series of ‘incidents’ that have brought me to write this one… i remember that when i first saw the movie, and heard this dialogue, i thought of writing a blog about it… at 3 am my enthusiasm to watch the complete movie prevented me from writing it at the time… but since then, every time i have seen the movie, i have tried very hard to remember what i wanted to write, sometimes even replayed the scene several times in the hope of a flash that would inspire me once again to write, but in vain…
well since i couldn’t remember what i wanted to write, i dropped the idea completely.. but then…
then while coming back from the university one day… i was lucky enough to sit in a half an hour traffic jam at the Delhi-UP border that i cross daily.. these traffic jams provide you some very valuable entertainment… as usual there were atleast a dozen different people asking for money… some by putting a most filthy piece of cloth on the windscreen, others by trying to sell you 5 over-used ladies’ suits for 100 rs. and sundry other objects… suddenly i saw two boys (16-17 years old at the most) running in between cars… as i watched curiously and cautiously, they went and stood next to a young girl sitting on the road, wrapped in a blanket… the boys, pointed to someone sitting in a UP roadways bus and shouted… “tum humari madam ko patao, hum tumhari madam ko patayenge… kar ke dikhayenge…” i couldn’t help but smile… love and aspiration took a new meaning suddenly…
incidentally, a few days later i went to a school in the nizamuddin basti and met some of the most beautiful children in the world there… a few adolescent boys i came across in the basti reminded me strangely of the two boys in the traffic… yet, i was there to work with much younger children… in class II, as i spoke, laughed and played with the children, i kept thinking what these children would grow up and become… boys at traffic jams? well, before i knew it, it was time to leave… but before going, three young boys i was talking with suddenly wanted to give me something… so on the papers they had solved some maths questions for me, each of them drew a heart, artistically shooting an arrow through it and writing three letters and 1 number inside it… ILU2.. i might add, the children don’t know how to read english… but they know that this is something boys draw for girls… Love is a four lettered word…
well, i said destiny wanted me to write this… today, i was taking a class in psychology and one of my students has brought a write up by a class VIII boy about friendship… the young boy had taken friendship to imply a romantic relationship…. and though love was not a theme they were exploring, i asked my students to now explore how children understood Love… for me… Love is a four lettered word…
well… maybe there is something else that is making me write this… St. valentines’ day… love is in the air… you can see it on all the balloons in the shops at kamla nagar.. the four lettered word i meant…