An eye for love...

It takes many days of going off to sleep without settling an argument, waking up next to each other’s smelly sweaty self, and scrubbing the leftovers off the plates all groggy-eyed to know how love is truly blind. This blindness does not strike you instantly. But more like the fog that shrouds Delhi in the winters. It creeps up on you unnoticed. And then shuts you off from the world. It is so dense that you do not even notice the speeding headlamps coming right at you. Until you have been knocked out, cold. Literally and otherwise. 

It is a strange kind of blindness that affects your sense of smell, touch, hearing as well. How else do you explain the free dissemination of bodily gas that most mature couples are used to? No one will ever admit to it, but farting freely in each other’s presence is the first sign that crackling chemistry is giving way to a more comfortable home science. 

When and how did you, the famously picky nose-in-the-air woman, decide that your partner’s not-so-gentle snoring can lull you to sleep better than Yog Nidra? Or for the man who once fantasised about his wife’s 22-inch waist, to put his arms around a life-size muffin and still feel like the luckiest guy in the world? 

The eyes do have a mind of their own. They see what they want to see. And tell you what you need to know. They are conjurers, trickers, con artistes. The heady days of courting, coupling are all about what could be. You see a lovely girl and your mind puts her in your arms. You want to wake up next to her for the rest of your life. Somewhere down the line, you don’t want to wake up at all. Because it would mean answering the door, fixing breakfast and putting on your best slave-face to brave the boss. You look at her sleeping, in her ripped, faded t-shirt from her 10th standard that she refuses to give up. The godawful blond streaks in her hair that you seriously disapprove. The unfinished tattoo over her breast that says: ‘Daddy’s Girl’ and the stubs on her legs from a manic shave job a few days back. You are still in love with the bundle of contradictions, a girl who ticks all the boxes for the ‘kinda girl you should never marry/date’. And you leave the house, telling yourself, that you are still madly in love with this woman.

As for the girl? She wakes up with a killer hangover, manages to crawl to the bathroom where she realises that the love of her life has forgotten to flush in a hurry. The razor and shaving brush are unwashed on the counter. She flushes out the excesses of last night and gets ready for the day. ‘Tonight,’ she tells herself, as she looks at her reflection in the mirror, ‘someone’s going to fall in love with this face all over again!’

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