Sweet First Crush

 

“Butterflies in stomach..
A skipped heartbeat…
All the devilish schemes to have a glimpse of the person who caught your attention…
All the trance-like dream sequences…”

Well, if you have any of the above symptoms, then are you in love or are you having a very typical infatuation!! Should I congratulate you? Or should I warn you from not investing too much of yourself in the relationship.. As your relationship buddy, I believe I should be sharing some experience that happened in real life that can probably work as your compass for real life.
To start with, I want to write about a Tamil movie, which released in the year 2005, a movie called Kadhal in Tamil, meaning love.
This is your typical Tamil movie, where the guy and the girl meet quite by circumstances. Guy falls for the girl and when her parents come to know of the story, they elope. The guy and the girl are separated by social status, where she is the daughter of a rich businessman and a political goon, he is a poor mechanic who struggles to make ends meet.
The movie was a super blockbuster hit and the music numbers were very peppy. However, I remember one distinct thought that came to my mind after I saw the movie. What made the guy and the girl fall for each other?
The girl was literate and convent educated while the guy was more an illiterate. What was the thing that made them elope with the realization that they were in love. The movie is a tragedy where the hero and the heroine are separated from each other and the guy is attacked very badly that he is bleeding profusely and the shot closes with the likelihood that he was on his death bed.
A few years elapse and the heroine who is married to a person of her parents choice, sees the guy, her first love as a madman in a signal. She narrates the entire story to her husband who places the madman in proper medical care and the movie ends thus.
It is now 12 years since the movie and the dynamics of relationships have changed. There is no longer the accessibility issues or the communication issues that was there couple of decades ago.
Thanks to the technology revolution, whatsapp, tinder and facebook, it is no longer tough for anyone to get in touch with their beloved. 
However, how many such stories make it till the end? Or is it that relationships have become fickle that they never become a real time couple. It is good till it lasts and then things conclude, each parting to go their separate ways. Or is it? We are seeing more acid attack victims and teenage abortions today than it existed decades before.
To answer all these questions, the first thing that we need to understand is the difference between love and infatuation.
What is love
As per Wikipedia, “It can refer to an emotion of a strong attraction and personal attachment”

What is infatuation?
As per Wikipedia, “Infatuation or being smitten is the state of being carried away by an unreasoned passion.”
When does love happen? When does infatuation happen? Is it likely that infatuation ends up becoming love?
Let me try putting things in perspective! In Layman terms, you see someone and like him or her. Well, why do you like him or her? You have no idea about the person, yet you spend hours and days obsessing with the person, thinking and analysing the person’s words if you get close access to them or thinking and analysing the person’s deeds if you have no idea about the person, in cases where you pass each other by 
The next thing that you do if you are a girl, you try confiding to your BFF gang and if they are anything like you, they go to the ends of the world collecting all kinds of information about the person! If you are the guy, then I believe the course of action is very straight. You ask for the girl’s number through sources.
The next thing is the meeting between the couple, and then things proceed from there. In earlier days, if things worked out, there were chances of the infatuation being converted into matrimonial bliss, but today where we live in an era of hook ups, there is no possibility for budding romances out of infatuations.
So now, what do you do if you like a person? Is it right? Is it wrong? I guess, this is where we need to open up as a society. As long as you like a person, there is no harm in it. This is part of the biological growth that everyone needs to undergo. Therefore, if there is nothing wrong in liking a person, can I go and convey that to the other person. I would say, do. The worst thing is the waiting game, the hide and seek that people play with the feelings of another person.
After all, you never know where this infatuation might lead you to. You might end up meeting your life partner ! I want to end this with a note, come what may, do not miss this magical period of having an infatuation for this is when you get to discover yourself as an individual and we know that you can take care of yourself, after all your are responsible kids to your parents..

Cheers!