Breaking Up Survival By Nish JamVwal

I was at the ripe old age of fifteen when ‘he’ crossed the firmament of my romantic dreams. Tall, intense, brooding, silent, – Heathcliffe, (no less), out of the pages of ‘Wuthering Heights”! 

And then my hero, this meteor in human

form, moved out of the aforementioned firmament, leaving behind an irredeemably inconsolable and bereft me. Fits of uncontrollable crying overcame at the remorse that we had not exchanged one single word in all that time our paths crossed! Ever so slowly time reconciled me to an endless life ahead, of forlorn singlehood! And then chance brought him once more to my vicinity. What had the scant month done to him?? 

Just one month had transformed him into this bashful, stoop-shouldered, chinless wonder who gagged in coyness at every mundane query!!
Thank Providence that no betraying words had been communicated! – At sixteen there was another similar devastation that I managed to survive, - after the tenth standard joint school-leaving social of Loreto Convent and the adjoining Mount St Mary’s school for boys! Subsequently (at sixteen-and-a-half, seventeen, seventeen-and-a-half.…) the heart went through tumultuous upheavals at regular intervals, that might have recorded highly on the Richter scale had one but spared time from one’s anguish to note! 

I did manage to clamber out of the quagmire of pain, rejection, hurt and more, seeking, over the rim, the nearest nunnery to enroll into. Cured forever (Or at least for a year, which was after all nearly the same thing!) Of an inclination to romance, restricting myself to the company of friends who were girls, or, at a stretch – gay!

In life’s arid landscape, most of us have traipsed the path of these oases that at closer quarters we recognized for mirages, till happy matrimony cured us of the habit. But there are instances when matrimony may be far from happy, or a relationship marked with intensity and investment of enduring emotion.

Men were forever out of my life, and I sought solace and company from friends who were girls or at a stretch - gay!

It happens to the best of us, never mind how beautiful you are, how intelligent, how scintillating, but breaking up of a romance is something not many of us have been saved from. And it hurts like hell. 


Whether its you who cut the connection or he. Just last week sitting with Vikram Bhatt over coffee, he poignantly reminisced about his most triumphant moment, the premier of Gulham, how he was declared a winner director finally and that was the precise moment of his break up with Sushmita Sen. How he felt he was internally hurting. 

“ Nisha , take it from me, the best survival technique is to just switch off your mobile phone, so that you don't keep glancing at it like a hopeless addict, waiting a never ending wait for that one call, and every time it rings or beeps a message its someone else, and your heart sinks!” .

That brings me to technique number four, date on the rebound. Whatever books and magazines may say, one of the best ways to get over the jerk is to go out to dinner with some other jerk! Trust me it helps.


Nisha JamVwal


Picture Anchal


Published In Asian Age