In Defence of Simple, Ordinary & Accessible Love
The most average kind works the best.
Play this while you read. It just fits.
Love, when I think about it, nostalgia rushes in like stepping into seawater and letting a wave take me whole. A rush of feelings that knock you over and let the water do its trick.
Some memories do not fit into words or pictures, but they sit there anyway. The things you did for love, for others, never for yourself. I still remember my first crush. It felt like the most honest thing I had ever known, love at first sight. The funny part is, I do not remember her face. Just the way she made me feel. And her ponytail, the same every day, bouncing as she walked. I had to work like hell just to get a few words with her. Looking back, that is the moment I knew, if I really want something, I ram into it and somehow the stars line up just like they were always supposed to. Perfect. Touchwood.
I befriended her brother. We shared our tiffin breaks, swapping whatever came from home. That was the best part of my day. For reasons I will never understand, I did not say goodbye to her when I left school. I said goodbye to everyone, even the security guard, but not to her. It had only been a couple of weeks since we started talking, but I managed to pull her ponytail once. That remains a brag-worthy achievement. And then it was over.
That is the thing about first crushes. They make you believe in the most unrealistic version of yourself, the most noble one, the one that does not know disappointment yet. Where expectation and reality romanticise without a fight. We were ready to build a whole world out of a single promise. Everything was meant to fit. You did not need words, and yet you were understood. The most impractical kind of love is always the one we tend to go after.
Love made a great transition into this grand, rare thing. Not for everyone. Only the lucky few get to live it. The most sacred feeling. Back then, we thought it could conquer the world. It was supposed to be grand, breathtaking, like your body was running on pure adrenaline.
We had monuments like the Taj Mahal to prove it. It was meant to be tragic too. The great romances set the rules—Laila and Majnun, Heer and Ranjha, Sohni and Mahiwal, Sassi and Punnun. Lovers defying caste, family, and fate, only to lose in the end. The West followed with its counterparts, Romeo and Juliet, stories that celebrated love’s intensity but framed it in sacrifice and separation.
Now Gen Z keeps it alive in their own way. By treating fairly average movies, if I am being generous, as modern cult classics like Saiyaara, where the most dramatic moment is when the actor sopke normally. This is where we are. Tragic, in its own way. The same crowd that cried and tore their shirts in the theatre could not spell love if it had seven letters.
Sometimes, History Lies
We have been victims of very good storytelling. Love has always been a timeless theme, but the way it is understood has shifted. Once, it was a divine force, strong enough to inspire impossible acts and impossible sacrifices, even from those no one expected it from.
As if it was not enough, even the gods had their say. Radha and Krishna, Ram and Sita, all setting the bar impossibly high. No wonder the Bhakti poets turned love into something holy. Mirabai sang to Krishna as her beloved. Tamil Alvar poets and Sufi mystics erased the line between human and divine affection.
Hinduism glorified love between the sexes, love worth going to war for. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana carved it into memory. The West mirrored the same truth. Paris and Helen set fire to Troy. Orpheus descended into the underworld for Eurydice only to lose her again. Passion was a divine madness then, blessing and curse from the same hand. The strange thing about love is that its principles are agreed upon everywhere, but the way it is lived changes from land to land, from one heart to another.
By the Victorian era, love began to move closer to home. In the West, society grew invested in the idea of love as the foundation of marriage. Love at first sight and marrying for affection became part of the norm, giving women more freedom to choose their partners. Under British rule, these ideas drifted into India’s educated elite. Writers like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Rabindranath Tagore wrote of young people torn between arranged matches and love matches, though change came slowly.
In the twentieth century, cinema made romance even grander. Hollywood gave us sweeping gestures, like in Titanic where love was selfless and senseless, even in death. Bollywood answered with its own grand visions. Mughal-e-Azam gave us a prince defying an empire for love. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge turned the clash of rebellion and tradition into the ultimate fairy tale, telling us that love conquers everything, preferably in song and somewhere in Switzerland.
Maybe there was a reason for feeding all this into our minds. Life needs its magic to keep us going, and love was given the job. It became the promise that something extraordinary was coming our way. It was the cheese that kept the rats running the race. But if someone had told you as a child that love can also be the person who drags you out for groceries on a Sunday when all you wanted was to sit at home and watch the game, would you have been excited to hear it?
Things we seemed to have learnt about love:
It is supposed to be special. Sometimes even divine. It comes once in a while, not every afternoon like your 4 p.m. chai. If you start having goosebumps every second, what is the next high? Peeling your own skin?
It must be grand, full of gestures, and preferably tragic. There should be a hint of sacrifice somewhere in the plot.
You must be selfless, even in death.
You must fight for it. The world against you.
It is not easy to find. You will know it when you see it. One look is enough for love at first sight. Nature will make sure there is either rain, breeze, sunset, stars, or sunrise. The formula has not changed for centuries.
And of course, there is always “the one.” Exactly one person in the entire world who can truly make you feel loved, make everything worth it. Do you fancy your odds?
It’s Not That Simple!
