The heart is a lonely hunter

Love actually

Recently I got talking to a couple of friends here about relationships (having all the sentimentality of a piece of wood, I have never having been in one myself, I suppose talking about it is the best I can do). The first conversation brought about many surprising revelations about a friend I have known for many years and yet I was unaware that all this while that he was going through such an emotionally intense time. As the details came out, I felt sympathetic of course, but also somewhat envious, that my 'relationships' or to put it more accurately, my 'attempts at relationships' or to put it more accurately, my 'friendships that went beyond saying hi to the other person' or to put it more accurately, my 'pipe dreams', were never even as remotely incident packed. I let this pass as the normal IIT-ian, too geeky and awkward to manage relationships with anything other than a computer syndromes but now that hypothesis stood nullified.
The second guy is a junior of mine in my dorm and he was recounting one of his on-again-off-again things with a girl in Delhi. He had proposed to her and she said no, but he later found out that she did keep asking other friends of her about him and how he was doing. Women, who can figure them out?
Well, most of the PGP-2s in IIMA, of the male sort anyway, who happen to be unattached seem to be pre-occupied by that question. One of my friends even bought a book called 48 Laws of Seduction which casts a cynical eye on this thing called love and reduces relationships to a game of strategy and planning. I was just leafing through it and one line caught my eye. It said that one couldn't give a women enough attention and women always welcome more of it. Without sounding misogynistic, let me say that I tend to agree with that view. That's why I told both my friends to go ahead and tell the respective objects of their affection about their feelings. With a kind of dramatic touch, I said - "This is the right thing to do...of course there are wrong ways of doing the right thing...and I speak from experience...of always having done it the wrong way". (Exit into the sunset)

Well, I got thinking, when did I become such an expert on these things. The most adventurous thing I have ever done is to have asked a girl out for coffee. And if I really analyze myself, it's because I am not a very sentimental person at all. Or maybe just a coward. Either way, not cut out for the games people play. There have been crushes here and there, some slightly more serious than the rest but nothing which involved getting to know the other person. And that's the first step in a relationship right? Maybe, much as I hate to admit it, my perception of romance is coloured by the Mills and Boons that I keep castigating my friend X for reading. Or maybe its because I am the exact opposite, I don't have a sentimental sinew in my body. Anyway, I wrote a piece to describe my condition:

I am a human desert. Nothing but silence envelops the sands that lie within, baking day in and day out under the merciless, perpetual sun. There may be an oasis or two around, but the oceans of sand drown them out. Every once in a while, a passerby comes along, raises some dust and disturbs the quiet. But they all eventually leave, the desert is inhospitable. They leave behind footprints on the carpeted dunes but time sweeps them into oblivion. And no one remembers that they were ever there. Every once in a while, the desert roars at its own solitude, and out of its anger rises a storm, which cannot moisten the parched sands, but only serves to agitate. The hollow reverberates with fury, yet it is all futile. The sands may shift or be rearranged, but they still remain. And the storm dies out, tearful that it could not get the heartless desert to flower. And every thing goes quiet again. And so it shall be forever, for that is the story of the desert. For that is its destiny.