I used to think that it was still easy to love a lady with beauty. It is difficult to strive to love someone who has no outer reason to be loved. (It is easy to get the love hanging luscious fruits, but no one bothers to take at least the trouble to get the one that is on higher branches or hidden behind the leaves. Everyone plucks the flower in the nearest park, but none bother to travel into the forest to witness the rarest of the blooms.)
Moreover, at least that’s what men are fed the idea of. Movies just validate the idea that women of looks and men of muscles are only worth living for and dying for. In tales and folklore, men have always chosen to die or live for women of beauty. But, I’ve also seen a tall, fair, charming man (a colleague of my father) choosing to marry by choice and love a woman of wheatish to dark complexion, short stature, looking for women of goodness of heart and soul, but this is a very rare case.
(I have heard people rebuking the man for choosing someone of his stature, matching his looks, and used to call the lady a witch to have enticed or done Black magic to get him as husband. They have always been a loving and respectful couple, not many words, ever smiling and very great in hospitality and generosity. And not made up, but feeling harmonious and peaceful, but hopefully they don’t pay heed to anyone. Earlier, I loved the feeling of love and being loved. When the object and objective of love fade away, we start to become adverse and hate the very feeling of love and being loved.
Yes, love, like most things in our lives, is fed by certain stereotypes and social constructs. Hence, it suffers deformation and distortion like everything else. One must learn to think independently and cultivate an idealism. But such people are always few in every society and age. But then there are young people like you who are the hope of the future.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
