“They say love is the best investment. The more you give the more you get in return.” Audrey Hepburn. I believe in this quote completely. I am not a writer. Neither can I ever be one. I am probably just writing this because I have no one to share this with. Even today, I still don’t know how I moved on from this experience.

It was as if destiny had joined forces with the evil spirits because at the end of it all - I ended up with heartache and loneliness.

I am a finance graduate and many people ask me for investment related advice. I always tell them to invest their money in long-term plans. But they often end up investing their money in insurance. They think that investing their money in shares is a risky affair. So they end up earning meagre returns from their faulty investments.

I think we follow the same pattern in all our relationships. We tend to get carried away by the initial euphoria of our love. When we make an investment for life it means facing the ups and downs of life together. That is what love is all about. But we are so happy with our short-term happiness that we do not want to risk considering long-term happiness in our relationships. 

I too forgot this statutory warning and ended up making a bad investment in my relationship.

Our romance started off with a spark. Things looked really alluring initially and we cemented our bond within a few days. When I first met her, I didn’t know that a concept like ‘love’ really existed in real life. I assumed that such things happened only in movies. I thought people got carried away by the artificial aura that was created in their hearts by such movies. I wondered how people could fall into such traps so easily.

But I realized that ‘love’ really existed when I actually experienced it after I met her.

She was so sweet-natured and attractive that I forgot she belonged to another religion. Even if we all belong to a developing country, we continue to look out for soul mates that belong to our own religion in all the matrimonial sites.

I am an atheist. So I never thought of things with this kind of a perspective. She too never mentioned that she was not responding to me because we belonged to different religions. So I never knew that this was so important to her. Whenever I told her that I could not live without her, she would always respond to me with silence.

But her beautiful smile made me forget that I was getting carried away by the initial euphoria of love – which was a short-term investment. I thought this was a very good investment. In fact, I felt so good about the whole thing that I did not even think about the long-term blues that I may have to face in the future. 

The present looked much better than the future. The future looked very uncertain to me.

I somehow thought that maybe by God’s grace, I would be able to make her understand how much I loved her. But then – I also felt sorry for myself because at such times I forgot that I didn’t believe in God too.

That was another point that was not in my favour.

I then made another mistake of believing that I could change her with the immense love that I had for her. I thought she would leave everything behind and come to me.

I was unable to differentiate between ‘truth’ and ‘reality’. The truth was we both loved each other. The reality was that we belonged to different religions.

I was enraptured by her twinkling eyes and her smiles. They always made my heart beat faster. Her beauty was enough to make a lazy person like me reach my accounts tuition classes earlier than my usual time. I just wanted to meet her privately. She too would give in to my demands and come early for the classes. She had once mentioned that she had met with an accident earlier after which she had this tendency of forgetting things. So I did my best to avoid stressing her out. I controlled myself whenever I wanted to ask her to reply to my proposal.

She would often tease me about the love that I had for her. She would say that her passport is ready and they would probably shift to Dubai in the near future. I knew she was the only daughter in her family. So I thought that this would really happen. But she has been living in the same city for the last 5 years and we have not seen each other during this time.

She just left me without saying anything.

The concrete foundation of my love shattered completely and I did not even know about it. We just parted ways without knowing that this is how things will end between us. All my questions remain unanswered. Even today when I think about it, I don’t regret choosing to love her. I did know that somewhere down the line – in the future - I would end up becoming the loser.

But I am happy that I experienced love. Otherwise, I would have ended up cheating myself.

That I think is the biggest difference between ‘love’ and ‘financial investments.’ In love even if you end up being the loser you will always be happy about being honest with your feelings.

Today I know that a woman’s heart is like a secret garden and the walls of that garden are really high. I also know that the woman I loved will always have a special corner in my heart. But that corner of my heart has also become dysfunctional now. Yet she continues to make my heart smile.

I would always wonder about all those love-related quotes that I read. I never knew that such concepts could happen in real life to people like me. But all those quotes make complete sense to me now.

Share This Story