I’ve been lying in bed and reading a lot. Orhan Pamuk has been one of the lucky authors.
How many of you agree with this?
It may not happen in the first instant, but within ten minutes of meeting a man, a woman has a clear idea of who he is, or at least who he might be for her, and her heart of hearts has already told her whether or not she’s going to fall in love with him.
Also by Orhan, tell me if you agree…
Solitude is essentially a matter of pride; you bury yourself in your own scent. The issue is the same for all real poets. If you’ve been happy for too long, you become banal. By the same token, if you’ve been unhappy for a long time, you lose your poetic power…Happiness and poetry can only coexist for the briefest time. Afterward either happiness coarsens the poet or the poem is so true it destroys his happiness.
And oh, dedicating yet another song to myself. Specifically uljhe nahi toh kaise suljhoge part.
The Mad Momma 
somehow i do not think the first statement is true. second one am too dumb to understand.
I think the first one is 100 percent true. At least for me. Second one, me too 🙂 too dumb to understand.
Every time, I have fallen in love, it was pretty fast, sometimes less than 10 minutes. And it has stood the test of time. I am married to my last love. We keep falling in and out of love. Now that I don’t fall in love with new men every few years, I still know. With in 10 minutes of meeting a 22 year old, I knew this is exactly how I’d like to raise my son to be. This is how age has changed me. I know I’d have fallen for him 10 years back 🙂
so true. i have friends who are 31 and dating 24 year olds. and when i see a 24 year old i might have fallen for, 10 years ago, i know this is what i want my son to grow up to be. its not age, its stage. atleast for me, now that i am a mother, its unthinkable to crush on them so the next best is to aspire to be the mother of one such! so sad :p
sad but good ..atleast this ensures that some sanity is still there in this world ..else imagine what all can happen..
LOL! and what harm is there anyway if two people fall in love? not everyone needs to be as prudish as me….
I’ve not read Orhan Pamuk at all, but this here, seems like I’m missing out on some really good stuff. I hadn’t even heard of him till some time back, and then there were these mixed reviews on My Name Is Red, so I just didn’t make the effort. But the second excerpt you have quoted here, is enough to sell it to me 🙂
i didnt really enjoy My name is Red. I’ve just been thrown by a couple of lines, but its not the kind of book i find unputdownable
Completely agree with the first. The second is also true – for those writers who revel in emotions and tragedy. The rest of us are banal anyway
first one , yes yes !!! Specifically in the negative sense .
Second one, hmmmm, it will take some time for me to understand that. Be back in a decade !!!
Agree with the second. First one… not! It’s a romanticism; might be true of some people, but definitely not most.
i’m confused. i like to think i am that clear but i dont know anymore.
I guess I’m going by personal experience. All the men I have been with seriously, the ones I would say I was in love with, I didn’t find that attractive on first sight. They grew on me… and how! On the other hand, the ones I was instantly attracted to, didn’t last very long. He pretty much seems to be talking about love at first sight (or love in the first 10 minutes) and experience has taught me that it doesn’t really work that way. I’m sure it happens for some people though.
hmm… well when i think about it, the men i find attractive i also end up disagreeing with violently. we argue and rant and debate. at some level just fighting attraction perhaps? but i’m never neutral to them. theres just no ignoring them
I completely agree with you….At least it has worked for me
Absolutely agree with the first one. You ALWAYS know. And it does not even take a physical meeting- Mails/ phone conversations will also do. I am thinking of all the men in my life and I realise- very true! 🙂
The second one, I am going to need to read it a couple of times more. Will come back.
somehow i knew which of you would agree with the first one. all bleddy romantics like me
What about u ?
what do u think of the first one 😉
From what i rememember from reading ur posts – u never thought of OA as the “special one” for a long time right 😉 ????
well, in my defence i did say that they are all romantics like me. i agree with the the first one.
as to your question, i think its largely clouded by your personal life right then. i was in a very serious relationship with someone else, the first time i laid eyes on the OA and i dont think I allowed myself the liberty to think about the OA. when i look back now i even remember what he was wearing, the few words he said and the expression on his face. i often remember why that snapshot stayed on in my mind – perhaps subconsciously it had happened and i just didnt have the sense to realise it. i do know that within 10 minutes of meeting him i knew the OA was an awesome guy and well, would make SOME woman a fantastic husband. i just didnt realise it would be me.
Haha. What would the world be, without us bleddy romantics? 🙂
I totally relate to what you mean, when you say you remember the seemingly mundane details of meeting the OA for the first time. I remember such details too! Clothes, conversation, food we ate, the exact joke he said, the context.. everything 😀
But then again, none of it lasted, so maybe its not entirely true.But then again, you never know 🙂
just because it didn’t last doesn’t mean it wasn’t love.
