<p>As the car spiralled down the road, my gaze fell on the rear-view mirror. This time, I locked my eyes into his, and held. This would be our last day in the hills and I had fallen perilously in love with this quiet guide who accompanied us. That he used kohl to line his eyes mattered. I may have been fourteen. Later, I would return home and spend a few wistful evenings wondering if he too thought of me, before school, friends and life took over. But his memory, like the toasted nearness of a bonfire stayed, longer. </p>.<p>Over the years I realised what a ‘dilphenk’ I was — giving the heart away easily, often. I had a knack for fantasy romances — not just when I went exploring new and different places, but even at home. I built the most impossible romances with the most peculiar characters in the oddest of situations. And always with the latest film song playing in the backdrop. Odd as it was, checking with friends I soon reckoned I wasn’t alone — it was a common adventure of imagination for girls with our middle class, timid lives! </p>.<p>Nothing came off these fantasies. A few furtive glances post the initial frisson, some awkward chatting, and some secret letters apart, there was no scope for more. Mostly there were only long diary entries and nights of being hero-heroines in self-authored narratives playing full blown cinema in our heads. We were too naive to doubt the authenticity of these feelings; and too young to remain hurt from their hasty dissolution. </p>.<p>One would have thought that was that. But even after age and experience have instilled copious amounts of suspicion for impulse, and the necessary weighing of most ‘feelings’ for their result-oriented contribution to our lives — these pointless sojourns of the truant heart persist in our adult lives. </p>.<p>The holiday romance</p>.<p>I have wondered why some of us are prone to develop feelings for people who are far away from the lives we otherwise lead, especially when we are travelling? Some call this ‘holiday romance’. Like wearing traditional clothes of locals and posing for photographs, perhaps this is a way of momentarily stepping into another life — one so remote, so obscure from our real lives that we will never ever think of actually living it. Us being away from home and this unraveling mostly in our heads — it becomes the perfect playground for our guilty desires. Maybe it makes us feel safe in a way our real lives can’t — a life we will never actually live can never cause us pain, right? Or perhaps in a world where who we can desire and love is strictly prescribed by social norms with boundaries as battle-lines, these little pretense-play pleasures allow for that tiny taste of transgression, a tentative touch of the forbidden. </p>.<p>Even at the very start of almost all of these affairs of the heart, we are aware that they are relationships that will never be. Either our return home from travels or the inability to find sustainable common grounds eventually prevail. Perhaps it is our longing for the mysteries of the ‘incomplete’ that bewitch us. Stilled in time, the ‘unfinished’ has no pressure of culmination to burden the joys of present experience.</p>.<p>While we think our hearts need maps with destinations and desperately attempt to analyse the road blocks of every relationship that in our view ‘is not going anywhere’, perhaps what sometimes nourishes our souls is the lightness that comes with an absence of the future, an escape from tomorrow. None of the relationships we actually live give us that. Most are stuck between the binaries of success and failure at the finishing line. This is a bit like the experiences of sexual intimacy — those relentlessly chasing a climax miss the wanderings of the pleasure-plateau and mostly arrive at indifferent endings. But for me what is most beautiful about the ‘unfinished’ is that it embodies a yearning for return, the greed for a little more, the desire for another chance. The unfinished always holds the promise of a ‘what if’, a land of eternal spring that overshadows present disappointments. Knowing fully well that we never will, we crave to live that life, in those moments, a while longer. Sometimes the heart aches just to signal its presence. </p>.<p>What detours do to us</p>.<p>At another time, in another world, this could have been different — we think. Some of us return from these detours with a deeper understanding of home — while others realise how fragile, how breakable home can be. There is another realisation. At times all you can do for those you deeply feel for is to wish them well in their lives, far from you. Nothing teaches this better than falling in love with people we will never meet again. But the buoyancy of our hearts in the presence of such feelings is magical. And we all have a right to float.</p>.<p><em>(This column navigates the various worlds of entangled relationships attempting to celebrate, cope with, and reimagine the meanings of our connections. The author is a writer, cultural practitioner, social activist, and traveller. All Our Loves: Journeys with Polyamory in India is her first book in English, published by Aleph in 2025.)</em></p>
