My Jodha :)

Image Courtesy: polyvore.com

Only once in a lifetime do we get a chance to be swept off our feet and made to fall head over heels in love. I know what you’re thinking: Oh no, not another post about love!

Well, in my defense, of late, there’s nothing more exciting happening in my life that is worth writing about – last night, I was stranded in the middle of the road when my bike ran out of fuel and this morning, a download I had kept in progress overnight, crashed and I had to restart the process again, but all this is quite normal and I can only say that God was in an awfully playful mood the past week. But more than this, the terror-child Cupid has been pulling at my heart strings for a very long time, and has been forcing me to write this post.

I’ve been reading this fascinating book by Salman Rushdie called “The Enchantress Of Florence,” a book that was gifted to me by this very very special woman and I don’t want to be a clichè over and over again about her, but the heart rules the mind these days and I don’t want my logical brain to come in the way.

In the book, Rushdie talks about the relationship between Akbar and his beloved Jodha, and she is portrayed as an imaginary woman, a Phantom Queen who pleases the emperor in all aspects and makes him ignore all his other queens, thus making them jealous of this figment of Akbar’s imagination.

She remains elusive and intangible throughout, at times lovely and at times frustrating because of her inability to be seen. Jodha has been portrayed as the product of the emperor’s fertile imagination, and remains the unseen whiff of wind, the unheard laugh, the untasteable kiss, the unfeeling yet-so-warm touch and the fragrance that isn’t. She resides in his head and yet roams around the vast palace, she resides in his heart and yet sleeps next to him at night, she plagues his mind and yet keeps him healthy, she feels sad about not being alive and yet she’s so full of life, she’s the only woman the emperor ever loved and ironically, being unreal, she’s his only anchor to reality.

The only difference between the Jodha in the book and my Jodha is that the woman I love is as real as you and me and she is a hundred times more beautiful than the Moghul Queen. She’s my anchor to reality just as much as the figment of Akbar’s imagination.

I’m just a hopeless, pathetic, over-optimistic romantic!