So do people still believe in the ‘happily-ever-after’? Do those romantic candlelit dinners still exist? Well what I am really asking is that – does romance still exist? And what is romance? Do we limit it to two individuals from different genders coo chi cooing? I have been confused about this word for a long time. Every time I ask anyone, ‘Are you a romantic person?’ and they would say ‘Yes’. But when I ask to explain the same to me, they don’t really have many words in their vocabulary to do the same. I casually ask a friend recently if he believes in romance and said, “Yes! But for me romance is of a different kind.” I started twiddling my thumb, which by the way is my latest hobby, time pass and my profession these days. What kind and how many kinds are there? “It differs from one era to another, from one generation to another, from one person to another, from one historian to another and even from one Shakespeare’s play to another. For me romance is deliberation of life and then letting myself be with the part I enjoyed the most. And not necessarily the good part, but the part I exhausted myself completely and had to restart for the next victory or defeat,” he said looking at the ceiling as if it was all written there. Even my friend Jerry (remember Jerry from my previous blogs) believes in romance… but does not want to divulge which kind. So for a better insight I, yet again, stopped a traveler who like to walk past fast and raises his eyebrows every time I stop him. I showed him my question and made a face. He said, “This is something I am not open for discussion!” I didn’t want to give up and so I asked him whether he is a romantic person. He deliberated and told me the different dimensions of romance. “For your generation (he is about 10 years elder to me, so I think he is allowed to use that line) romance is limited to dating, which comes with its own expiry date. Yes, I agree that for a lot of people before this generation, it meant courtship or dating as well. But the times and the dedication toward it were different. Again a problem with this generation is that of stability. Not that my generation didn’t lack that, but there were fewer one astray than the count now. You all give too much importance to things that actually mean too little in real test of time. I still can’t fathom for the life of me how it works for all of you,” he said clutching his traveler’s bag firmly. “I romance the feeling of vacuum that will be created after I am gone. Remember what Ashoka did? He gave up on everything not because he didn’t value it but he knew there is more to life than this. He created a vacuum, which the others felt. But he went on to lead a different life. There is more in the nothingness that you can see. When you are too busy saying, ‘that person said this about me, the life is not fair to me, everyone has an agenda against me’, you are blinding yourself from the love of that nothingness that holds the essence. I am no saint, I have made my share of mistakes, but I have looked and looked very hard for the answers. Some of them have been answered and some are waiting to be answered. Now I will leave you with that,” he said with a suppressed smile and walked again, fast. He left me with two words that make me ponder with great pleasure, ‘romanticising idolism’. Though I began asking what my generation thinks can be related to romance, but I now admit that one can romance just about anything and anyone. Am I a romantic? Yes! I have a romance with every line written about life, music and Al Pachino. Is there more to romance with in life? Oh definitely! But for that I have to still prepare myself to look at that nothingness… that vacuum. Now I am going to go back to my very first question, does it have a happily-ever-after? Ah and I found my perfect answer in a quote by Oscar Wilde --- ‘They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.’ Ain’t it romantic?
