It begins with a look. Then another. And another. The desolate guy accosts the girl, often asks her phone number or e-mail ID. Before you know, the two are dating and cooing to each other. By and by, they are so intimate as to be inseparable. A few hormonal surges. Aimless meanderings.

Movies. Restaurants. And what not. Then one gray morning, each gets up and the last thing s/he wants to do is see is their partner. That’s it. Over. It ends as abruptly as it begins.

I can only pity them. How can people change partners like their clothes? Aren’t these folks giving love a bad name? Thanks to the new- age, show-me-the-money relationships, the very word ‘love’ has got a new meaning. ng. I regret to admit that even some of my best friends fall into this group.

The first time I saw ‘her’, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with that girl. No second thoughts. Not in my wildest imagination can I even think about the time when I will need her no more, nor she not need me, for that matter.

But it is difficult to drive home this point to my friends who have experienced nothing close. I get really pissed off when they make jokes at my expense; when they ask me if I am not tired of being with the same girl for five years. Absolutely not.

I can’t understand how one can stop loving someone one really cares about — the person who understands you without your utering a word. Someone you are attached to beyond considerations of profit and loss. If two persons confessed ‘love’ for each other, how can they think of breaking off a relationship just like that? Relationships are not casual business bonds that one makes at convenience.

But more than getting angry at my sorry pals, I pity them. They call me naive and sentimental,

but I know it is they who are in the wrong. I really feel for them for their faulty understanding of the word ‘love’.

As a popular saying goes, one often ends up with what one wishes for to begin with. I have found what I was looking for. But do my friends even know the kind of partner they seek?

I pray that someday they will come to a better understanding of what it means to love and be loved. Or will they?