She met him in her college days and have loved him ever since. It was unfortunate she couldn’t marry him, even more unfortunate that she couldn’t stop loving him. She, a married woman now beats herself up for she cannot feel love for her husband like she was supposed to; even more for feeling it for someone else. She is convinced she has sinned. Love made her suffer and shamed her.

He loves her but he doesn’t know if he would choose her over his career. He has always been ambitious and now his career is driving him far from his love. Leaving would mean letting her go forever and staying would hurt his ambitious ego. He chose the cowardly way and left without a note. He could survive without love but loss of his pride and ambition would kill him. Love couldn’t make him less selfish. Love couldn’t make him braver to at least say goodbye.

They are the prototype of today’s energetic and carefree generation. They don’t know what love is and they don’t bother much to know about it. In time they will know this strange little thing called love, they say. For now, lust is enough and unlike love, lust judges and compares. So they lust after the hottest body or the prettiest face or degree of popularity. Soul mates are not real to them. Love couldn’t befriend them, not yet anyway. Love for now still dwells in movies and novels for them.

She has been in a long distance relationship for 2 years now and she wasn’t complaining. But now there is this guy and he is there for her in times when she wished her lover could be. He takes care of her, brings her flowers, is available any time of the day- all the things her lover is unable to do. Her lover now seems like a strange dream to her and this guy a sweet reality. She is tempted and finally gives in. Love couldn’t make her patient. Love made it easy to be tempted.

They were married for 15 long happy years and when he suddenly died one day, she didn’t know how to go on. She was still young and had prospects like her family told her but she couldn’t move on. She didn’t feel the need to. She didn’t feel empty so as to replace that with somebody else. He was gone but their love was not. She didn’t feel sad or alone for she knew his love was ever hers and she could live with that. Love made her strong. Love became her support, her friend and accompanied her till her death.

There are more of these stories. There is that girl who is in love with this hot shot guy who prefers girl with pretty eyes and faces, everything she is not and that makes her heart hurt but still she smiles every time she sees him. If only appearances didn’t matter, if only he would choose to see her heart instead of her freckled face, her extra weight and her out of trend clothes. But he wouldn’t. Love does after all consider such trivial things. And there is that guy who is in a relationship since ages but still doesn't tell for sure if he loves her. To say “I love you” has been a routine. He still doesn't know the meaning of it. Love to him is a substance to use and now it also comes with instructions.

The shades and fragrance of love changes with every story and every people. And while many grand things about love may or may not have held true, this statement does. People are immersed and smeared with different colors of love. Their love smells different, acts different. There is no love similar to another. Love is subjective. So if you love someone or more than one at the same time and you cannot find your kind of love in movies or songs or philosophies, maybe you are smeared with an entirely new shade of love, one that was not found yet.