Must love lead to marriage?

 First, let's get this straight: love doesn't always mean some marriage-and-wedding kind of story. It might lead to that, but it doesn't have to. I used to believe in fairy tales about love being essential for marriage when I was little. Now we've grown up. We need to learn to think like adults, as Ritwik Ghatak would say, we need to "practice thinking." In most cases, marriage is essentially a social contract, and I've never felt that love requires contracts. Rather, at the beginning, this marriage contract has some resemblance to the consensual practice of sexuality.

 The children we see around us—not all of them were born of love. Some were born by mistake, some from habit, some from social pressure, some because of pressure from grandparents. Not all children are the fruit of love, but almost all children are treasures of love.

 What love needs most is mutual respect. You don't love someone you don't respect. But you can respect someone you don't love. Love must include respect; respect may not include love. Simple thing—better not to complicate it.

 When you feel like sleeping with someone and then tell them in roundabout ways, "I love you!"—it feels rather petty! Both approaches seem stupid and pathetic to me. This hypocrisy that you need love to engage in sexuality—until we can break free from this, this nation's main diet will be rice alongside "sentiment." The practice of sexuality may or may not be related to love. If love just circles around sex and sentiment, there's nothing more disgusting. A handshake in the name of love is far better than a contract in the name of love; even better is a contract in the name of contract. Love and lust may or may not be connected—you don't need to be Einstein to understand this. If you understand this but your heart won't accept it, then you surely deserve some suffering.

 Humans are strange creatures. Everyone has different priorities. None are wrong—whatever keeps you happy! Some sleep when they love, some love when they sleep; some sleep to love, some love to sleep; some sleep to sleep, some love to love; some don't sleep even when they love, some don't love even when they sleep. We need to accept this: you don't necessarily need love or affection to sleep together, but yes, when it's there, the joy increases manifold. Union in the name of false love is a kind of silent mental rape.

 If you love someone, before it occurs to you that they can't cook good kacchi biryani, it will occur to you that their simple dal and fried eggplant tastes like nectar. If you can't say two good words about someone's fried eggplant, I think they don't need to learn to cook kacchi just to feed you. Love doesn't ignore limitations, but love doesn't dance around limitations either. When you love someone, thoughts will definitely come about what they can do, what qualities they have, what more they could do if they wanted, which areas they could pay more attention to if they chose—these thoughts will come! If they don't, then I'd say since there's no conflict or love between heart and bed, one can exist without the other, and quite well too; if you exit this false happiness before it's too late, both of you will be spared a lot of unnecessary future pain. Love and lust are neither mutually inclusive nor exclusive.

 If you see no light in someone, only darkness, then what you have for them is called habit, attraction, or sexuality—not love. When two people love each other, both think about and discuss each other's good qualities, both try to develop them. If your loved one's qualities don't flourish in your presence, then I'd say they should reconsider their decision to stay with you. The same applies to yourself. If you don't feel good being with someone, if you feel low, then either you don't love them, or they don't love you. Your lovemaking might be wonderful, but there's probably something wrong with your lovefeeling.

 Love means "two becoming one." If the person I love isn't well, how can I be well? If the person I love can't enhance their talents because of me, who could be more worthless than me? Love teaches selfless giving and grateful receiving. Here lies happiness, here lies peace. Where there's the thought of "what will I get for what I give"—yes, even there the theory of "two becoming one" holds equally true... but only in bed!

 Postscript. For those having trouble accepting marriage as a social contract, let me say this. Our experience tells us that at least 96% of love affairs end in breakups. Those who break up—barring one or two exceptions—don't just sit around refusing to marry, do they? So most of those who do marry didn't have prior love affairs! I've never believed that from the start of marriage, two strangers begin drowning in love for each other. Rather, even after spending two decades together after marriage, many couples we've seen and continue to see are bound not by love but merely by affection or habit. In that case, isn't marriage a kind of affectionate or affectionless social contract? What else could it be?