Love! We can talk endlessly about love. So much has been written about love. We have dedicated poems and songs to love. We are never tired of making movies on love and romance. From Pakeezah to Dilwale Duhlania Le Jayenge to Yeh Jawani Hai Diwani, from Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Pretty Woman to Titanic to Brokeback Mountain, a good love story has always won our heart.

Of course, love has changed with time. Expressions have changed, mediums have changed. Sometimes I feel love has become more complicated, or we have complicated it by incessantly swiping right and left. The digital platforms and the mobile apps that that have brought young people from across the world closer, may have also added to the confusion. The restlessness, the uncertainty, the indecisiveness, sometimes reluctance to commit. Though these emotions have always existed alongside love, the more articulate younger generation may have only brought them to the surface. They may have also given love a bold new expression.

Many of us though still miss the older times, we nostalgically look back to our simple college love stories. Anupriya Agarwal beautifully pens down the old world charm of love that she so misses.

The charm of older times – falling in awe of someone over a cup of tea, or a glass of water is all gone. I remember in college, during college fests – admiring someone for his pink shirt – sheepishly discussing his smile with friends and then making a big deal if he came and said Hi, we will be in touch!

Your post, ‘Love me, love me not’ reminds me of good old times – the boy who only called out the colours that I was wearing during a tip tipi top game in school, or another one that I liked to go to the water cooler with for period breaks in school.

This charm of falling in love over a little smile, a small conversation, a discussion with friends is forgotten these days! All we do is digitally bombard our thoughts, likes and dislikes. Love, in those days, wasn’t even anything to do with having relationships, but to just enjoy that moment of appreciation, when someone came said I love you and ran away never to meet again. It was a glass of water and a capsule that made two friends meet, a cup of chai was all that it took for two people to get married and rest well is history!

Thank you for taking me back to these lovely memories. Words will always swipe my heart away.