Love Vs Lust

I think it was about 3 hr past the midnight when the phone rang. The warm summer breeze was flowing right through the window, right into my face. I struggled to my feet, and walked towards the blasting rings, going more by instinct, than by choice. My underwear, stuck at my ankles really didn’t help my cause. I made a mental note to myself, to kick it completely off before going to sleep.(One of the few good things about staying alone).

At last, grabbed the phone and before I could start cursing away, a very beleaguered, dispirited, crestfallen kind of voice on the other end of the line started speaking in a very incoherent, unintelligible gasps, which I recognized as friends’ of mine. Well call him ’s’ because of a lot of reasons that I really don’t remember to mention here. If you really want to know why we’ll be calling him ’s’, I can lie for you. We’ll call him ’s’ because, that way, we can create an air of mystery, we can make this guy look less stupid, and I dont have to type his really big name again and again.

Well, ’s’ finally slowed down, stopped crying, started breathing and told me he was in need of something huge from me. I was getting ready to say ‘yes’ if he asked me for a kidney or my girlfriend or for that matter, my girlfriends’ kidney, when he asked me, “I don’t understand my girl”, and continued in the same tone, ” is this love, lust or something else? ”

Being the very helpful and nice guy that I am, and knowing probably I could write something about this at end of it, I decided to help ’s’ out in anyway that I possibly could. It’s like my friends keep saying about me, ” you are so modest !! ” sounding as sarcastic as they can and I keep replying,” I’m very proud of the fact that I’m very modest” sounding as modest as I can. Well, I promised ’s’ I’d come up with some answers soon and decided to investigage myself what the thing was with love and lust and all the hoopla about it.

The best way, I decided, was to meet some friends and ask them what they thought, and if that didn’t work, I figured, there are lots of people who have nothing to do at any time of the day and they wouldn’t mind, me asking their valued opinion. And i knew where to find those kind of people, because I knew all the malls in the city. Although the first thing I did was to go and check out the dictionary for the words love and lust, a habit which I’m trying to inculcate, only because this girl I have a crush on lately does it all the time. Anyway, that wasn’t of much help, so lets not go into that.

Well, I got some awesome answers, I have to admit. I have some really awesome ones, funny as hell, some not suitable for children to read, some very outrageous and some really serious opinions. I’ve decided to go for the funny ones first.

I first went to this friend of mine, who I think actually inspired Bon Jovi to write and sing, “In and out of love”. He has been in about 6 serious relationships, in the last 2 years that I have known him. I never dared to ask him how many before and how many on the agenda or the waiting list. So anyway, in his own words,” you know its lust when you compare the breasts of your girlfriend with other girls”. Well, if there is anyone who knows about this stuff, he’s the one. I take his word, rock solid.

Then, there were the usual answers about going weak in the knees to life revoling around person and the general answers you all get to hear in the movies. I guess I’ll stick with the funny ones. I went to this mall, where there was this couple and I decided to get their opinion. The guy said that love and lust have to be there in a relationship for it to work out, and the girl disagreed. I guess they didn’t have both, and I’m glad to have bought it to their notice. I guess its not necessary for me to tell you all that they didn’t leave together.

Anyway, there were these guys who were hanging out around the mall, and I asked them for the first thing that came to their mind.So, here goes my record,

guy1: depends if you want miss right or miss right now.

guy2: (points towards two girls walking together) definitely lust with girls like those.

guy3: u know…..aahh….

guy4: elvis rocks

guy2: (pointing elsewhere (i thought he pointed towards some guys!! (i’m not judging))) I can fall in love with them

guy3: aaahhhh……………its like…..hmmmmmm…..

guy1: listen to 21Qs by 50 cent man, u’ll understand for sure.

guy 4: come on dude (encouraging guy3), you can do it

guy3: (now looking very serious) lust is like washing your hands clean before picking up a dirty spoon and eating food. love is eating with dirty hands.

guy1,2,4,me: (trying very hard to contemplate) good one man, great

Well, I guess I have to fall in love myself to understand what he meant. Probably some people who are reading this will surely understand what he means. Incase you do, please do try and explain it to me too.

Then, I went back home and called some friends to get their perspective. One guy said, lust is like enjoying Brian Lara hitting a century while love is like Sachin Tendulkar hitting a century. I kinda wanted to agree with him. Then there was this other guy, who slammed down the phone saying, “I don’t have a girlfriend man, life sucks. The only thing that can get me a girlfriend is either hope, or plastic surgery”. I really wanted to tell him girls not always go for good looking guys. How many times haven’t we guys seen awesome babes with these stupid looking guys? Tonnes of times, right. So, maybe time has come for you to be the ugly stupid guy with the good looking girl.

I also got a pretty unique answer, when I asked this girl I know. She said,” Love is being able to wait. Lust is when time is a big factor”.

Hmm, that got me thinking. Time and space discussing love and lust huh. I wish Newton was here to help. Then there was this guy who said,” both love and lust are like cancer, lust is malignant while love is benign”. I don’t really agree. Why compare with something negative, is all I ask.

Well, all this took a day, and when I went to ’s’ to make him understand everything, he was already cozy and back with his girl. So, glad I wasn’t of too much help. I guess this is something for everyone to figure out for themselves.

If u go and ask Sigmund Freud he’d probably say, there is nothing called love, everything is lust. He’d probably even say that love is a uncovered form of lust. If you ask Mahatma Gandhi, he’ll tell u there is nothing called lust and that any feeling of affection can be one or a different form of love. If u ask me, I’ll say there’s neither love or lust. I beleive in what the Wachowski brothers(makers of Matrix triology) say, in their script about ‘Karma’. Its just a word, what is important is the connection that you create in your mind about it. What is important is the state of mind that is attached to the word. The important thing is what you want to beleive the word means.

Or, incase you want to settle for Shakespere, here goes,

“Love comeforteth like sunshine after rain,

But Lust’s effect is tempest after the sun;

Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain,

Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done:

Love surfeits not, Lust like glutton dies;

Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.”

William Shakespere - Venus and Adonis