I am actually replying to MM’s statement below – for some reason it does not have a reply button attached. Very true: lovely summary of how some relationships go.
Super cute 🙂 Amazing how years of stalking later, I still find new stuff about you guys on the blog.. just needs enough stalking in the comments section as well. 😀
And since I didn’t say anything about the first quote, I do want to say I agree too. I’ve always known in the first meeting.. always. I saw A, the husband, in a room full of people on the first day of B-school and the prof was announcing something about choosing your group. And I walked up to him and asked “You’re already in a group?” So yeah, a lot has changed since then but I know it was that first meeting.
And I think you’re bang on with the arguments being a way of fighting attraction!!
LOL! I say more in the comments than I do in the posts.
thanks for the response …
I was best frnds with my husband for 3 years before we became gf/bf and thats the reason I thought the first quote is not true for me …
but reading ur explaination – I too remember exactly what he was wearing .. what we said to each other ..same with him .. he remembers what i was wearing …
and after a couple of weeks of meeting him, i and another gf had commented – he is such a nice guy .. his wife is going to be so lucky ….
but i still never thought of him in “that way ” for a loong loong loong time ….
I rest my case, milord
That line “you bury yourself in your own scent” reminded me of Sylvia Plath’s line in Bell Jar: “stewing in my own sour air”! Isn’t it strange that writers, poets and those who pontificate say the same things over and over? Life is same, I guess.
Hope you are feeling better. Hope you don’t have to take up the long commute again.
no such luck. the long commute continues to reign
“Happiness and poverty can only coexist for the briefest time.” This is very true though the converse may not be.
And I dont think the first one is true with everyone. I mean I dont think of every man I meet with that perspective. Not until I’ve spent some time with him.
i dont know if one can choose a perspective. neither does it imply that you look at every man as a prospective. just that if its going to be love, you feel it within those first few minutes. there has to be something special about that someone if you’re going to fall in love with them… right?
The man I married, who has been boyfriend since 3 yrs, I didnt feel the love in those first few minutes of meeting/talking to him. 🙂 One can choose perspectives, its when I see things from the point the other person sees it, I know what he means, even if he of a complete opposite stance. I merely stated that its not true with EVERYONE! It might be for some, not for others 🙂
oooohhh that sounds gooood. i know, i know, you are in pain and all. but lying down and reading oohhhhhh that sounds goooood.
(do you want to hit me, MM? come on, bring it on).
thats right. hit a woman when she’s done. you of the fit knees and basketball energy
The first one is SO true. It hit home instantly. Let me go find the other half of my brain to understand the second. Am so glad you’re getting over it :-). Warm cuddly hugs 🙂 Oh, am going to b’lore over the weekend. ANYTHING you want from there?
the weather?
Aww..mere bas me hota toh would definitely bring it back for you and myself too 🙂
Oh, you DON’T want the Bangalore weather – not the weather we are experiencing right now. Its rainy and grey and depressing like nothing I have ever seen before. I miss the ‘Bangalore weather’!!!!!! 😦
honey i’ll take rain over this heat, any day! although my starched and twisted cotton dupattas smell like crap.
Isn’t the opening chapter of Museum of Innocence the best thing in the novel? Agree, agree, especially with the first one 🙂
Glad you are better. Love.
i KNEW you’d agree with the first one.
I don’t agree with the first one.
With Man#1, the first time I met him, I wished for him to shut up, I was just so damn intimidated.
With Man#2, I thought, “This company should stop hiring these damn freshers who keep coming for knowledge transitions so that I can have some hair left on my head when I leave this hell hole.”
That was all I thought, I swear 😀
I married Man#2.
I agree with the second one, though. I don’t know abt.poetry, but my free verses are a better read when something significantly sad is going on in my life.
pooh. thats what you tell yourself. we know differently. :p
@Smartassbride: You think you can getaway by saying things like this? You think I don’t read MM? How dare you!
Go on, tell her the truth! You fell for your husband’s charm and that dazzling smile on the very first day! I mean, who cant fall for that smile? When I met him 2.5 yrs ago in this dingy pub in B’lore, all that I could see was his smile!
@MM: When I met, Guy-0.25, I thought ‘Mummyyyy! I’m scared!’. When I met Guy-1, I thought ‘Acho! How aiyoh paavam!’. It turned out, Guy-0.25 was scared of me at the end and Guy-1 was anything but aiyoh paavam 😐 And then, when I met V, I thought ‘Wow’ and then he went and married our Smartassbride. Sigh!
hah! I thought as much. she thought she could pull a smart one on me
okay, you two want to give me the image of a Discerning Subconscious and Heart Owner,
despite that fact that retarded geese are probably more discerning than I am.
What can I say, am honoured 😛
yeah, that fellow I married marginally looks better than a dingy pub, i agree.