No one stops living because someone else ceases to exist in their life. We think that losing them is the end, but we always find a way to move on. It is one of the quiet powers of being human. Who better to explain it than Lord Krishna? He was never married to Radha, yet he lived, achieved great things, won wars, and fulfilled his destiny.
I believe there is always “a one” in life. Our gift is to move from “the” to “a.” If only Heer and Ranjha or Romeo and Juliet had allowed themselves that chance. If they had just waited. Who told them there was no life beyond each other? You always outlive your heartbreak. All you need is one honest attempt. Stop chasing and it will come from where you least expect. It is not just a line from literature. It is life, lived first hand. If you chase the butterfly, it will fly away. But if you grow a beautiful garden, it will find you, often with more than one.
The best part is that love does not demand anything extraordinary. Most of the time it is simple, regular, and one of the most accessible things, in our good, average life. Most of our fathers never built a Taj Mahal for our mothers, yet they lived decades together. They found love in a house full of people and in scooter rides with two children between them. They still do, even in their sarcasm, taunts, and little bites. It was never glamorous enough to inspire us, so we ignored the best examples we had.
We went for the glitter, but the truth is Ram fought a war for Sita, and he also let her go. They never lived their ending together. Yudhishthir pawned Draupadi in a game, and that single act set the Mahabharata in motion. Who does that to the one they love? We have a habit of twisting things, bending facts until they suit the story we want to hear. Even the most sacred examples are never as flawless as we make them.
At times it gets stuck, and then it needs work. It’s easy to give up when there’s friction. That’s natural. But when it is worth it, you find ways to stop yourself from giving up. Like the time you kept going through the entire cake even when your stomach said no.
Binge-watching a movie on a weekend is one of our favourite things. The couch becomes our fortress. But to get there we have at least two round-table conferences before we agree on what to watch. When that doesn’t work, I bribe my way in with chores and flowers. The pillars of a happy household are when a man gets both done. Sometimes love asks for more work than you expect.
Sunday evening grocery shopping is not exciting, but I make sure to get a cake and a hot chocolate before we start. It has become a ritual. I find love in that monotony, in it happening the same way every time.
Maybe it is safe to ignore some of the rules the great stories gave us. Maybe we can let the horses run beyond the bias and allow it to be something ordinay and always within reach. I try to see it everywhere. In the compliment the uncle from my building gave me about my blog in the lift. In giving a pass to someone on the road when I don’t have to. In following traffic rules even when no one is watching.
To Love Thyself
Our wait for that someone who will walk into our life and make everything worth it, the wait, the heartbreak, the mess, feels a lot like our wait for the ‘Ache Din’ promised by the government. Hopeful, but painfully slow. At some point, it is better to take control rather than sit around waiting, at least in the matters we can.
When something as sacred as Dharma can come from within, why cannot the same be true for something even holier, love. Why cannot it start with appreciating myself for what I have done, achieved, fought for, and everything I am still working towards. I think I am doing a decent job. The only thing pushing me forward is that I am still trying.
Loving yourself can be as simple as recognising the moment you thought would break you and knowing you made it through anyway. You get past what you thought you could not, every single time.
I don’t want to hold the same regret as Andy Bernard, aka ‘The Nard Dog’:
I correct it by reminding myself that I am already living a movie, a hero’s life. And you cannot help but love the hero. Always be one, no matter how impractical it seems. It keeps the love for yourself alive, because the hero inside is full of possibilities.
I might not be a wonder boy, but I still like to believe I am one. It began when I let go of the pressure to make it extraordinary and allowed myself to find it in everything ordinary, exactly the way it was meant to be. Sometimes I even smiled because I had just found a new song I could play on repeat.
I am not someone who would change much if given the chance. But for myself, there are a few things I wish I had done more.
Gone a bit easier on myself.
Spent more evenings and nights just with me. Done more just for myself, said no more often, because loving yourself also comes with a price.
Become a morning person, much earlier.
Shown more love and cut myself some slack.
Written more, travelled more, spent a bit extra on experiences.
Taken better care of my health.
Bought more flowers and gone to more open mics.
Learnt to cook earlier.
Quit my job sooner.
Gone for walks and practiced empathy more often.
Why not treat yourself the way you once expected your first love to love you?
If push comes to shove, be the conceited man without any admirers if you have to. Be one, because it is breathtaking. Love yourself, especially in the moments when you do not think you need it. You might just take your own breath away. What a feeling that would be, mesmerised, like when I remember her ponytail, only this time it is for me.
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I'm not aware of the fact why...but i was sobbing reading first two para . lol . We have been told that love comes with big gestures , background music etc..etc . But the thing is somethimes we don't even notice the love around us we just feel it .
Thank you so much for this write up. It's like it found me at the right time when I needed it the most. I'm such a daydreamer but practical at the same time but yesterday after watching Devdas and Heer Ranjha for the first time.. and remembering about other movies like that.. my head was swirling what if I'd find one and if the tragedy happens.. will I be able to love anyone like that again... This was sooo beautiful.