The Tragedies Of Teenage Love

Roopa Prabhakar wins a Rs.300 gift voucher from our sponsors, Zaarga for her cheeky, yet wise story for our Love Story writing theme!

Roopa Prabhakar, in her own words: I’m a new mother, a working woman who believes her face is plastered on the glass ceiling, a closet feminist and writer.

“Women Maaan!!” wailed a young friend of mine, he was all tense and worried about the day of impending doom a.k.a. ‘Valentine’s Day’. His dainty little girlfriend had decided to base the future of their relationship on how this year’s Valentine’s Day was celebrated. In short, she was milking it and the onus was on my friend to make sure that he fills the 24 hours with every kind of mush – bought, borrowed, begged, stolen or sincerely felt.

I laughed at him, enjoying every bit of his delicious misery .Since I’m past the college-lovey-dovey age I take an almost sadistic pleasure in the tragedies of teenage love. He gave me a dirty look and collapsed back to his dejected self again. I was surprised that he seemed so lost, especially in this day and age where the good people at “Archies” do everything for you except probably manufacture a girlfriend/boyfriend.

“No way, none of the corny Archies stuff will do, she wants to test the boundaries, find out how much I will risk for love, she’s baying for my blood maan!“, cried out the young man in despair. As if on cue, the coffee shop guys started playing “I would do anything for love… but I won’t do THAT!” which caused another bout of agony.

“Did you know I introduced her to this song and she’s latched onto it and keeps singing it back to me these days….la la la …Would you do anything for love…WOULD YOU???”

“How come she’s conveniently forgotten the ‘but I won’t do THAT’ part??“, I questioned

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“I don’t know, I never listen to the lyrics, what does he mean by  …I WON”T DO THAT…What is ‘THAT’??”, answered my dim-witted nerd of a friend.

I sighed and said, “Buy me another cup of coffee and I might just save your love life”. Though he was short on cash given the Valentine’s Day hoopla he relented and ordered and I was ready to dispense with my expert advice.

“The ‘THAT’ is about how he will never forget the way he feels about the woman, how he won’t move on to someone else, how he will never get tired of her etc. Tell your pretty girlfriend that a lot of guys may say that they would do anything for love but not many will be saying – BUT I WON’T DO THAT. And THAT is what separates you from the riffraff….The LOVE is present in as much as the things you DO as in the things you DON’T DO“, I ended on that philosophical note as the coffee was placed on my table.

“You know what, you may have something there…it’s definitely worth a try working with that logic…I’ll let you know how it goes“. With that my friend dashed out and I sat back to enjoy my cuppa!

My guess is as good as yours as to how this plan will work out for my friend on V-Day. But if I were that girl I will not be buying this piece of astounding logic…. Did I mention I enjoyed the tragedies of teenage love? He he!

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*Photo credit: sweetonveg (Used under the Creative Commons Attribution License)

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