Faithful Foolery

Notion & Song - Faith - Celine Dion

Is letter writing a lost form of expression?

More than merely a form of expression, is it a lost form of art?

A good friend of mine randomly brought this up the other day on our Whatsapp group. Although, hers was a rather specific inquiry - 'Has anyone ever written a love letter?'

Quite understandably, there were valid additional questions asked - 'Do emails count? what about love messages?' We also tried to find out if a few lines on a greeting card cut the bar. But my friend held her ground firmly. Actual letter.
Love letter.

It was heartwarming to then find out that the most unromantic person on the group (in my opinion, please) stated that she had written one. And that others too had written a few letters if not love letters but all in the long past yesteryears. That got me thinking about me writing a letter for the last time.

I do write. I write long messages, pages of emails, and then blogs and what-nots. But all of this is digital. Physical writing? Maybe once in a month, like a page in a diary or a journal. But a letter addressed to someone? Unfortunately, I realized it has been a while. A few of my closest friends who know me since childhood have had the amusement of receiving long letters from me when we were young - that is how I would fight with them. In written word.

I know!

But have I ever written a love letter?

Hmm. Oh well! I owe this confession and the context of it to myself, so here goes!

My biggest concern when I first started blogging - and even today - was that I feared I couldn't write about anything besides romance. For that is all I can think about as a topic to write on. In fact, the  couple of first penning downs I had when young, were about love. Of course, none of them stemmed from personal experiences or encounters but were musings. Remember what Kate Winslet's Iris says in the opening of The Holiday? She pretty much sums up what I would say about writing and thinking about love. And this is precisely why I refrained from blogging all these years as I was afraid I would only write sappy soapy romantic mush (not that I have written something entirely brilliantly distinguished). But somehow I managed to steer my writing direction away from it but I think it is time I allow that teenager to finally say what he has been saying all these years. 

If there is anything that I ever considered to be at the core of my life, it would be love. I always imagined my life centered around love - education, career, social life would adjust themselves around it. This was a firm belief that I carried from my teens to my mid-twenties. And rightly so, I consumed movies and series and stories and songs that validated this belief. Such fiercely held notions they were. But interestingly, my personal life has always been far away from being a repertoire of romantic encounters. In fact, it was in one of those short-lived encounters that we ended up discussing the effects of the emergence of romanticism in literature and art. That sort of popped my bubble. That maybe, just maybe, I have had it all wrong all these years in terms of what needed to be at the core of my life? That may be all this romanticism addled my impressionable young mind and that I should grow up? Ouch. That was a brutal thought.

Now I do admit that the idea of romance might have instilled unreasonable expectations and misguided understanding about love in people's minds to some extent. Alain de Botton has written and spoken succinctly about this. But I would beg to differ slightly. Mildly.

Sure, maybe, I watched Notting Hill, Saathiya, Runaway Bride, Meet Joe Black a little too many times or Brothers and Sisters, Grey's Anatomy a little too much. Or connected with Imtiaz Ali's movies a tad-bit much. But I was also surrounded by friends and family who were picking their life partners at the age of 15 and have managed to be with them, stay married and not kill each other to this date. And trust me, most of them had quite romantic stories too. So I refuse to believe that it is all hogwash and that all them writers and artists were crooks who endorsed romance. After all, art is inspired by human life. Fiction finds its foundation in reality; the embellishments are the artistry. 

And therefore, there is no reason for me to embarrassingly hide that side of mine. But sadly, I have realized that a few years ago I could say I hid that side of mine. If you ask me now, I am afraid I would have to say I have lost him. No, I don't think he grew up and matured and evolved. He just went poof. It hit me the most when I stood in front of the Blue Door in Notting Hill and I merely stood there amused. When I walked through Vienna and Paris thinking of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset and felt barely anything. And that is precisely why I need to write this today before I lose him completely. 

Do I still believe in love? The kind that I grew up reading and imagining? Yes, I do. I just need some validation and reminding. After all, I did write a love letter once and it wasn't that long ago. Yes, I was inebriated but had still managed to pen it down well. And quite romantically, I rolled it, tied a string around it (for the love of my life can't remember where I found the string) and threw it in the sea.

Yep! That's the romantic fool in me. Romance isn't everything I agree, But it sure can be the beginning of love. Unrequited or content, love is love and there should never be any shame in having faith in it. Yes, there is a fine line between faith and madness but I also think there is merit in both faith and madness. And faith reminds me of the song that I want to end this saga of mine with.

I came across Celine Dion's Faith when I was in the phase of buying Celine Dion cassettes and a friend of mine gave me the One Heart album CD. I Drove All Night was the song that made this album popular, but my favourite song was Faith. For me, the song says it all and brings a smile to my face every single time. I was supposed to write a blog about having faith in love and this song a long time back but had lost that side of mine. So here's me trying to find him again by writing what he would have written (a little more romantically) years ago. 

And while I am at it, and since the letter I threw clearly did not reach the intended person, here's me sending a digital one out there. Hopefully, you will write back to me this time? :)

Dedicated to all the Fools Who Dream