C'est La Vie!

It's the most discussed emotion, and perhaps the least understood. It has sunk ships, destroyed cities, dethroned emperors and made many seemingly wise men loose their heads. It is also one of the few things that can't really be bought or inherited. Yes, it's that one incomprehensible, illogical yet mandatory emotion, love.
Heh Heh! How was that introduction? Who says you can't make something seem a lot bigger than what it actually is? Who says you can't make the mundane seem magical? Agreed, the above paragraph was a quite pathetic attempt, but you get the picture. In the hands of a competent writer, anything can be made to be bigger than it actually is. Just ask Bollywood.
But seriously, I'd better get to the point before you start cursing your judgement to read this. (if you're still here, of course :D) This post was inspired by a Wodehouse novel that I was reading. (Damsel in Distress, if anyone's curious) Anyone who has read a few Wodehouse novels will be quite familiar with the general layout of any particular book. Man/Woman falls in love with Woman/Man. Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, said Man/Woman finds himself/herself betrothed to some poor soul who is in love with yet another person. Throw in a bit of English aristocracy, a rural English castle, and you have the makings of a hilarious, light-hearted yet plausible adventure. One of the many interesting parts to this plot caught my eye in this novel. Whenever the feeling of "love" is described in a Wodehouse novel, it is often accompanied by descriptions of the room spinning around the protagonist, the heavens descending in the form of singing angels, the very ground beneath seeming to give way etc. In short, love is described as something that occurs at first sight. Bang! And you are now "in love". Forget "getting to know" someone or "feeling your way" around. You are supposed to know that you are in love, instantly.
While this concept works wonderfully in the world of fiction, can a scenario like this ever occur in the more prosaic world that we live in? The romantic in me (yes, yes, contrary to popular belief, I'm not made of stone - I do have some semblance of emotion as well) certainly hopes so. The other part of me is highly sceptical. The couples that I've seen come together, have done so through a far more mundane route. Months of seemingly innocent conversation, followed by several more months of waiting while one of the partners gathers the necessary courage to actually do something that could lead to the start of a "relationship". This is followed presumably (I'm barely 21 - most couples I know haven't got much further than the hand-holding stage - I refer to mental progress, not physical) by a few years of "getting to know him/her" and maybe, if all things go well, marriage. That's certainly a far cry from the "love-at-first-sight-live-happily-ever-after" that we are all exposed to in our channels of entertainment. Why is there such a huge gap between fiction and reality? Is it because we would like to make-believe that ours isn't a monotonous, boring and lacklustre world? Or is it because of the fact that love at first sight isn't a myth, just something that is fleetingly rare? I hope that it's the latter, (and I hope that I am, someday, the "lucky one") but I suspect that it's the former. As they say, C'est la vie!