Cupid is an Ass hole.

I like to believe that love is a malady that afflicts all people with unprecedented democracy.
That it infiltrates all lives without consideration for caste or creed or color of skin or depth of coffer.
That it invokes the divine euphoria as well as the crippling sorrow in all its victims irrespective of circumstance.

Circumstance being the aspect that is usually held responsible for most love stories culminating in tragedy.
I however believe that the nature of love is tragic. That from the moment you recognize the symptoms, you should say, a silent prayer for your heart and good bye to your innocence. Nothing can rip apart your naiveté and idealism like love gone bad. And love does go bad, I have a billion lives scattered across history to bear witness to the integrity of this claim. Love inexplicably, inevitably goes bad. But not ultimately, no. Not Ultimately.

Sometimes, it redeems itself from the very bottom of the putrid barrel of wasted romanticism, like the phoenix rising from the ashes and reclaims the optimistic imagery of a freshly inflicted heart as improbable reality. Blessed truly are those, who have the strength of conviction to stand steadfast through the toughest trials of a withering entanglement to find their way to destiny,

Most however, are not blessed. Or not steadfast enough to weather the stormy mid-life of all romantic relationships. Most give up. Their conviction and their commitment. The hope and the vision. They give up on the dream they had crafted together, because they fail to realize that only at its worst is love at its most resolute. They fail to see the truth beneath angry words and hateful gazes and pompous smirks. They tend to take everything at face value, giving into the reality that has been constructed around them by millions of spoiled lives constricted by illusions of nobility and forthrightness. They fail to recognize their egos getting in the way of the simple things that had made the love such a prized and miraculous experience to begin with.

And in all this failing, lies the undoing of the maze of fantastic dreams that the lovers had built for themselves to attain a purpose for their interaction. To ferment a goal to be accomplished for this seemingly absolutely inexplicable rush of feelings towards a basically normal human being.

It is after all, in its purest form at least, more a compulsion than a choice. Once smitten, you really have no recourse left but to follow the stupefying demands of your enraptured heart. And hence you stumble on through the initial magnificence of it all. Where every word spoken is true despite how exaggerated and superficial it may sound to any one else. And every action you take is ultimately right because you undertook it in the guise of love.

The world revolves simply around two people, you and your beloved. Nothing else exists, the wind blows merely to blow her hair in your face so that you my swoon upon the fragrance of her perfectly groomed tresses, split ends and craggy curls and all. I have no clue as to what women find even remotely fascinating about their men so I’m at a loss for using a suitable image to reflect the ladies’ point of view.

In either case though, gender-wise, the spell wears off soon enough. And the lilting fragrance turns into too many eggs and the split ends and craggy curls take center stage. The things, quirks rather, that you once found endearing begin to make less and less sense in terms of logic and propriety and it becomes exponentially harder to absorb all the nuances of a very different animal in the name of love.

This is where most couples surrender, for this can last a long long time. Sometimes much longer than the happiness did. And so , at least for a little while, almost all couples continue to bear each other in a perpetual state of disgust with a few bright moments reminiscent of the by gone glory sprinkled haphazardly in between just for the sake of fetid irony.

Those of us who are lucky to survive the onslaught if miserable, heart breaking companionship, or masochistic enough to bear with being crumpled up like badly written poetry every day, make it through and find the light at the end of the tunnel.

The rest of us find out, in the words of Mettalica, that the light at the end of the tunnel is (in fact) a freight train coming our way.