We were best friends and I loved him. I fell in love with him when I was 16 and by the time I turned 20, I couldn't believe I had saved enough space in my heart to accommodate all the love I felt for him.

He was a Jain Marwadi, and anyone who knows a Jain Marwadi coming from a staunchly orthodox family knows what the outcome of the story is going to be. Armed with all the strength his love had given to me, I believed I would be able to love him enough to inculcate in him the courage to fight with his family for a love that was so beautiful and true. But oh, such naivety!

One day, five years later, when I was hopelessly in love he told me that we should consider putting a full stop to our relationship because it would not work out in the future.

He didn't think he had it in him to fight for us, to fight for a love that was the centre of my existence. And obviously his family would never agree. And his own morals would never allow him to hurt his parents. I don't blame him. The background he came from, the amount of orthodoxy and strictness he had been exposed to all his life, it was only natural that he should fear going all the way. I was proud, too, that he had chosen his morals and the love he had for his parents above everything else.

And so, those invincible invisible walls of religion had us put a stop to our feelings.

The sheer injustice of it all pains me more than the heart shattering, unending, debilitating, almost physical pain of not being able to love him. I am being punished, and oh so cruelly, for loving someone with all my heart! Congratulations, society. I think we've finally mastered the art of irony.

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