The Kollywood Delusion

Okay, I don’t know why I proposed marriage.

If I scrape the bottom of that chaotic, screaming basement memory, the only coherent thought I can isolate is guilt. I just didn’t want her life to be adversely affected by me. I didn’t want my physical proximity to trigger the collapse of whatever fragile peace she had built in that apartment. It was a stupid, blunt-force instrument to try and shield her from those vultures. A reflex.

But whatever the reason was, I never looked back at it again. I buried the logic and just accepted the reality of the words hanging in the air.

We are spending a lot of time together now. The claustrophobic panic of that morning seems to have evaporated, leaving behind something dangerously warm. I like this girl. It’s a terrifying, fragile admission, like holding a lit match next to a powder keg, but it’s true. I actually like her.

I can feel myself slipping into a delusion. I can feel the very real possibility that I am going to fall in love with this girl. Not the messy, complicated, grinding reality of modern love, but that glossy, hyper-realized melodrama you see in Kollywood movies from a decode or two ago. The kind of love where the hero just stares at the heroine in the rain, everything operates on cinematic logic, and the background score completely drowns out the reality of debt, anxiety, and ringing phones.

It is incredibly naive. It is violently uncharacteristic of me. I am a twenty-nine-year-old cynic operating on a script written for a twenty-year-old romantic.

But I am hoping. Against every single instinct I have cultivated my entire life, I am hoping all will be well.