I find it difficult to remember what to add first, onion or tomatoes, when making a gravy. I was in the kitchen a while back trying to make egg and potato curry. I added chopped onions first and then the tomatoes. I hope that works. I had to stop preparing the gravy midway when I realized the egg wasn’t boiled yet. I thought they were and so I tried peeling off the shell of an egg. White liquid oozed from inside. Oops. I placed back the egg back in the vessel, with the other eggs and potatoes and lighted back the flame. The egg is getting boiled as I write this post. The onions and tomatoes are cooling down in a frying pan as I write this post. I am 30 years old as I write this post. The transition from twenties to thirties happened yesterday. When people turn 30, they often feel like expressing how it feels to be thirty. I have no clear feelings. But I feel like expressing nevertheless.
Biwi will be back from her dance rehearsals in less than hour. I hope I have something eatable for her when she returns. I don’t usually cook food. Today is perhaps the first time since we moved to Goa, that I have attempted something on my own (without her asking me to). Earlier today, she had asked me what I think of love as. Love is an undefined feeling that comes from within and can’t be expressed in words. I told her. I didn’t tell her whether I loved her or not. She didn’t ask. I don’t know. I do know she loves me. That’s the reason I have never let her leave me since she discovered me. Or we discovered each other as they say.
There was a time when I had felt I was in love, whatever love was. I had felt so, because I had wanted to be with those girls. Wanted to be with them forever. Live with them. And that never happened. So I never could know if that really was love. And then I started hanging out with MRP. And I could feel her fascination for me. Her admiration for me. And her eagerness to be with me. I let her be with me. Because she was a good girl to be with. And yet, I am not sure I ever fell in love with her.
After several months of courtship, I was clear about one thing though. I had the feeling that life would be better with her than if she left. Would you call that love? I don’t know. I proposed to her one day, to marry me. She said yes. We got married. And now it’s not just about the two of us. New families have met each other; wew relationships have been forged. A simple sweet relationship between a girl in love with a crazy boy, and a crazy boy who was never sure if he was in love and yet didn’t feel like getting the girl drift away, has been replaced by a husband-wife relationship. I am 30 years old now and I have been together with MRP, now my biwi, since more than two years, and I still carry the same feeling. The feeling where you don’t feel you are in love and yet at the same time, you don’t really want her to stop being a part of your life. I wonder if I am the only one who feels this way. When I am away, I hardly miss my wife. I hardly miss anybody. I hardly miss my ma, papa, siblings. Does that mean I don’t love them? May be not. May be, I don’t know what love is. Does anybody know what love is? I am not dying to find out the answer anyway. I am okay with this state of being. Where I have no clear feelings. But I feel like expressing nevertheless. I am 30 years old.
One reply on “So I turned 30…”
When you open your eyes every morning to see me sleeping beside you, you do get this beautiful smile on your face. What would you name that feeling?! When you come all of sudden from behind and hug me, grab me, we feel like getting romantically notorious every single time. What would you name that feeling?! You are happy all by yourself which is outstanding in its own way, but, you do feel equally happy or hopefully happier with me being around in your life. What would you name that feeling?! Very frequently, you pester me in the night. That feeling of pestering the other one comes from where?! What would you name that feeling?! The fact that in spite of being together for more than two years and living literally together ‘all the time’ in Goa, our life still has the same zeal, freshness and liveliness is because we both are blessed to have each other. What would you name this very blessing and the happiness that it brings along with it?! Love is not a complicated word as you make it sound here. Its as simple as waking up in the morning with a smiling happy face to see to your right side. If ‘we’ bring a simple soulful smile on each others face, it is ‘love. Its not important to feel love every single moment. What is important is to be ‘love’. Attaining that conscious level of constant love with your own being is difficult and that is precisely what every human being, you and me, should thrive towards. If you are ‘love’, every thing around you and every person around you is love. You often say I am too sweet. What makes me sweet?! The answer is love perhaps. You are not searching for an answer, I know. But, the answer is readily available in every single moment of your life. Just be aware of it.