Obssessed with the word ‘Love’

Romance & Love Stories

Have you ever noticed how popular love stories are? Visit any blog and you will find at least one story about love. Read any magazine and there will always be a short story dealing with love. More often than, not love stories always seem to have the upper hand in any situation, Try posting a love story in Facebook or blogging about love. It will have more likes and comments than any other post and in a shorter span of time too.

There is no question that romance is the most popular genre. The fact that Chetan Bhagat (as he is the most popular writer known to youths today) alone releases 4 titles in few years how large the reading audience really is, as opposed to merely 16 titles of other combined genre. Pick up any book from a library and there is more chance of it being a love story than anything else. The stories does not even have to do with the typical love between men and women, there are stories revolving around a mother's love, about love between two friends, brotherly love, love in a family and everything else that can possibly be constituted but it always revolve around the idea of love.

Furthermore, no matter what the story is, there is always a short span of romance in each book. Take our Bollywood super duper hit films. One should be agree with the fact that no doubt DDLJ is the most popular movie of our time, One could easily observe himself/herself in place of SRK and Kajol in green fields of Punjab. Do anyone correlate himself with Sunny deol of border or Ajay Devgan of Bhagat Singh.. Obviously no.. All the situations above seem to have some notions about love.

 
Every writer seem to be obsessed with love story. They either write about a past love that they have experienced, an ongoing experience or something that has happened to someone else or sometimes even a story that he/she wishes to avoid. A few years ago there was a huge obsession with happy ending. Pick up any book and it always provided you with a happy ending. It doesn't matter how many villains were after the couple, it didn't matter whose family objected their union, it didn't matter how impossible their love was, in the end love conquered all and the writer always provided you with the perfect ending. The prefect example – Chetan Bhagat Novels and many more in that similar series.

I suppose the charm lies in being able to manipulate the story as one wishes. You are the writers, you can do anything you please with the story. The situation you choose will be your own, your characters in will be yours alone, you can choose a happy ending, you can choose an 'unfinished' one, you can damn well kill the lovers if you want. People often write their own prefect ideals in the theme of the story. One can make your 'hero' to be handsome, dashing and charming, employing all the characters that one, oneself find more appealing and creating your own version of perfect guy. The girl will be beautiful, sweet and prefect presenting your own version of the ideal mate. It is always about one's own mind playing out their own ideals of romance and readers love it, falling for the same old ideals of love and chivalry, searching for their own perfect boy/girl in the pages of some story, hoping the love story comes true for them.

They say male readership is mostly associated with romance but if you are a female and reading this, don't tell me you haven't read a love story and liked it. Don't tell me you haven't written one yourself, be it with hatred or with remembrance. Everyone always does it at least once. Of course, one can always write about politics but there will always be someone who won't be interested, you can write about currents affairs and there will always be someone who is not affected thus not bothered to read about it. But that never seem to be the problem with romance. People always seem to stop and read a love story - some because they can relate, some because they want it to happen to them and some merely because they want to feel it - but people always do read.

We are obsessed with love stories, with romance. Most stories are written about love. Most people prefer to write about romance, most readers want to read about love. Story telling doesn't seem to function without the theme of love. But why? Why are we so obsessed with this idea of love? What is so special about a love story? Most often these love stories are fictional, portraying the desire for a world full of love that we want to live in, so does that mean the real world we live in doesn't contain love? Are we living in a world which is so out of love that the only place we can find love is in the stories? Does reality contain no love? Furthermore, most characters these love story presents are creations of the writer's mind so does that mean the world is full of jerks that the only perfect version one can find in a man is in the books? Are there no boys who actually equate a girl's ideal love? Most people read love story to escape reality so does that mean that the reality we face is not of a world full of love? People say that one only obsesses over things they don't have so if love exists in the real world, doesn't obsessing over something we already have seem redundant.

“Kuch Kuch hota hai Rahul… Tum Nahi Samjhoge”

“Kuch Kuch Hota hai Anjali… Tum nahi Samjhogi”