Long time back Kierkegaard had said Love is spontaneous while marriage is a decision. But, then who was this Kierkegaard? Was he a Hindi literature professor? Was he a moral police? Was he a Hollywood actor? Was he a TV Journalist somewhere in Germany? Whoever he was, he was not a philosopher and by the way, who had given him the right to comment on such a sensitive issue. Didn’t he know only the TV journalists of 21st Century India has got the Exclusive copy right over it. Only they can comment on it; only they can make it an issue, only they can show it live, only they can seek a public opinion and only they can define Love and market the definition of feelings and emotion.

Lets move over from what Kierkegaard had said. Its our very own balladeer of body who recently has expressed his desire of alchemy, saying Love is not the greatest glue between two people, Sex is…but at last he wrote it to realize that Sex is not the greatest glue between two people.

Doesn’t someone somewhere has written that only the foolish can seek happiness in separation… in distance… the wise grows it under his feet?

But, then what is true happiness. The TV journos may ask and does it hold any titillation for TRP, they ask again.

It’s Friday and it was all there in drawing room of the great Indian middle class, courtesy the saas-bahu kind of TV journalism. For, whole day all the Hindi news channels barring one prominent, ran the live telecast of how a Professor of Hindi literature lives with and longs for reciprocal love of his beloved who happens to be his student; and how his estranged wife accuses him for being immoral, sexually pervert and a dramatist. But, the twist in TRP came when the wife in woe grabs the beloved through her hair and thrashed her on the ground.

The show was live before camera, before excited TV journos, police and the public--- all seemingly enjoying the take two of the day long serial. The bemused yet composed professor stood mute and helpless. He could not do anything for his Love. The fuming wife accused the girl as concubine of her professor husband who she had married twenty-eight years back.

But, the take three had more visuals for the zestful TV reporters. Some apparently hired youths, said to be students of the University, blackened the face of the professor and they got the thing what they wanted for their channel to beam it as Exclusive.

The Professor again stood calm. With folded hands, blackened face and beloved by side Love was down but not out.

The professor of literature admitted his love for the girl and the girl didn’t hide her face with italics on camera. She too confessed her faith, her feeling, her emotion, her bonding with the professor, almost twice her age.

Does love need age, caste, religion,region strike? Haven’t we heard and hummed that popular Bollywood song…na umr ki seema ho.. na janm ka bandahan… jab pyar kare koi dil to dekhe sirf man…

Perhaps, the TV journalists know only…byte and P2C… .

Both, the professor and the girl did not fall in love… they rose in it.

The girl said its not easy to define love.. what kind of feeling I possess for Him… “you will not understand it so easily”, said she to the TV journalists.

And, they apparently kept insisting her to give graphic detail about her intimacy… physical intimacy… saucy sequences to the ever chasing camera.

All of them were seen flashing broad, ear to ear smile on their faces as if they have got a perfect exclusive for their separate channels. All of them ran the same footage… same byte… same shame, though some raced ahead from others by hiring experts in their studios and opening an opinion poll through SMS.

SMS to define Love, feeling and emotions between two mature individuals.

The serial goes on and on for well over six to seven hours. The experts kept repeating the same words… one, who himself has been hindi professor started tukbandi …appreciating all the three while accusing all the three !

Meanwhile, the two in Love—the professor and the girl--- stood in perfect balance of calm and composure; exotic and existential but trapped in merciless media.

It was their edgy silence that spoke the loudest. That Love needs no word to defend… fight to survive.

Who would tell the TV journos that Love is pure, Love is queasy, Love is life, Love is journey, Love is pain, Love is pleasure…. Love is sorrow.. Love is solace…

Its not just the alchemy of Cupid’s chemicals--- Dopamine, Serotonin or Norepinephrine.

And, moreover, who has given right to these wild mushroom like breed of TV journos to act as moral police in society… to define whats wrong and whats right…. Who should love to whom and who should live with whom..

Do they really know what is purity of primary… how it feels when once love offended… how it comes when a beloved is beaten up publicly…

I’m more than sure they do not. How can they? They’ve just become a TRP man for their channels which pay them much much more than they deserve with a 24/7 swanky car to be on their toes… always, everywhere, anywhere…

Feeling is an alien word for them. Sensitivity doesn’t come naturally to them. Emotion, what is it?

