I remember breaking up with a girl over a phone call in my car. Words were exchanged to that effect. To be precise, I told her I never wanted to see her again.“But I want to see you,” she professed, teary-eyed (her faltering voice gave her tears away). The phone went silent. The line did not “get cut”, as Indians are wont to say. She had cut it herself, just like I had cut her from my life.
In all fairness, I was seeing her for marriage. Which meant I had met this girl a fair few times, with both of us thinking there might just be something more than coffee dates and car drives. Until I stopped thinking that way.
No love programme is irreplaceable
When we are in love, the love programme that is wired into us, seems irreplaceable
ShutterstockI have seen people devastated by the havoc unleashed by love. Rather, the dearth of it. I once met a gentleman who, after pleasantries had been exchanged, went into a bitter, raging monologue about his ex-wife and how she had destroyed his life. In his eyes, I could see a kind of madness, that which can only be seen in victims of heartbreak.
A girl who had once been dating my friend, came uninvited to his wedding and sat in the front row, watching her ex-lover take pheres with a demure girl completely unlike the free spirit she was. What on earth might have prompted her to land there? She did not seem sad or betrayed. Worse still, she had an eerie smile on her face. Perhaps she wanted to know who her lover would be waking up to. In the days to follow, the sight of the empty pillow beside her would gradually suck the air out of her lungs. Until she was over him, too
When we are in love, the love programme that is wired into us, seems irreplaceable. As though there could be nothing better than that particular version of love hardwired into our minds. And hearts. And lungs.
One fine day, the programme changes. You find yourself shutting down, like a MacBook Air would during the latest Apple update. Except, there is no update. That love programme has been erased from your mind (and heart and lungs). When you restart, there is nothing on your hard drive. One piece of malware (you certainly think of it as such if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of being the one broken up with) has erased everything else on it. You are empty.
When we change, we have to destroy the things that no longer serve us
The programme of love works in strange ways
PixabayI imagine the girl I had broken up with must have felt this very sense of emptiness. Only a short while later, I would break up with another girl I almost got married to. She was broken. But something else happened. Something strange. I was broken, too.
It was as though my breakup virus had turned on itself with a sense of relish, after attacking the host it had latched onto over the last few months. When you are in love, a twin programme is written on two drives. You are not only breaking up with the person you want to end things with.
You are breaking up with yourself, too. At least, with the version of yourself you once were.
Like computer hard drives, there comes a time when the hardware of love cannot support its software. There is a call for a massive restructuring of sorts. It is simpler in the case of computers. You can stick to the older software until you are able to afford the superior hardware that will allow you to avail of a new technological high. Not so in the case of us human beings. When we change, we have to destroy the things that no longer serve us, with immediate effect.
We have to create different versions of our hardwares, too. Create black holes where stars once shone.
For reasons best known to me, I opted out of both the aforementioned relationships (if you can even call them relationships). With the first girl, the programme I had erased from the poor girl’s mind did not have a backup in mine. In the case of the second, the situation was trickier. I had fallen in love. It had taken a breakup for me to find out. Needless to say, in both cases I chose to click “uninstall”, with my love software having changed versions. Ironically, both breakups were engineered over the telephone.
Love deals in updates, not upgrades
Love’s updates are, by definition, painful, says the author
PixabayCharles Darwin once proposed that species change over time. I believe that statement has more than just biological implications. I must have been updated to several different versions of the person in my body over the course of my 40 odd years. And yet, people refer to me by the singular Rohit. As though there is only one fixed idea of who I am.
Sometimes people change. It is difficult to imagine how a gentleman who loved his family suddenly left them in the lurch and gallivanted into the sunset with a young Scandinavian flame.
She plays Diwali with her children and they watch the Northern Lights together. The language of love is one and the same. Only its versions are different.
I remember lying distraught in bed for a week after I had broken up with the second girl. I was sorry I had broken her heart, but I would have been even more sorry if I had not. And while it might be extremely painful for the person who has to bear the brunt of the decisions we have made, it is imperative they know that enduring a few days of hell clearly trumps a lifetime of “bleh”.
If you are hurting, it is because love’s updates are, by definition, painful. Updates, not upgrades, mind you. That updated software might have a bug embedded in it, like the solitary bed bug that unleashes an army of terror.
When someone breaks up with you, remember this — it is not you, it is them. To forget another, we must first destroy the versions of ourselves we once were. To learn to breathe again, we must first suffocate our former selves to death.
Rohit Trilokekar is a novelist from Mumbai who flirts with the idea of what it means to love. His heart’s compass swerves ever so often towards Kolkata, the city he believes has the most discerning literary audience.
