I remember I once wrote an article called Punch, Drunk..Love maybe a couple of years back in my old blog. Ever since I migrated here (as in my cyber home migration), I had prevented myself to categorically stay away from love-related topics. You can never be politically correct when you are writing about love, because it is subjective, and everyone has his or her own opinion about it.

I’m sticking with the same title primarily because I think it is catchy, it epitomizes what love is all about, and above all it is the title of one my favorite films- the 2002 Adam Sandler starrer that made me go what the… (I’ll beep out the last word).

I have grown incredibly in the last two years. I have experienced pain and delight in equal measures. But this article is here primarily thanks to a certain Indian filmmaker called Baskar. When my cousin brother cajoled me to watch this movie called ‘Orange’, I was wondering what the big deal might be. But little did I know that the movie presented several ideas that are complex yet very much related to the modern world we live in.

Neither is Baskar is excellent filmmaker (Bommarilu was brilliant through) nor Ram Charan Teja a great heir to his father (too much of painful to the eye colors from him but was constantly doing things over the top). Neither is Orange a great movie. It’s quite the opposite. It’s annoying, full of unnecessary style, it tries to be funny and yet it irritates, and it’s basic presentation is just the image of a 16-year-old girl full of excitement.

Imagine a good-looking 16-year-old girl wearing all sorts of colors on her so that she would look bright but ends up looking too bright for anyone. That’s how Orange was as a movie. A fashion faux pas.

But that aside, some thirty minutes (or little bit more I guess) into the movie and you have the heroine going all flattered after seeing a lion and says she wants this love forever in her love, to which our evidently full-of-himself hero says he can only love for a short time and would later break up. That’s what this movie revolves on, the idea of love lasting only for a little while.

The thought was amazing and mature, but yet I feared the filmmakers would commit the cardinal sin of deceiving the viewers into saying love does last forever and ever- even beyond the graves we can awaken and dance duets with our loved ones.

Thankfully it did not. The idea might taste bad in many people’s mouths, but as usual, many would opt for fantasy than reality. Admittedly, you need that. Love itself is a fairytale, and to keep dream going on, you treat it like a fairytale, and always keep in mind the ‘happily ever after’ that would come at the end of the book.

But the book doesn’t end till your life ends. It doesn’t matter if you are 17, 25, 30, or 55, love will end if at some point- you start taking its presence in your life for granted.

Love, or relationships, takes plenty of effort to create and manage at the same time. How long it lasts depends on the will of two individuals more than anything.

I had said long ago in one my articles that one should use the heart as a compass to lead life. But often we superficial people tend to overlook the role our brains play in determining our lives. Our hearts can point us the right direction, but compass always remains in the pocket- you take it out only when you are lost, and even at that time a compass takes some time before it clearly points out which is your North.

Hearts are the foundation of life. But brains are the tools to live life with. A compass alone won’t be enough for you to negotiate through bushes. A compass may point north, but you might be starring down at a lake in front of you, and beyond that, a mountain. Would you, for the love of your life, blindly walk into the lake and expect to climb the mountain, all the while saying ‘the will is enough’? You’ll definitely end up drowning, like a character from a well-made tragic comedy.

This is when you keep the compass, mark your direction, look around you, and start using your brains to negotiate around the lake and around the mountain. The path that you need to take will be much more complicated, but there are no straightforward paths in life.

Run through the ways, climb the mountains, trek through anything, and you shall meet plenty of hurdles and temptations. If amidst all these you still keep faith in your dreams, in your north, only then do you deserve to reach your promise land.

Love to applies the same way. The compass points to you which person you should, or could, be with, but how you work out a relationship amidst all hurdles (trust me, you’d face more than you can imagine in today’s world), you need to use your brains, or to put it more simply- you need to do it the traditional way- take effort, work for it.

You might be 60 and have had a 40-year-old love story, and even then you are not guaranteed of a happily ever after.

Love, as narrated in Orange, initially lasts only for a certain period. It’s all fine and rosy and weak knees when you know you are in love. You are excited by someone else’s presence, you enjoy the small attention you get from him or her, it makes you dream of great things. If this small rose is this good, how good a bed of roses be?

But maintaining a bed of roses is not a given. Roses wither after some time. Everything ends. Your bed of roses (I’m referring to a relationship here) will end at some point. And when it does, there is only one way you can keep the magic going, bother to stand up, walk, pluck some new flowers, and replace the withered ones on your bed. That way, you always have your bed of roses. Don’t lie on that bed expecting it to last forever. Without proper ‘maintenance’, nothing, and I mean nothing, lasts.

Saying ‘I will love you forever’ is nothing but an assurance, an uncertainty. Nobody ‘will’ love someone forever. All you can say that you love someone right now, at this moment. And for it to last forever, you need to spend time from your everyday life, to pluck one flower at a time.

Many will scorn the fact that love isn’t magic. It should be magic, according to them, where everything falls into place, on its own. But if there is anything I learned over time, we are asking too much from God. He’s generous enough to wave his hand and give us the emotion of Love. Where Love is, there God is. In a cunning way he proves his presence, and tells us there is something in this world no scientists could ever put their fingers on.

But aren’t we being too spoiled to ask Him to keep that magic going on forever? Love is like wish, a star. It shines brightly, but He has given it to you. It is up to you to keep it shining, don’t expect Him to be your maintenance guy all the time.

Loving someone is like setting upon the sea by yourself. It’s all-nice when you could just wet your legs and run back to the beach. You look at the beauty of the sea and you wish you could swim in it with ease.

But the longer a relationship goes, the deeper into the sea you travel. After sometime, you need to forget life jackets and learn swimming on your own. Everybody stands on the beach and gazes at the beauty of the sea. But only a special someone actually swims across it and gazes at the beach from far away, with a feeling that you have conquered the sea.

If you want to conquer the sea, learn to fall in love time and again, with the same person. Love will taste like victory as well.

When love too tastes like victory, you will know you have earned and lived your life to the maximum.

-Cup your faces in shout in jubilation when you finally have learned to swim in the sea of love, that’s the ultimate emotion-

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