My Interview – ‘Love Call, a far Cry’
Love is all about being with the one who stirs your soul, peppers your heart with honey -laced dreams. It is a lot more than the Bard’s Language. Just the mention of the same conjures up rosy images of perfumed gardens, passionate twilights, singing fountains, candle-lit dinners and a relationship where soft whispers echo for a lifetime.
(The following text is chat that happened b/w I and a Reporter of Hindustan Times – Disney Brar)

HT – Love’s the flavour of the season. Everybody has someone to care for.
GP – Love means Loss Of Virtually Everything.

HT – Hey! How can you be so harsh’
GP – It is money, not love that drives the world. A fat wallet brings love; a rich man has no dearth of love.

HT – It dilutes hatred and melts even the sternest of hearts.
GP – Many of my friends are in love and they sure lose track of everything else.

HT – Are you jealous because you don’t have a girlfriend’
GP – No, I think, beyond the confines of family one can’t find love.

HT – Are you crazy’ Look around, love marriages are on the rise.
GP – They are short-lived.

HT – Are there any rules, which decide that love is doomed’ OK, all love classics portray a sad ending, but then, love is not about ‘Living Happily Ever After’. It’s sacrifice, after all.
GP – Yes, love also has some qualities; it makes one work on oneself.

HT – Edgar Allan Poe remarked that love makes the soul drink with delirious thirst’..
GP – OK, but love is something that has never clicked with me.

HT – Are you a misogynist? Being so paranoid about love and relationships at your age is dangerous, no?
GP- Not at all. I don’t have a girlfriend, but I take life as it comes. It is possible that I may fall in love unconsciously; but consciously; I don’t want to, as it makes you numb towards everything else.

HT – But love, existing within the confines of family; is ludicrous. Can you match love b/w parents & siblings with love b/w a man & a woman?
GP – Why confuse love with infatuation?

HT – It happens but not always. Love at a mature level, is spiritual.
GP – Love is a mirror to one’s soul; it is all about changing oneself to suit the other person’s need.

HT – Exactly, it is all about fitting a jigsaw puzzle. You never know when you find the right match for yourself.
GP – I saw the movie ‘Cast Away’, in which the Hero (Tom Hanks) deserted on an island; lives by assuming that his wife is with him, the spirit of love makes him live, but his wife is married to someone else when he returns.

HT – (We see where it’s coming from). Don’t let it colour your perception.
GP – It’s confusing.

HT – You won’t know until you fall in love.
GP – Fall in Love, don’t fall in life.

He sits silent. Meanwhile, all around, love s clearly visible in the cosy twosomes strewn on the Campus. New stories commence and old ones flicker passionately, at times, at the brink of getting sniffed away, and at times, glowing bright and full of vigour, baked over the years.

This Interview was published in Hindustan Times; on 23rd sep 05.