Vivek

He works as a freelancer in the company that I am now part of. He has been training others for over 3 years now and is a BE graduate just like me. We got talking, it was so easy to talk to him. We have similar kind of thoughts and are somewhat similar in our personalities. He told me one thing, ‘we are both here because we made some wrong decisions’. I could just connect to him with that sentence and I think the acceptance over the fact that we are both in similar situations, both trying to clear GATE and move forward with our lives is what hit the connect.

We started talking about our respective jobs, our previous jobs, he was warning me about how hectic training can get, I was telling him about my experience at BASE, so on and so forth. Of all the people I have met at Quantech, Vivek is easily the one I like talking to.

The other day, when we were getting back from the college, only he and I were in the car along with a driver. Somehow we got talking, and he started telling me about his girlfriend. It was such an endearing story. And to hear him narrate it in his plain, as-a-matter-of-fact tone made it even better.

She was in the same school as his, but they were both in different sections and both had some untold competition between them as to who would score the highest in the school. However, all throughout their schooling they hardly spoke to each other. After school, he came down to Bangalore for his engineering and she went to Kanpur if I am not wrong, to get trained for medical entrance exams. Towards the end of his engineering, they happened to get in touch over the phone and started talking. That’s when she confessed that she has had a huge crush on him right since their school days and if he would like to be in a relationship with her. He was taken aback, and he said he needed some time to think over. After a few days, he agreed and they both got into a relationship.

Things didn’t go on so well as he started feeling that he is not too comfortable in the relationship. That happens of course. When you enter a relationship based upon the other person’s feelings, not knowing what you want yourself, that is bound to happen. So they broke up. But, they remained friends and would still talk to each other.

Slowly as they spoke more, he got drawn towards her, and finally they are now in a relationship for about 3 years. i think in the meantime they have hardly met each other, because they both live so far away. Nevertheless they are in a happy, functional relationship.

He was telling me why he got drawn towards her. She really loved him, and he could see that in her eyes in the few times that they met. And he said that he would always wonder why she loved him so much. Of all the people in the world why did she love him so much when they hardly knew each other. I can relate to that feeling Vivek. He saw that she really loved him, that she really cared for him and that she is really true, and he decided that this is going to be the girl he marries. Above all, he really wonders why she puts up with his eccentricities. When he was narrating, I was wondering why she would put up with all his eccentricities. He doesn’t want to talk much over the phone, doesn’t like wishing people on their birthdays, doesn’t wish others on their birthdays, doesn’t shower praise, is very to the point every time he talks. I mean, these are the special things every girl wishes for - praise, birthday wishes, speaking endlessly over the phone. But she does. And we still haven’t figured out as to why.

He was telling me about the first time that he met her, the first time after entering into the relationship. She met him all alone in some place without informing others where she was going to. Such is the implicit trust that she had on him. Now, Vivek is a good person who I know would never take advantage of a girl. He wouldn’t even think of it. But what she placed in him was really blind trust.

I wonder what drives people to madness in relationships. It’s like our brains voluntarily switch off when we are in the relationship mode. Not filtering things before we blurt it out our mouths, always trying to find an explanation for every wrong that the other person has done, and making up excuses for his behavior in your own mind. That’s just how it works all the time.

He was also telling me how he is slowly learning to cope up with the eccentricities and the mood swings of a woman. Every woman is capricious. Every woman. I think that’s just one quality that is inherent in all of us. And a person who loves us truly, will sincerely understand that and cope with that. Just like how he is learning to.

And I think at the end that’s what love becomes all about. We accept the other person’s eccentricities and differences and keep them aside to look at how wonderful they are as a person. Beyond all, it is really important to be a good person. That is the only way one can respect another person, and if you cannot respect a person, you cannot be in a relationship with them. We are all good, awesome, sincere, eccentric, and different in our own ways. And we all want to be accepted for what we are, without someone trying to tweak and fit us to the description in their minds. We all want to be appreciated and loved for precisely how different we are, we all want to be accepted with our ‘conditions apply’ tag. And, if we happen to find a person who not only accepts, appreciates and lets us be, but also celebrates our eccentricities, it’s like icing on the cake.

Vivek also told me how driven she is, how she fought with her parents to allow her to study medicine while they wanted her to study for bank exams as they felt a bank job would be easier for her. How she is now doing her MBBS and is looking for a master’s seat in Bangalore so that she can be with him. He also told me another thing, when she was a child she was afflicted with polio, and she hasn’t been able to walk without any support. She either needs another person with her, or crutches for support. Never throughout his narration or our conversation could I have imagined that he was talking about a polio-afflicted girl. He never saw that in her, he saw all the other million things in her and loves her for precisely that. Vivek, for the man that you are, RESPECT.