Alert to MM:
MM, the 0.25 guy Revs refers to is a five year old. Keep the brat safe from her, please.
*promptly tucks the Brat under a chair*
yes. all we’re trying to say is that we know you better than you know yourself, only through the reading of your blog. And why cant I? My trolls feel they have the same right.
Grrrrr
confused..is it happiness and poverty or happiness and poetry?
whoa. typo. and what a terrible one. its poetry of course.
n THAT makes sense!!!
and thats y i was like whr did poverty come in all of a sudden. may be there is something in this sentence that talks abt it and may be am the dumb one was what i thought. 😀
LOL! glad you guys pointed it out. i wonder how many people read that typo and wondered if i was nuts.
I read and i thought I was an idiot for not understanding 🙂
The second one is most definitely true. Poetry and happiness coexisting for long is impossible. Beautiful poetry needs for a fine sieve to be maintained between a poet’s life and the mundane ups and downs of life in general. That sieve in turn, creates all the sadness and solitude for the poet.
About the first – it has been true for me. But then love as a concept is losing its hold on me now. So can’t say if it’s true in general.
I agree with both. when in the mood to type..may come back to elaborate.
The first one can’t be more true. I kept falling in and out of love. may be its easy for some. Who don;t think much – don;t scrutinise and thinking of the future the minute they meet a man. There are women, who start thinking practically about the future. I guess this statement doesn’t hold true for them. Second bit – i think a person writes his/her best piece when they are either extremely happy or extremely sad.
actually i do think it happens to almost everyone, but sometimes you dont recognise it for what it is. at others you simply suppress it.
I agree I agree with the first one 🙂
You just KNOW in the first ten minutes. Doesn’t matter if the knowing happens in the heart or the tummy or the gut or the brain, but it just happens.
The second one , I just don’t get. Let me conveniently blame that on work and the deathly cold that I have.
Are your knees any better MM?
no darling, but my mood is
That’s a start 🙂 You will be better soon soon.
oye, thought you swore off Pahmuk after My name is red/Snow? or was that just me?
No I did hate it but I’ve been dabbling again.
1. Agree. And btw you nailed it with “and when i see a 24 year old i might have fallen for, 10 years ago, i know this is what i want my son to grow up to be. its not age, its stage.” Happens with me ALL the time.
2. I think it is true. For any kind of writing, not necessarily poetry. I THINK. One example. I almost HATE how my blog sounds now. Some of my older blogs at least sounded nicer, I was depressed and hurting and I think I used to write like a million bucks then 😀 😀 And no, I can’t classify my writing as “good” even in moments of intense narcissism 😛 But I think years ago I used to be at least better than now. Now I think I sound happy, but at the same time desperately-trying-to-sound-funny.
Such is life.
well i have a strange theory on that. merely that when you’re happy, you dont really care about anything. its when you’re in pain that the effort of doing something distracts you. the passion is channeled and for that little while that you are immersed in it, you are giving it all that would have otherwise gone to the pain. i know – its a rubbish theory but i had fun thinking it up. that should explain it
Have you read Preeti’s blog lately? This post:
http://justamotheroftwo.blogspot.com/2010/07/experiment-7-days-of-positivity-day-1.html
LOL! ask her to uproot her life, lose the use of two limbs, lose her driver, her cook, her home, and practically lose her job too (well a 4 hr commute is crazy, isnt it?). and be marooned in a strange place that goes against her every belief.
i’m kidding. i like the idea will do it. starting my next post. big hug.
Well–you have no idea what I have indeed lost …(which was the reason for starting it in the first place)
And hey–i have no cook, have been uprooted to a strange place, have lost my job, my home, but yeah I still got my limbs 😉
Cheers
Preeti
oh um. ouch. sorr yabout whatever yuo lost. lets hope this brings you the cheer. and thank you for setting us all off!
Ive always fallen for the ones who arent good for me. So imagine falling in love knowing this isnt going to work out. And the ones who fell for me Im always wondering why? Including the one I married. Strange no? So true about that point tearsndreams made.
Excerpt 2 – totally agree.
🙂 i never wonder why he fell for me. i wonder how i fell for him
*end ego trip*
You go, girl 🙂
BWAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I don’t know about women, but most men will agree with this quote
“It may not happen in the first instant, but within ten minutes of meeting a woman, a man has a clear idea of who she is, or at least who she might be for him, and his heart of hearts has already told him that he’s going to fall for her.”
OK, sorry to be an intruder in this kitty party.. 🙂
😀 welcome. its good to have a man’s point of view. i cant believe you just said that. most men would deny it till they are blue in the face.
well.. we deny because that is what is expected of us.. you know.. all that socially acceptable behaviour crap
‘Mana ho tum’ is sung (beautifully) by Yesudas (in case u thot it was Kishore (” Kishore, Kishore, Kishore!”)