<p>As the car spiralled down the road, my gaze fell on the rear-view mirror. This time, I locked my eyes into his, and held. This would be our last day in the hills and I had fallen perilously in love with this quiet guide who accompanied us. That he used kohl to line his eyes mattered. I may have been fourteen. Later, I would return home and spend a few wistful evenings wondering if he too thought of me, before school, friends and life took over. But his memory, like the toasted nearness of a bonfire stayed, longer. </p>.<p>Over the years I realised what a ‘dilphenk’ I was — giving the heart away easily, often. I had a knack for fantasy romances — not just when I went exploring new and different places, but even at home. I built the most impossible romances with the most peculiar characters in the oddest of situations. And always with the latest film song playing in the backdrop. Odd as it was, checking with friends I soon reckoned I wasn’t alone — it was a common adventure of imagination for girls with our middle class, timid lives! </p>.<p>Nothing came off these fantasies. A few furtive glances post the initial frisson, some awkward chatting, and some secret letters apart, there was no scope for more. Mostly there were only long diary entries and nights of being hero-heroines in self-authored narratives playing full blown cinema in our heads. We were too naive to doubt the authenticity of these feelings; and too young to remain hurt from their hasty dissolution. </p>.<p>One would have thought that was that. But even after age and experience have instilled copious amounts of suspicion for impulse, and the necessary weighing of most ‘feelings’ for their result-oriented contribution to our lives — these pointless sojourns of the truant heart persist in our adult lives. </p>.<p>The holiday romance</p>.<p>I have wondered why some of us are prone to develop feelings for people who are far away from the lives we otherwise lead, especially when we are travelling? Some call this ‘holiday romance’. Like wearing traditional clothes of locals and posing for photographs, perhaps this is a way of momentarily stepping into another life — one so remote, so obscure from our real lives that we will never ever think of actually living it. Us being away from home and this unraveling mostly in our heads — it becomes the perfect playground for our guilty desires. Maybe it makes us feel safe in a way our real lives can’t — a life we will never actually live can never cause us pain, right? Or perhaps in a world where who we can desire and love is strictly prescribed by social norms with boundaries as battle-lines, these little pretense-play pleasures allow for that tiny taste of transgression, a tentative touch of the forbidden. </p>.<p>Even at the very start of almost all of these affairs of the heart, we are aware that they are relationships that will never be. Either our return home from travels or the inability to find sustainable common grounds eventually prevail. Perhaps it is our longing for the mysteries of the ‘incomplete’ that bewitch us. Stilled in time, the ‘unfinished’ has no pressure of culmination to burden the joys of present experience.</p>.<p>While we think our hearts need maps with destinations and desperately attempt to analyse the road blocks of every relationship that in our view ‘is not going anywhere’, perhaps what sometimes nourishes our souls is the lightness that comes with an absence of the future, an escape from tomorrow. None of the relationships we actually live give us that. Most are stuck between the binaries of success and failure at the finishing line. This is a bit like the experiences of sexual intimacy — those relentlessly chasing a climax miss the wanderings of the pleasure-plateau and mostly arrive at indifferent endings. But for me what is most beautiful about the ‘unfinished’ is that it embodies a yearning for return, the greed for a little more, the desire for another chance. The unfinished always holds the promise of a ‘what if’, a land of eternal spring that overshadows present disappointments. Knowing fully well that we never will, we crave to live that life, in those moments, a while longer. Sometimes the heart aches just to signal its presence. </p>.<p>What detours do to us</p>.<p>At another time, in another world, this could have been different — we think. Some of us return from these detours with a deeper understanding of home — while others realise how fragile, how breakable home can be. There is another realisation. At times all you can do for those you deeply feel for is to wish them well in their lives, far from you. Nothing teaches this better than falling in love with people we will never meet again. But the buoyancy of our hearts in the presence of such feelings is magical. And we all have a right to float.</p>.<p><em>(This column navigates the various worlds of entangled relationships attempting to celebrate, cope with, and reimagine the meanings of our connections. The author is a writer, cultural practitioner, social activist, and traveller. All Our Loves: Journeys with Polyamory in India is her first book in English, published by Aleph in 2025.)</em></p>