amritaspeaks

My all-time favourite love story is TheBridges of Madison County. I have always been attracted to the book or film maybe because it is not a typical boy-meets-girl story nor can you classify it as an extra-marital affair.

The story takes off when a housewife meets a freelance photographer while her husband and children are away for four days. Love happens in those four days but they never meet again since she stays behind for her family and he moves on. But till death, they do not pass a single day without thinking of each other. It’s a unique love story, a story of a love that doesn’t expect anything in return, a love that probably exists only in fictions.

In my quest for love stories I have realized every person has a love story. And some stories are even as unique as The Bridges of Madison County. I share with you four such unique real-life love stories that my two ex-colleagues and two friends have told me.

“I married her despite knowing she is HIV positive”

We met on the Net and I really liked her and we got talking. I was divorced, so was she, but when she told me she was HIV + I was so shocked I did not contact her for months. When she was sure that I had made an exit after what she told me, I came back and popped the question.

This time I managed to shock her. All this while I fought with my own mind and my family because I felt that she was such a nice person and she deserved a normal life. Most importantly I loved her and that is all that mattered. We are married now and I think this is the best decision of my life.

“We met when we were 16, then for 10 years we didn’t meet”

I had met him at a wedding and I instantly liked him and I know he liked me too. I had never felt what I did when I saw him at the wedding. Once the wedding function was over he went back home in another state of India and I came to mine in Kolkata. He was on my mind for a long time but at 16 you cannot keep holding on to a person you don’t know whether you will meet again. I fell for someone and later I came to know he too had fallen for someone. Both our relationships did not work out and 10 years later we were suddenly face-to- face again at another relative’s wedding. This time we quickly jotted down our addresses in two pieces of paper and there started our correspondence through letters.

We are married to each other for 18 years now and I truly believe that our marriage was made in heaven because we were destined to fall in love.

“I found love for my ex-girlfriend”

We were a madly-in-love couple till things started going wrong. Issues started arising in our relationship and we finally parted ways but we decided not to harbour any ill feelings for each other since we had always respected each other.

My family fixed a match for me and I got married. Months later I met her at a common friend’s party and she was with a colleague. The guy was very good-looking and looked hopelessly in love with her. After talking to him I liked him immensely. But when I asked her about him, she said she wasn’t sure if she was in love with him. I just told her, ‘You will make a mistake if you let this guy go.”

She told me later my words helped her take a decision. They are happily married now with a kid. I feel if you really love a person you will always want her to be happy.

“I thought she looked like an ugly boy”

The first time I saw her she had come to meet my father at our place because he taught her English at the university. Her hair was so short that she could put any guy to shame and she was wearing an ill-fitting T-shirt and baggy jeans. Had I not taken a second look I would have mistaken her for a Chinese boy. Then my father dropped the bomb. He told me that he really liked her and that she would be a good match for me. I was aghast but still agreed to meet her.

After our first meeting I don’t know why I asked her, ‘When are we meeting next?’ In the second meeting she made it very clear that she would go into a third meeting only if there was a commitment from my side, otherwise she wasn’t wasting any time. I think I got so attracted to her strong mind that I completely overlooked her hair and clothing. After several meetings one fine day I realized I was dating a girl with very short hair.

Now that we are the proud parents of two sons I continue to admire her strong mind and my father’s ability to look through the short crop and baggy pants.

PS: It’s another thing that my wife is nowadays sporting danglers, long hair and skinny jeans.

(Although some of my friends were comfortable giving their names in this post, some were not. So I decided to keep them nameless. I guess what matters here is the love story and not the name.)