Love is....

· Like the thrill of finishing your exam 10 minutes before time and getting to revise the paper twice.

·  Good luck. Imagine the joy of receiving your TDS refunds just when you were scanning Flipkart for a new phone (Oh look! There’s a 30% discount on top of that!).

· Relief. Like, your queue moving faster than the others before a metro-rail ticket counter and you just managed to board a train, you never thought you could catch.

·  A smile. A sudden one. When you are stuck in traffic and you find that the car on your right is playing the same song as yours on its radio. You look away casually and find that the car on your left also has the same song playing. Three of you and a loud, happy song. :)

· Like a happy coincidence….of picking up the cell phone to text someone and see his message blinking on the screen. (And finding that he has written exactly what you were about to write).

·   Contradiction. The ease after a Thai spa, the pain of the first periods.

·  Like the joy of watching 3 idiots for the 35^th time and laughing and crying at the same places. Every time.

· Finding “that’s so us!!!” in Guru Dutt-Waheeda Rahman, Lamberto Maggiorani-Lianella Carell, Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan, Salman-Bhagyashree, Ranbir Kapoor-Nargis Fakhri and Calvin-Hobbes. (Yes, most perfectly in the last one).

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·  Finding a best friend with added benefits. Added. ;)

·  A sudden pleasure…..the pleasure of chancing upon someone talking about you behind your back and discovering that he/she is saying something really nice.

·   Fun.  The fun of waking up before the alarm rings and finding that you have an extra hour of sleep left.

·  That particular scene from "Talaash", where Kareena puts Amir Khan to a blissful sleep, half-seducing him and half-soothing him. Yes, love is being able to play both.... a fiery seductress and a caring mother.

·  Confidence. Of knowing each other so well that you can read each other’s mind even before you open your mouth. Like the delight of having Google Chrome as your web browser, finding what you were looking for, even before you’ve typed the whole thing out. 

·   Getting all your past perceptions about yourself in a mixer-grinder and thrashing them hard on a ‘High Speed’ mode. It makes you a different person altogether, does everything to you which you thought can only happen to characters in novels, movies and soaps.

· Like that extra “sukha” phoochka  (without imli-water) that comes for free at the end of your long paani-puri session, those 3 cubes of butter on a Chelo Kebab platter, that one long slice of coconut and jhuribhaja on the top of a jhalmuri and that boiled potato amidst the Chicken Biriyani rice. You realise its value thrice as much, only when it is missing.

·  Sweet. Like a Sunday. And a sundae.

·   A bumpy ride. A non-formatted blog post like this one!

·  The biggest joke life played on you. Like, someone casting love-struck eyes on you and saying, “If I was Leonardo da Vinci, this would have been my Monalisa” and showing this picture.

·   Suffering sad jokes with a not-so-sad face.

·   Putting Lord Krishna to shame by giving each other 278 nicknames each. Mostly obnoxious, mostly meaningless.

· Revenge. If he kisses you hard, get back at him harder.

·  Like puffing a cigarette…when you are high, when you are low, when you are happy, sad or when you just recovered from an orgasm.

·   Illogical. It is like staring lovingly at your city from the topmost floor of Chatterjee International and realising it for the umpteenth time why you can never like someone who cannot relate to your city.

· Finding the most perfect soul mate who is as imperfect as you are. Lazy, careless yet unusually happy.

·   Finding a Superman in that lazy, careless, imperfect guy. Nah, he does not wear his underwear outside his trousers, he does not wear an “S” t-shirt nor does he have a “hawa mein urta jaye tera lal dupatta malmal ka” on his shoulders. Yet, he is your Superman. 

·   Like the adrenaline rush every time you hear “Jana gana mana adhinayaka”, “pehla nasha” or “raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens” playing somewhere.

·   A little extra effort. Of turning bland Cream Cracker biscuits interesting by adding little accompaniments. Cheese dips, mayo, jam and/or butter. :)

·  Taking each other for granted. Being oblivious of the very existence. Like the Naphthalene balls in a hotel wash basin, the green chilly bits swimming in a bowl of vinegar in a Chinese restaurant or corn flour in a chilly chicken gravy. Like salt in biscuits. (You never knew it was there, until one day the Doctor diagnosed you with high blood pressure and told you so).

· Magic. The magic that transforms piles of angry fights into piles of mush when put under a blanket.

·  The first one minute of this song. Role reversal would make no difference.

·    You.

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Words of wisdom:-

P: It often bothers me. You know, may be, I am not as good as you are. Do I deserve you truly?

J: Well, going by your logic, let me give you an example. Say, you are the left hand and I am the right one. You are the less valuable, less revered and used for cleaning poop. I am, on the other hand, the more functional, more useful. But when I need to pray, I have to cling to you. When I clap or hug, I need you. No matter who you are, you make me complete. It’s not about you or me. It’s about us. And, we are a team. That is all that matters.

(Do you know J, what the happiest woman on earth looks like? She looks like me..... 

On another note, we just now completed 13 years of the day when we decided to pray, clap and hug….together, for the first time.)