Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega

In an earlier post, I talk about how love for one and all defines the essence of good character. You might think that what has got into this nerd who keeps on talking about love so persistently. But frankly, it is just a set of coincidences. So lets get going with it.

Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega is a phrase in Hindi which means Every Heart That Loves. Apart from sharing the title with a moderately popular Bollywood flick, this blog has got nothing else to do with it. The trigger incident for this happened a week back. It was a normal day full of mind boggling research, exciting classes, equally exciting job and lots of cycling around. In night time, my roommate Captain Haddock (name changed on request) comes upto me and says that "I have got something to discuss with you". Now when a roommate says this to you, the topic under question can vary widely from "What to cook for dinner tonight ?" to "Who is supposed to vacuum room this week ?" to "Which nubile woman to have for room wallpaper ?". I was naturally indifferent. What shook me out of this indifference was the revelation that our Mr. Roommate was no longer in control of his heart.

Apparently there was this new girl in block (and if you know anything about statistics of likeable women in postgraduate studies, you would know that they stand right next to endangered species) which had set his heart fluttering. He had been meeting her now & then & apparently needed some guidance from me (poor soul) on 'how to take things further'. Now Mr. Roommate has not got a reputation in these matters and it was very much unexpected.

In India, it is still common for people to undertake what is referred to as "arranged marriages" where your parents choose a spouse for you. Depending upon family, you may get to have no or substantial say over these matters. These marriages are considered different from "love marriages" where you yourself set the ball rolling by choosing your spouse yourself. Marriages of latter type unfortunately still have a stigma attached to them and many people voluntarily stay away from it for reasons ranging from not wanting to hurt parents to not wanting to get into the mess.

Statistically (atleast in my times, I am sure statistics have changed now), many such romantic relations would bud in college time i.e. undergraduate studies (note the disclaimer earlier). Therefore if you find a person's status as single after graduation, it might either mean you did not find somebody good enough (btw, statistics for likeable women in undergraduate are far more encouraging than its graduate counterpart) or else you plan to make it an "arranged affair". And this was the reason why I found this piece of news a revelation.

Whenever i think of that incident now, I am reminded of this phrase which is a constant reminder that every heart is capable of love.

So my concept of normal day has been modified to include a 5 minute status update over this 'critical matter'. As for our Mr. Roommate, he gets to share my pearls of wisdom (he is very soon going to realise that they are virtually none) over wooing girls. Best of luck Haddock.. !!