“What is love?” Kuldeep asked with a mischievous tone. I knew he was putting the question to me. I acted as if I didn’t hear what he said & started moving my lips as if I was too deeply entrenched in my book. He knew what I was up to. “You don’t know the definition of love. Do you Mr. Love Guru?”  This remark took its toll on me & drops of sweat condensed on my forehead. After all, my contribution to social work was in question. “It’s a game of chess. You lose to win.” I didn’t look up but my face wore a broad smile. It was a definition I was proud of. I remember filling in the same in all slam books at school time. “You lose to win. So eventually you get to win. You win & your partner in love loses. Is that so?” Pat came the reply from Vinod who was sitting next to Kuldeep. Damn it! I said to myself. So much for the definition. I shouldn’t have said it in his presence. He’s a canny customer. Vinod has this special ability to turn your grey matter into vegetation. So much for tomorrow’s control system end semester examination, I thought. Let’s ruin it in a special way. “So what’s your definition Vinoo?” He closed his eyes as if he was directly connecting to God. “Well it depends.” He said with a raised eyebrow.” It depends what type of relation is it? Father-son, mother-son…….” He was going way beyond the boundaries of the topic so I had to stop him. “No wait. I’m not asking for love in blood relations. I guess it’s easy to understand in what context Kuldeep asked the definition.”

Pankaj, who was sitting next to me probably didn’t heed my words or he was just trying to aggravate my discontent to the morphing of the context of the debate. If Vinod had the ability to turn your mind to vegetable then I have no qualms in saying that Pankaj is an expert in deep frying that vegetable. “Yeah, right! I had read about this mother-son love in philosophy of sex & there they had written that…..” That’s it, I thought. This is not the way I wanted it to go. “Oh come on, you morons. Didn’t you hear what I just said? Relate to the topic please. It’s really serious.”

“So what’s your point of view, Ajay?” I made an attempt to delocalize the conversation and tilted sideways to look at Ajay as ‘THE PILLAR OF CONFUSION’( which stood right in the middle of our triple seater room serving as a divider & also as Ajay’s cupboard) was blocking my view. He must have rued the fact that I dragged him to this stupid debate.” Ask the one who started it all.” he said with a dry smile. All heads turned to the culprit of the day. “Why do you think I asked it? Really, I don’t know.” Kuldeep said defensively, as if he was pushed to the wall. For a brief moment everybody stared at the gravity of our ignorance. Ajay had a flash of light, “Hormonal Imbalance.” I heard somebody applauding the definition. Others authenticated it with silence. “Hmm…. Riveting!” I remarked. I really had no other words to say. Could have given another one relating love to control system but dropped the idea as I looked up to find everybody groping in their books. Kuldeep met my gaze in the process & smiled. I reciprocated his ex-pression & turned my thoughts to the book again.