Move Over Cupid
The waiter is clearing the remnants of the chocolate mousse, the candles have not yet sputtered to their ends, and Rakesh, 25, an advertising executive, leans over to his girlfriend and tells her that she has to pick up the tab of what has been a very expensive meal. Startled, she begins to fumble in her bag. Rakesh, all smiles, reaches into his wallet and hands her her very own credit card. All hers—and on his tab. Love in the time of plastic cards? Funny things are happening to romance on its way to the 21st century. The gift of the card is Rakesh’s way of saying “I love you”: Those three little words don’t say it anymore by themselves. Nitin Bansal, 23, who’s on his way to Europe for an apprenticeship with an MNC, has opened a joint bank account with his girlfriend of three years: This way she can call him whenever she wants from Delhi. Nonika Datta and Pawan Kapoor—both in their early 30s, business partners, lovers, but not live-in lovers—have bought a small flat in Mumbai together.
Has romance got less moony? More pragmatic? What indeed is happening to romance today? Romance used to be all about stolen glances and stolen kisses, and endless anticipation. When the world shrunk itself into just that one other. When each second apart was an eternity. When today was all detail and colour and tomorrow just a blur. When that furtive glance or a shared Coke said it all, and holding hands was in itself an epiphany. Before love-at-first-sight began to get nudged aside by love-after-many-bytes. And the word love itself became suspect.“When a guy I’ve been out with just twice says he loves me, I just laugh. He’s being cheesy,” says Reena Dhavan, 23, who works in a bank.
Gulzar, the poet-filmmaker who has penned some of Hindi cinema’s most romantic words, thinks we should simply strike the word romance out of the daily vocabulary of screen and life. For him romance has to do with mystery, and romance in the ’90s is “like a fade-out in films when all the shades gradually disappear”.
Like the moon in the light of day.