What if the Professor has deserted his wife and has an adult son? Have they got him Love, have they brought him what he wanted from them? He didn’t killed his wife, burnt his wife…. Just walked away, quietly.

And, what if the girl happens to be his student and half his age? Doesn’t she know these facts and doesn’t she mature enough to realize such relationship in our yet to be sensitive society?

Even if they realised the fallout what could they do?

Kya pyar par kisi ka jor chala hai?

They were helpless. Surrendered to each other. Immersed into each other.

Sex might be some allurement---as the most of TV journos believed and tried to believe others--- but as we all know it doesn’t last long. It comes often but less in nature and action.

Doesn’t sex become just a novelty after sometime?

And, who in our middle class media doesn’t know what the post-coital desire of a man is. Turn around and get off.

Its time now to spare a moment for all of us—not the TV journos who doesn’t even have time to think or mind to strike---- to kick off the debate on the definition of Love, meaning of Love and what it feels like falling in love..

Also, to what extent the TV journos invade the privacy of two independent individual in love… to what extent they should cross the line and what sort of people should be in such a reflective medium.

Meanwhile, monsoon has come to Patna and once again the dancing photos of peacocks in capital’s zoo have splashed in local dailies.

Comment

comments...

Kudos to Bihartimes.com for carrying out such a nice piece written by Amarnath Tewari on Professorial love…"

It is surely a challenge to live with dignity in an age of 24/7. These TV journos hardly bother to know what they do during their intervening breaks. But when it comes to focus the camera on others, they are always ready. A time might come when people do not think of having a window in their bathrooms. Privacy is invaded like never before. They are everywhere, looking for sleaze and sizzles. The men and women in studios want us to believe that it is a national event and we must follow it with keen interest and respond to it with innumerable SMSs.

Amarnath is absolutely right in defining love. I am reminded of a couple of lines by some poet –"I want to be a honey bee moving around my beloved's lips in an endless flux of humming kiss". So, why bother about me and my love? The only mistake and even half-mistake (as his wife is a party to it) the professor committed is that he has not severed his marital ties with his wife. If wife thinks her husband is a pervert and a compulsive sex-maniac, she should sit down with him and find a peaceful way out of it. It could be a divorce, of course.

As nobody in interested in below-the-belt (literally) story of the professor in the past, the professor in question should find a solution permissible within social and legal ambit. Senior advocate Y V Giri thinks that there is nothing much law can do in such cases. State woman commission chairperson says counseling will not work as the commission cannot ensure that the professor does not meet his beloved after the peace is broached between wife and husband. Cosmetic solution cannot save such marriages.

William Congreve wrote "five years of marriage have debauched my five senses". So, it could be a case of post-marital disillusionment. It is love and faith that sustain a married life. It is useless to continue a relationship one does not believe in. Wife too, must not take husband as a heaven-sent provider, protector and benefactor. Women can just defy the wrong. Pati is no longer parmeshwar. So, no double standard please.

The professor should not corrupt young minds. It is his private affair. The professor should not take his love affair as a novel school of thought. He should also stop going from studio to studio to propagate his love, his carnal bliss. The beloved should also stop hurling her chaste Hindi on common folk; After all, life is not only about crammed definitions. It is a good example which makes a definition, not the other way round.

Thanks a ton to Amarnath for having provoked some thoughts in me.

Santosh Singh

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nice to see your belated reaction... at least my expression was read by someone and even provoked some reaction...

nice to see quotes in your reactive piece.. especialy of the great English dramatist and master of perfect comedy, William Congreve...

But, Santosh, i must admit here that I did not make a comment on "the definition of Love"... who am I to define it?.. and who has given me the right to do so?... I just expressed what i thought about what was going on for hours and hours in a corner of our drawing room...

And, what should the Professor and his estranged wife, or, for that matter, his beloved should do, i think, is purely their affair, their concern.. their cause...

I just wrote about how the TV media made feeling, a flimsy thing, emotion, a concotion and Love, a lousy matter.... how the TV media acted as a moral police and how it has started determining what should we, the people of India, do and what not...

I just wanted to remind them that morality is like a slipping eel which can take any form anytime according to its conveneince and opportunity...

I never ever wanted to sermonise...as mentioned in your reaction... what the three independent individulas should do and what's wrong in society.... who should love or live with whom.. what is permisable in one's religion...

