Lovarea
LURINGLUV

By Faria Shahab

When I said "love", my 18-year-old sister imagined a cute hunk, someone close to Johnny Depp or maybe Hugh Grant. When I asked my dad he started thinking about how things were 24 years ago. When my mom heard it she started worrying over the clothes to be washed, the food to be cooked and the dishes to be cleaned. For my granny it was that green sequined sari of hers in which everyone said she used to look like Madhubala - 50 years ago, of course.

LOVE…aaaaaaaaaaahhh…yes love… This four-letter word conjures its own vision for everyone. For anyone of my age it means cupids, chocolates, red colour, hearts...

But here is what some of my acquaintances thought about love...reduced to a three-letter word now thanks to the short-hand sms/chat lingo and popularly called 'LUV'. (Pronunciation: 'LOOV')

My close friend who is a cadet…

"For me, love is when I see her and my heart wants to salute her, when I am lost in my front rolls she is the only one who flies to my mind. She is the only one I want to sleep in…it's my 'uniform'!

Well…after the uniform has been doffed off by the higher officials, he might be reconsidering right now. As someone has said, "It's impossible to love and be wise." So true!

An acquaintance I met at a saloon

"Dekho yaar, for me love is MONEY, MONEY and yes MONEY. I mean, helloo… I can live without a man but who can live without money? I need to get my GUCCI, my VERSACE, my CHANEL…

Duhhh. Men can change, men can be infidel, but money can change men, money can set them right. Smart move, girl!

The Nerdy-Birdy

"According to the current statistics, women and yeah men, too, spend like half of their lives trying to please the person they think they love, but basically love is nothing but just a nerve impulse travelling at a light speed in the limbic system, along with the hypothalamus affecting our frontal lobe where emotions are being processed. I don't need someone to love, I can tell my limbic system to do that for me anytime anywhere…!"

Huh? What was she saying? I kind of fell asleep somewhere in the middle of it. *yawning*

The Daddy's Girl

 "Love… Well it's an emotion that strongly binds you to your family. Love for me is what I feel when I look at my parents. What I experience when I receive blessings from my elders. It's a sentiment which arouses in me a desire to do something good for my siblings. A commodity that makes me closer to my cherished ones."

Woman, you sucked all the life out of love. It now seems more of a duty!

The Open Eyed Dreamer

"Love brings into my mind the image of a handsome prince who would find me irresistible the moment he sets his eye on me. He would adore me day and night and I would be unaware of my secret admirer till the day he saves me (doesn't really matter from what as long as I get to fall in his arms at the end). And then I would become his princess and we would live happily ever after."

Well, okay! It seems as if she is a character zapped out of the fairy tale, oh now I get why Walt Disney had the super idea to produce 'Enchanted'.

The Hulk ooopps... I meant The Hunk!

"A beautiful girl. Tall, long hair, fair, slim of course and the moment you look at her, your heart starts beating at a faster rate and she just takes your breath away. That's what love truly is. It all starts and ends with beauty."

'Shallow' is the word invented for guys like you, Mr.

The Mommy's lad

"Jo ammi papa kahain gain…"

Whoa..! Now this is what is called the Eastern Bride...oh...nahin, Eastern Groom!

The denial cookies

"Boyfriends?" Eeewww… Never… Did you just hear Mr. X is going out with Miss Y? Girls get so carried away when it comes to guys…*ring ring* The phone sings "Every night in my dreams…I see you ..." Picks up. "Oooohhh…jaan..it's you, how was your day, I missed you…"

These are the worst kind, because they beautifully lead double lives; may be double guys or girls, who knows? We are only guessing!

This is only some of the elementary classification of the 'luv hierarchy'. Look around you and I bet you could add a million more to this endless list of "luving" and suffering. I found this great quote online one day: To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down."

I don't know about you, but I definitely got it down. :) Did you?