The One Who Was Indifferent

What is love, sometimes I wonder; and no, I do not plan to make this post some cheesy and cliched piece of impractical rubbish. I genuinely wish to be told what is it that causes people to be with each other for several years on end.

How does someone know that the person they are sharing a cup of coffee with is actually their better half? The half with whom they wish to spend a happy and married (at times) life together.

I just don't understand this notion of love, at all.

I mean, I am not apathetic to feelings of love towards people: my sisters, my Mum, my friends, all do make it into that aura warmed by my love. But to think I could spend all my life with someone out there, is a phenomenon as far-fetched as our evolution from apes (which quite a few institutions believe to be true).

Why did the Mughal Emperors establish the Shahi Mohaala if several ShahJehans could express profound love for their respective Mumtaz-es? Why does there exist the concept of extra-marital affairs in a relationship? If two people love each other like mad, shouldn't they carry on doing so forever?

If not, then does that indicate these so called lovers are actually making incorrect decisions with their lives?

Why do married couples (and in many instances unmarried ones too) have rows? Why is there divorce? Why are there single mothers struggling to make their ends meet in some corner of the world? Aren't these the examples that have paved the way for eternal love?

What made Romeo fall for Juliet? I don't know. I won't ever know. Because Shakespeare's writing is just bleh. Bleh, is right. I don't care if you disagree, he fails to make sense to me.

Why do some wives allow their husbands to manage two households? Why do others lobby their rights, getting their marriages nullified? Isn't love meant to be a process of understanding?

Of course, we all pick up fights in life. But most of these are with people we don't spend our lives with. People who we aren't bound to. Like your brother, for example. I mean, yeah, you can love him all you want, but nothing suggests you to hang on to each other when you least want to. I mean, after all, you didn't really have a choice to end up with him. It wasn't like your parents took you to a nursery and asked to pick out the baby you were most compatible with.

Compatibility. What's that? Isn't that meant to be one of the basics of love and marriage? Then how do you explain a hook-up in college that resulted in a twelve year long marriage, which ended being broken because one of the partners had brought in a third person into the system?

Were those twelve long years a gullible mistake? Was it naivete? Or was compatibility lost somewhere down the line? Or perhaps, there was no compatibility, to begin with?

So many questions. No answers. They all say, you will know when it's time.

And you ask yourself: did they know when it was time, too? Or are they veiling a mistake they know has been made? Or are they compatible? May be understanding? May be compromising?

Then couldn't having two wives achieve a compromise of any sort?

I will never know, I think.

This ridiculous form of love, I shall be indifferent to, for as long as I know.

Or...will I?

I don't know.

So many questions. Yet, no answers.

Crushes. Infatuations. Love. Lust.

So many ideologies. Yet, no convergence at any point.

Or...is there?

I don't know.

So many questions. Yet, no answers at all. None whatsoever.