LOVE

Not to worry, this isn’t a lovely-dovie entry. It’s a memoir of my fumbled attempts to describe my romantic life and Western notions of love to a group of Indian twenty-somethings.

Picture a bull doing ballet in a china shop. Speaking as the person who played the part of the bull, it was a rather awkward scene. But hey, sometimes broken pieces are beautiful. Ever seen the mosaics of St. Marc’s in Venice?

This all begins on Tuesday, when my class talked about love. Every guys’ eyes light up at the mention and each of their mouths eagerly turn up into smiles. The one young women smiles at me, and shyly turns her head down, embarrassed.

We begin by trying to define love.

One young man says, “It’s a meeting of two souls.” Yes, everyone aggress, love is a meeting of two souls. “There’s nothing like it in the world,” he adds.

I find this strangely moving. 8000 plus miles of physical difference between our homelands, and even farther in terms of worldview, and yet the six of us, sitting in a small sweltering room together, describe love with the same terms. "A meeting of two souls.”

For them, love grows. This is a world of arranged marriages, where your parents pick a mate and you learn to love them. You grow to love them. You work with what is chosen for you.

In America children choose for themselves. And so we date (insert my own insight # 1 into the American dating scene). Because our parents do not do the choosing for us, children have the task of finding the best mate for themselves.

“Have you ever had a boyfriend mame?”

Oh jeez. “Um, yes, I have.” (I am not admitting to two. I really do not feel the need to be crowned the Western dating queen of these villages.)

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Yes.” (Gosh, is that even worse than admitting to having had a boyfriend? I attempt to read all of their faces. No shock. Just anticipation. What will she say next?)

The first young man thinks that true love only happens once. “Well, in the US we have this thing called 'first love'.” I give a very fumbled attempt at explaining this foreign idea, because this means that we have more than one love. (YOU try explaining American concepts of love and romance and relationships in one hour while re-hearing everything you say through the filters of their ears and dealing with a language barrier. Why do we even have something called “first love"? And how do you even begin to describe it when every person I have ever meet has experienced it differently?) Anyway, this entails me trying to explain that I think you love your first love differently than you love your last love, a notion that was either just silly or truly lost in translation.

Essentially, this is the point in the conversation where the bull tries to do a lot of dramatic tight spins in the middle of the dance piece and falls over. My explanation is met by mostly polite (and confused) head nods. Oh man, keep talking.

Somehow this leads into my mother’s perspective on my dating. (Mom if you are reading this I didn’t actually make it sound like you wanted me to date every man under the sun, despite how this may be interpreted). I tell them that after I broke up with my first boyfriend (damn, did I just admit to having had 2?) my mom said “You are NOT going to marry the next guy you date. You will meet many men in your life. You are only 16. Do NOT marry the next guy you date.”

Now there are very wide eyes and bewildered looks. Whoops, again.

P. says that marriage is a lottery. I tell him that that is why we date in the U.S. (insert my own insight into American dating # 2). Because you can never be 100% positive that you’re picking the right person, but we try to improve the odds by sorting through the selection before we choose one.

More explanation still necessary.

“Okay, so let’s say that my first boyfriend didn’t read a lot and wasn’t well educated but he was great with his family. So there’s one really good thing, but there’s one bad thing also, because we can’t connect intellectually. And say that my next boyfriend was incredibly articulate and read a lot but he hated his family and didn’t care about them. Well, I know that’s not someone I want to have children with. But say that my third boyfriend was educated, read a lot, and was great with his family. I know he has the important qualities I am looking for, so I marry him.”

JACKPOT. I have just explained American dating (albeit in a toned-down version, I get three boyfriends and apparently am only looking for two things in a life-mate) and it is cross-culturally acceptable. Western relationships make sense in an Indian context. I come extraordinarily close to jumping up and down and giving myself a high-five.

Now that American dating makes some sense they break off into small groups. P leans forward and says “Mame, I have been in love, once.”

She was in one of his classes. He never told her, always loved her from afar, and continued to love her, despite the fact that the feelings were not returned to him. "What do you call that?" he asks. "We call it unrequited love." "Yes, yes, it was unrequited love."

She had 30 Punjabi suits, all in different colors. So he had 30 shirts made, each one matching one of her suits. And he wore them as a testament to his love.

She is married now, he says, with a baby. That was her destiny.

This news is delivered peacefully, without resignation. For him destiny is acceptable, life goes on, and love does not have to be possible in order to be beautiful.

I spend the rest of the afternoon wandering between Indian and American love, between choice and destiny, between the expectations of what we want and the reality of those we fall for.

I linger in the possibilities.