Hiccups in love

Based on Plato's Symposium: "People were initially hermaphrodites until God split them in two, and now all our halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost...."

There was this friend of mine who was good looking, topper in the class, a great sportsman, an orator, a painter. We all envied him for we believed that God had given all talents to one single person.

But there was one minor defect he had. Whenever he saw a beautiful girl, he would start hiccuping infront of her. His hiccups would never stop and no water or no panacea could cure his disease. It was as if, God would have made a perfect human being but then later he decided to leave one imperfection in him. And that he hiccuped talking to a beautiful girl. Hiccups as heels for my Achilles friend.

He would approach a beautiful girl or a beautiful girl would approach him and then he would indulge in serious amorous talks. And amidst all seriousness of mutual attraction, he would release one blip of non serious hiccup. And then the girl would lose interest.

I even asked one of these girls that why was my friend being denied all the time, despite being a stud. And then she would reply, "Vikas, do you really think that we girls seek studness in love, we only solicit serious, incessant, unrelenting love".

Yes, now I remember once I had drunk lots of beer before giving a presentation for my strategy class during MBA. Initially I was doing well, shedding my inhibitions, describing strategic frameworks, talking more and more (although out of inebriation). The only success parameter in MBA is that you have to talk a lot and fake seriousness. But then, alas lots of beer comes with a side-effect. I burped. That typical beer burp.

Similarly, love has its similarity to MBA. That desire for uninterrupted seriousness. Alas, the curse of my extremely talented friend was proving detrimental in the world of love.

One day, he was passing through the city streets and on pillars, he noticed a poster which said, " CURE FOR THOSE WHO HICCUP WHILE TALKING TO A BEAUTIFUL GIRL. CALL 9811872714."

He was shocked at the exactness of time and the space coordinates of that poster. He immediately dialed the number and there was a beautiful girl's voice who received it. She asked him to come to his flat, giving him her address. When he met her, he realised that she too had the same disease. She hiccuped while talking to any handsome guy. They both talked and hiccuped and talked and hiccuped.

That's how they lived happily ever after.....

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Based on Plato's Symposium, love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

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World of unrequited loves

Dear students,

Imagine a world of unrequited loves. My sample size of today's discussion is the entire universe whosoever is capable of loving. But then today our lecture is about one of the most beautiful concept of "unfulfilled loves". We all love it.  Last evening, I screened for you the movie Vicky Christina Barcelona by Woody Allen in our auditorium . In the movie, Javier Bardem says "Maria Elena used to say that only unfulfilled love can be romantic". I saw the reaction in each of your faces and it was perfect. Half my job was done.

So now, imagine a world where 'A' loves 'B' but 'B' does not love 'A' and rather loves 'C'. 'C' loves 'D' and does not love 'B' back. And so on,.... 'Y' to 'Z' but not 'X'. 'Z' to 'A1' but not Y and so on.....I have bored you with alphabets but I have repeated it so many times that the concept is drilled in your head. And the introduction of A1 is to ensure that I have taken the entire population.

Now, try to enforce one of those characters on yourself. Let us assume that you are P25 in our sample size. You love P26 but P24 loves you.

So tell me, would our world not be awesome that way. We all try to find heroes in Romeo and heroines in Juliet. In our world, we all would be our own heroes and our own heroines. Living a heroic world, hahaha.

Remember I had told you once that there is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. In our world, there would be no bad luck but above all no misfortune!

Now Prakriti, I know, you would ask me from your last row seat "Profesor, would there be marriages also in our imaginary world?". See, I saw that coming. I like the way how you add to my ideas from your backbench. But to answer your question, marriages have nothing to do with love. Marriage is altogether a different arrangement, probably to keep this world going. So marriages will be there in our world and few of them might be borne out of unrealized loves.

We will discuss later about marriage in detail. Marriage is a bit of permanent concept (altleast in most of the countries). And that permanence in the world has always had contrary charms for man. It drives him to both despair and hope. It never says but one thing: first it interests, then it bores and then it interests. But marriage always wins out by the dint of its obstinacy*. It is always right.

Anyways, we will do a brainstorming and attempt some roleplay on our concept in the next class. The groups have already been divided. So, just go back and think about this before you sleep tonight. And Prakriti, you are the only student who has not submitted your last assignment on "the state of zero"...

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*Lines twisted and presented from Albert Camus' book

Dedicated to Albert Camus (7 November 1913 - 4 January 1960)

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Ask the Expert

Inspired by Ask-the-Experts columns by Suhel Seth (for Telegraph), Pooja Bedi (for Delhi Times) and several other experts, my friend too decided to try himself on this counselling business. He started the same job long back but then no newspaper or magazine was ready to publish him, so he approached me quite saddened by his failure to launch a life-counselling career. Hence, I am helping him by lending a space in my blog to publish them.
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I am 28-year old guy working in one of the trashy offices (as probably no one else would give me a job). My problem is that there is hardly any intellectual talk in the office. All the time, everyone is talking about how many houses they have bought. They discuss square foot rates of the next coming apartment that they are planning to buy. They earn four times my salary only through renting out their apartments, some from the houses they bought while some from the houses their papa bought. For that large sum of money, they really need not work hard as they already have taken post dated cheques from tenants. 
While I keep sitting spending 70 percent of my salary in my education loan, my parents are also pushing me to buy a house and save a lot of money. While I am able to change topics with my parents, my office colleagues are quite a mess. I try a lot to ignore them but then they are too loud to ignore. Please help.
                                                                                                                        - Gaurav S (Gurgaon)

My friend, I think your problem is not quite unique. Lot of young people like you (who assume that they are intellectuals) render other talks to be trashy. However, if you are an intellectual, you must be smoking pot often. If not, stop considering yourself an intellectual.So in each smoke break in office, try and find a corner where you can smoke up and after that read my columns. You will also start finding rhythm and music in the real estate talks of your friends. This will surely help.


I am a 26-year old Gujarati girl who is currently working in Mumbai. My problem was quite trivial and hence I did not ask bigger experts who are published in newspapers. My place (like all other places in Mumbai) is quite tiny. My bathroom is so small that I can't even open my arms fully under the shower. But then that is not my problem. 
I have two shelves in my room. In one of the shelves, I have kept my books. I treasure that shelf a lot. In other, my mom who visits me once a month has kept some idols of God, a coconut from Siddhi Vinayak temple, a 500 ml coke bottle containing (holy)Ganga water from Haridwar. While my mom is very religious, I am quite an agnostic. My problem is that the bookshelf has been overloaded and I have no space to keep my other books. So I am always thinking of using the religious shelf. However, my mom does not allow me this. I always tell her to take it back to the place where she spends her rest 28 days in a month. Nowadays she retorts that once Narendra Modiji comes to power, girls like me would be behind bars for denying her Gods. I really see that coming and am quite scared. Help.
                                                                                                                                 - N. Patel (Mumbai)
I think only one of the Gods can help you in this. Try sprinkling some Ganga water from that 500 ml coke bottle on you or definitely on your mother. Sense will prevail probably.

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Address your issues to me at ask_the_expert56@yahoo.com. Please remember to add your name and city of address at the end of your question.

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