Of Ranjhaanaa and the terrible thing called love

It’s actually quite amusing to realize that after the numerous jokes about multiple wrist-cutting and what-not, the movie has actually inspired me enough to write a post. However, this post is not really about the movie – rather the unexpected chord it struck with me.

Raanjhanaa describes love quite accurately, I would say. It correctly captures that rosy, warm, high-up-in-the-air feeling and how it slowly turns into that gnawing, terrible pain in the heart and stomach that does not let you rest. That makes you feel you would rather die than survive the terrible ache which consumes your entire existence. In the movie, you sort of traverse that journey with Dhanush aka Kundan as he struggles to make peace with this pain – and ultimately finds salvation in death.

I have had love described to me by various people in various ways. All of them have felt it, celebrated and suffered it. I remember one particular comment that has stuck with me throughout the years:

“The purest love is a pain. Unless you feel pain in your heart, it is not true love.”

I did not agree to it at the time. Naive enough to mistake my childish infatuations as the “real” thing, I had argued that love is flowery and mushy and all things Karan Johar. I later learnt the hard way how true my friend was. In a matter of days all those butterflies that flutter so ecstatically in your stomach settle down to leave that ezmpty ache – that dark vacuum that threatens to engulf your happiness.

Am I being too negative? I plead guilty, yes I am. But that’s the whole point. It is negative, at least, mostly dark with a few patches of light

Look, don’t shake your head and say “Poor girl, she has had it rough; I hope she finds true love soon.” I don’t want your pity or your sympathy. I’m just trying to say that love, as celebrated as it is, isn’t exactly the glorious saviour that it’s marketed to be. But we all know that, don’t we?

I'm not denying that there are a few lucky ones amongst us. Those who haven’t had their heart broken, have found true love in the first attempt. But most of us, the ordinary ones, have had their heart broken at least once. Some like poor Dhanush in the movie, multiple times by the same person. It doesn’t matter. The pain, with or without heartbreak, is all too real.

As I grow older, I realize the truth in some sayings. That you grow more cynical with time. That the heart gradually its power to love so acutely, every time its broken and mishandled. I remember the lines of Bronte, when Isabella speaks of Heathcliff:

“I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death, and flung it back to me”

And alas it’s so true. I look back at the years, only to find my heart being pinched and flung around and gradually hardening into a cynical mass rendered incapable of love – by love itself.