I'ld rather ask why should a person not live with his/her beloved when both are in reciprocal love... why there is a need to first divorce their partner and then get agoahead in matters of heart...it may be a sociological or legal chapter to be dwealt on and need a long academic debate, dialogue and discussion...

But,don't we know feeling of love is like the very best of a calamity.. it happens without any warning... I'ld be the last person to make a comment on it...

My focus of expression was how the Television media trivilaised such a sensitive issue and marketed it for catapulting their TRP... and how the two people in love got trapped into it...

It can be anything BUT not Journalism....

I wanted to convey how Love is to understand and surrender to its countless contradictions...most importantly, though, how to never stop loving...

And, that is what all the the Professor of literature and his pupil are in these days [nobody knows what tomorrow holds.. eternal love, i think, is just a misnomer, a dictionary word.. it never happens in this life]...

But, then our own Bollywood has long back declared it... Jab jab pyaar par pehra hua hai... pyar aur gahra hua hai..

Belive it or not.. this is purity of primary..

.. tks once again for reading my perosnal expression...

Amarnath

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Hats off to Mr Amarnath.

Kaash... those TV journos could also get time to go through it. It will compel them to think twice before repeating such acts on other occasions.

Mr Amarnath's reflection on the trend is bound to provoke thoughts in everyone.

Mr Santosh Singh has written a lot and got reply from the author himself.

However, it is Amar's reply that provoked me to express my opinion here.

He has a valid question:

"why should a person not live with his/her beloved when both are in reciprocal love... why there is a need to first divorce their partner and then get a goahead in matters of heart..."

Isn't it time to appreciate Islam that offers a solution to such problems? Which has also got support by intellectuals like Mr Amarnath.

Isn't it time to make a correction in the Hindu Marriage Act, which stops a man from marrying another women while first wife is still alive?

It is hard to find any example even in Hindu scriptures that stops from having two wives at once. Thanks only to the creators of Indian constitution who interferred in nature's job.

In today's world, One may go ahead with second marriage only if he is a film star (Dharmendra) or a celebrity (Udit Narayan).

Amar, You are right. It needs a long academic debate, dialogue and discussion...

Thanks for starting it.

I would request Mr Ajay to support the debate by providing a platform.

Imran Mojib,

The Gulf Today, Sharjah

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nice to see your comment on my piece which was just an expression of an individual in the writing business.... But, I'm not an "intellectual" at all as you have mentioned in your comment...

I'm just Patna based journalist who sometime reacts over whats going on in his surrounding and it was also just an off-the-cuff write up... and thanks a lot to Ajayji that he provides me the platform to make its reach to all of you dear readers...

I really donot know about what is there in Islam or for that matter, in any religious texts or scriptures regarding the issue of the Professor in love but I do know the power of love...

Anyway, tks again for your appreciative comment and hope it may trigger a debate from other corner of the worls also..

Amarnath

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Imran Mujib has been trying to divert the discussion. Amarnath primariliy hit out at TV journalism. It is discussion about love and maybe about adultery, not certainly about which religion offers better solution. What solution Mujib is talking about? This is 21st century. By his logic, why not should be then a provision for fourhusbands for a woman as well. So, please do not take the debate to that level.

The debate is on who will decide in matters of heart, especially when law is unclear. The Supreme Court has surely has given a go-ahead to live-in relationship, but not about matters of heart when a party, called wife, is affected.

Howsoever we may try to justify an affair with definitions and intellectual sharpness, the fact remain law --good or bad, agreeable or disagreeable -- catches up with us. Professor can afford to call it love because law is silent on such affairs. But saying that Islam offers a solution is just misguiding and man-centric. And Amarnath has not supported such solution in his piece by the way.

Santosh Singh

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Of course there is nothing in Islam or for that matter, in any religious texts or scriptures regarding the issue of the Professor in love. My comment was not about a professor in love but in the context of the question that you posed: "why should a person not live with his/her beloved when both are in reciprocal love... why there is a need to first divorce their partner and then get a go ahead in matters of heart..." Hope it clarifies any misunderstanding.

Imran Mojib

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Thanks for writing nice article however I like to drive your pen towards missing aspects. It would be better if you pour contrast of roles of media in similar case of Udit Narayan Jha. Thanking you

Rajkishore Prasad

Japan

Amarnath Tewary Patna based special correspondent of The Pioneer