AM0R:

It’s the noun/verb/adjective (and all and none of these at the conscious level of reality!! :P ) that has h0unded all us literature students for almost 3years nw!! Since it’s the most-0ft discussed and most widely used subject in every form of cultural expression : Music, Movies etc etc.. I think its time we discuss what actually it’s all about! That’ll help us in our understanding  and interpretation of literature.! So please use your Grey Cells, ppl, its begging for s0me action !!

*References from across the literary universe is welcome!

Please try give some insight into Freud-ian & Lawrence-ian (@meg) kind of L0ve.. b’coz its totally beyond me. ~X(

There’s a very well known Sms on the topic which reads :

“Its when you really truly absolutely like a person and you d0nt kn0w why.. that’s what we call Love”

How true is that people? I think in every literary depiction this is somewhat true.. take for example, Tridib in Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Shadow Lines’, he falls in love with May Price, without any rhyme or reason. 0r may be there were reasons, if we dig 0ut Freud and his ‘literally’ psycho theory.

Sindhi falls in love with most eccentric of womankind there is, and then refuses to accept that he does and complicates the situations.

God! The deeper I think the madder ill Bec0me .. I guess.!

As I think and think and think.. I c0me to a conclusion that in literature, l0ve is, more often than not, about 0neself rather than the significant 0ther.. its about what kind of a mental disposition you have.. thus, the soldier-boy in ‘The Fox’ is concerned about “his worth” all the time, which he calculates in terms of how he will ‘get’ the girl. Miriam in Sons and Lovers is totally suffering from a very low self esteem and fear of abandonment coupled with a belief that ‘she is not meant for day to day happy life but for higher things, like Tragedy’.. thanks to which she ensures that tragedy does befall her and even when it doesn’t, she carves out her own tragedy for herself.! Fcukin m0r0n Lawrence !:P And with all these already there, she has set her eyes on Paul .. “who is incapable of anything, but friendship” because “that’s a flaw in my makeup” as he is suffering from m0ther-fixati0n!! God!!!! Anything else left out by yu Mr. Lawrence ?

Awright let me site some ‘sane’ and ‘normal’ examples. Rukmani in Nectar and Rukmini in Collector’s Wife are better balanced when it comes to Love. They are both very clear about their respective ideas of how they define love. And both of them end up comparatively happier than their slightly-psycho counterparts. :P

 D in French Lover is another ‘character’ who is absolutely clueless about what  she wants- and ends up ‘giving’ when she ought not to and refusing to ‘’give” when she might as well have. Do wrong decisions really teach her nothing?  Guess not.. and what is it that she wants in life? The novel ends with the picture of a lonely D standing in a well-furnished but ‘empty’ room and her life devoid of any hope for future or anyone to share it with, considering that her ‘French lover’ has now left  her and her mother is dead. Perhaps it was the impressions of a ’family’ (her parents’) life as unsuccessful and suppressing for the female rooted in her mind that prevent her from entering into/ living in, any normal relationship. The only person that she recalls as she stands alone in her room is her mother, with whom she probably feels at peace with, with whose failed relationship with her husband she identifies.

Many a times, across various literary representations, characters often fall in love with people in whom they find a reflection of what they think they are lacking in themselves. Like Laila, the rich, upper class girl with golden locks falls in love with a cigarette-smoking Roadside Romeo called Amir ( in “A Thousand Splendid Suns”)

Now coming to the real life.. Hmmm.. Its intensely personal, and like we all know, differs from one person to another. So any attempt to describe it universally would be futile. !

I leave the task to more mature and able gurls.. Go Qd!! Go Meg !! :D

/farheen