'Love' ...because Lust is a Bastard!

I was probably six or seven when I hawed for the first time listening to I LOVE YOU in my classroom. Love then was not a word for children of my age to use, or so I thought. I love you was for the grownups, who have boyfriends and girlfriends. Love was for movies. And my tender little mind weaved the late nineties and early twenties bollywood scenes featuring the love of my life and me. Unaware of the feeling, love still seemed familiar since forever.

I was twelve when a couple of my girl friends and I would meet explicitly to discuss that kiss we saw in the movie, that intercourse which happened inside the sheets, those uncensored pictures in the internet and so on. Believe it or not, giggling was our new profession. Surprised by the boldness of my friends compared to the shy person that I was, I was intrigued by things they said which initially seemed gross but always gave me a tingling sensation. It wasn’t till another year when I was made aware of that thing called lust.

I am twenty and love and lust occupy my mind more than often. Call it the age of distractions or the gender politics forming a major theme of the books I read, I am that bekaar citizen who finds the politics of emotions more interesting than the state politics. 

Do I speak of love in hushed tones? Do I speak of lust behind closed doors? NO. My friends would be elated if I did. Walking in the corridors of my college, my friends would speak of love in a quite elevated manner and would give me that look of ‘be careful when you talk’ look as soon as I say ‘sex’. So it made me think, why in all these years love found its way out of the closed doors and lust did not. Ancient Greece seems really fascinating to me at times when it comes to the Dionysian festivities.

Source- Google

Once a friend of mine asked me, what would you think of me if I say I objectify women? To which I replied, I would think you’re human. Listening to this, the pseudo-feminists would probably want to kill me. But where was I wrong? To love is to be human and to lust is to be a dog? How does one see the nature of a person while falling in love at first sight? The concept of love at first sight is based totally on lust and objectification of the subject and yet we call it love when love is associated with knowing the true nature of the person.

Generalizing what I see would be doing injustice for I see the world as the few people around me. Being in the rape capital, when a man objectifies a woman he is bluntly given the tag of a rapist. But what about the objectification that women do? They may not voice it loudly for it isn’t how a lady is supposed to be. Objectification is common to both men and women.

Over the centuries, poems have been written in praise of the beauty of women. Most of the times, women are flattered and dream of a partner romantic in similar way where the romance comprises more lust than love of course. But yet it is considered love. Why is it so wrong to name it lust aloud?

Love is something to be proud of; lust is to be ashamed of. Love is spoken of in elevated and ornamented words; lust brings the sense of disgust. How does one live with the emotions without a physical touch? In a healthy relationship, love and lust go hand in hand. Alas, love  became the crown prince and lust remained the little bastard.