Blind Love

Love, they say, is blind. But the tragic suicide by a college going girl in Cuttack after a CD showing her in a compromising position with her lover should open the eyes of all lovers – especially of the feminine kind – to the heavy price one has to pay for blindness in matters of love. Asima Mohanty is not the first woman to be betrayed by her lover and made an object of public titillation. Neither will she be the last. But her premature death, tragic though it is, would hopefully ensure that girls become a lot more careful before entering into a physical relationship with their lovers. They should find out a lot more about their lovers, their antecedents, the kind of company they keep. For all you know, the sweet talking boy next door could be a wily fox like Tinu Sahu, ready to dish out their intimately private moments for consumption of a huge audience of sexually starved and depraved men (and, who know, even women) with access to the internet, a CD player or even the ubiquitous mobile phone.

Ashima took the extreme step of committing suicide once her sexual dalliance became vicarious public discussion. But imagine the plight of the girl who cannot muster the courage – if that is the right word – to do the same. She would be condemned to spend the rest of her life in utter ignominy. In the kind of social set up we live in, she would most certainly never be able to marry in her life. Even the boy’s parents would never accept her as the daughter-in-law. It is thus better to be careful and restrained in your relationship rather than regret the innocent and perfectly natural act of making love with your lover being spilled all over the public domain.

I often wonder what it is it that drives these street Romeos to do what they do – the lure of money, a desire to ensure that friends and follow travelers also get into the ‘act’ or simply masculine bravado at having succeeded in getting a girl to the bed? Whatever it is, there is little doubt about one thing: today’s youth is becoming increasingly cynical and depraved.

Paradise lost

The rapid erosion of the lovely beach in Puri, arguably one of the finest in the country, is causing consternation not just among hoteliers and citizens of the pilgrim town, but also among tourists in general and beach lovers in particular.

I have always been a great lover of the Puri beach and have spent considerable time on the lovely beach at all earthly and unearthly hours of the day and night. On one particular occasion, I was so bitten by the beach bug that I drove away at 11.30 in the night with a friend riding pillion just to spend some time soaking in the atmosphere, watching the white waves appear and disappear by turn and to inhale the fresh, enlivening sea breeze that has always acted as an elixir. Hence, I was shattered to find the once sprawling beach now reduced to a few meters from the sea in my last visit. An American tourist once told me was the ‘finest’ beach in the world! The Yankee man said he came to India for a month every year and spent half of it on this paradise on earth. Coming from a man who had apparently seen almost all known beaches in the world, this undoubtedly was a glowing compliment. And he had no apparent reason to flatter me or the beach, though the easy and plentiful availability of marijuana could have played a small role in his ranking of the world’s beaches.

I am no marine scientists. But surely, there must be a way to check further erosion of this beach so that the beach lovers’ fraternity does not lose this paradise once and for all.