WHY I LOVE BOLLYWOOD (Part I)

I’ve been thinking an awful lot about marriage lately. I realized, not so long ago, that I’m finally ready to get married. I keep trying to figure out why. I never anticipated that this day would come. It’s not really my style. Or maybe, I never anticipated that this day would come and my prospects would be so bleak, to be more exact. Yes, I think that’s it. That’s the real problem. I’m 27 years old and I feel ridiculously old. This probably has something to do with the fact that I’ll be 28 in less than two months, marking the 10^th anniversary of my release from the prison of my parents’ authority. I’m beginning to think I’ve quite wearied myself on independence. I really, REALLY, wouldn’t have believed it possible even five years ago. But then five years ago I was still coming to appreciate my release from the tyrannical prison that was Liberty University. So maybe that’s the essence of it, I’ve been out of college a full five years now, quickly closing in on six years and I have fully, firmly and completely established my independence. It’s almost like that moment in Cast Away when Tom Hanks’ character realizes no one is coming to get him…

I nearly did get married a year and a half ago. It was a precipitous climb to an unanticipated destination. At the time I became engaged, age 25 seemed golden and full of possibilities. The realism and cruelty of the march of time had not yet set in. I had not yet peeked into the valley into which I have currently descended. The valley is deep and wide. The engagement fell apart, not because I wasn’t ready (I wasn’t) but because he absolutely wasn’t right. And so I tumbled into the valley of aging and singleness all at once. I had absolutely no warning that either was about to befall me. Naturally I had anticipated the milestone of 30 but I had previously envisioned it as a brightly colored flag to wave wildly in brave allegiance to independence, childlessness and aging gracefully (no post-pregnancy bellies here, thank you). In my most liberal of envisionments, I allowed for the inclusion of a suave, metropolitan, punk/hardcore, suburbanite, creative, intellectual, spontaneous—yet responsible man at my side, loyally grasping the flag—this marker of my achievement, as I plunged it into the ground, commemorating my triumph…

So ladies and gentlemen, one might be tempted to ask, “Why the change of heart? Why grow so weary so quickly? Was the breakup so horrendous as to shift the entire matrix under which you had been existing?!?” Why yes, if you must know, it was. But that is not what brought the change of heart. Somewhere in the middle of, or toward the end of, that relationship, I discovered love. It was like a secret garden barren and dry brought to life. Like Santa Claus, love was an idea I had long abandoned in childhood. As it gained life anew, its roots expanded with unflinching tenacity. Suddenly, the world had a different hue…

It was around this time I discovered Bollywood. I suddenly found myself able to appreciate a movie like Dil Se. It is a story of heartbreak and a story of love. Melodrama aside, the film Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham impacted me deeply by the very idea that someone would ever go to such great lengths to bring their family back together. While I realize these are just films, they are based in an ideal, in a consciousness that organizes itself around love. In the words of India Arie, “I am ready for love.” At least for now I have Bollywood.