Falling For Your Friends

Like that insightful dialogue from KJo’s otherwise embarrassing Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, is friendship really just a stepping stone to romance?

- Arnesh Ghose

I am a hopeless romantic - and this is not an easy world for hopeless romantics. Chetan Bhagat and Nicholas Sparks rule bookstores, Baadshah the air waves and Bollywood still hammers on the head of formula. Alongside, there is the grisly world of Tinder and Grindr, where sex is just hooking up – a quick “cum ovr r8 now” (double entendre intended). There’s barely any romance in the air.

Yes, I enjoy a healthy amount of casual sex, but I like my fornication peppered with a drink, and a smoke, and a side of conversation. How am I supposed to enjoy something that intimate with a stranger without knowing their tastes in books, or wine? Can they tell their Ghalib from Mir, their Faust from Foucault? If that sounds too highbrow, do they enjoy cinema and stay abreast with the latest pop cultural developments? My encounters often lead to the other person being a tad overwhelmed by my taste in art and literature. They sheepishly smile and say: “Oh, you are Bengali, na? Of course you will be creative types, no?”