Shudh Desi Romance

This week I'm privileged to bring you a heart-warming love story from the exotic land we call Uttar Pradesh. A young person called Kulvinder decided to climb atop a cellphone tower with a gun and threatened to kill himself if he wasn't reunited with his wife. As it turns out, his "wife" had given him the gift of a police complaint alleging blackmail because she had never actually married him. Kulvinder being a proud man decided "What better way to prove a blackmail complaint wrong than by climbing atop a mobile phone tower and blackmailing the police into handing over a supposed wife?" Police records revealed that Kulvinder was a habitual professor of love to various women from atop mobile towers in Bijnore, showing an excellent dedication towards love, blackmail and willingly getting radiation induced cancer.

While you might be tempted into thinking Kulvinder's love story is unique, it isn't. Millions of Indian men are trained in doing ridiculous things to prove their love for a potential partner thanks to film and music. It's not the dramatic mobile tower climbing rooted in Dharmendra's suicide attempt in Sholay, it's the little things like taking lots of sleeping pills, drinking till the live collapses and my personal favourite, threatening to slit ones wrists after being spurned that make our love stories special. What is the point of being with someone if you have not had to fight for her?

The objective of being in love is never happiness; it's being able to show the world how much you love your potential partner by being willing to destroy both your and their lives. The trick in "pulling a Kulvinder" is successfully threatening to kill yourself till successfully guilting someone into being with you while continuing to stay alive. The key here is being able to balance being alive while always looking like you're about to die. If that's not a healthy recipe for a relationship, I don't know what is. Pro tip: stubble helps in looking ragged.

The problem is not with the Kulvinders of the world. The problem is with women refusing to say yes to men who are clearly so deeply in love with them while the latter are surrounded by objects through which they can kill themselves. Would you ever climb a mobile phone tower for someone? Thought so.