Much like Wagner’s’ Tristan and Isolde, life, like a piece of classical music, builds slowly. We can never really anticipate the crescendo it will reach when it begins. I never thought I would write books. For a couple of years I wrote poetry and scribbled my musings until the idea of my first book began to germinate. I felt foolish and self-indulgent as art is more or less the representation of a subjective experience, but I circumvented my doubts and carried on. I had not received an education in creative writing or worked in publishing. Yet, what started off as a meandering thought process which I arranged into sentences, and then a story, brought me to explore a world inside myself that would have otherwise remained untapped and unspent. Erma Bombeck whose books I’ve really enjoyed, once wrote, ‘When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say. “I used everything you gave me.” That’s what most of us aim to do; whatever we can, our best, our most.

Things begins slowly. Good things as well as bad. Some relationships seem to crumble suddenly but we just didn’t notice the bits of debris that corroded their foundations over a period of time. Someone’s barbs may have been chipping away at another’s self-esteem or questioning their self-belief. One last acerbic remark decimates everything. Similarly, even good things build slowly. A friendship starts with hesitant meetings and the sharing of small confidences. It isn’t always easy or simple. People go through phases, remaining preoccupied or sometimes unavailable but what defines a friendship is constantly reaching out. Friends that go far back seldom remember that they were awkward with each other at one time.

Love at first sight is a fallacy. Attraction is at first sight. Love is an attachment that builds gradually. If you are with someone merely because you are attracted to them, it is likely to fade out. Love is what survives after sex and romance take a backseat. What differentiates a lover from a loved one is that the latter is the person you sit with while doing your taxes and filing your insurance papers. It’s the person who somehow makes all these boring tasks seem worthwhile. It’s the person who laughs at your stupid jokes while watching a badly made movie or with whom you exchange looks because someone ahead of you in a queue made a vile remark. You have found love if you resist the temptation to go further than flirting with an admirer, and it is love if you ignore the age lines or the frown lines or the new rolls of fat. What you see instead is someone you are going to ask the same questions to over and over again, all of which have nothing to do with love. It’s about what they want to have for dinner, whether to accept a party invitation for the weekend and if they’re open to trying a new fad diet. And yes, it is the repetition of this routine that infuses a commitment between a couple with love. Even couples who remain together for reasons other than love, find one day that what they feel is a resilient, abiding bond which took years to grow strong. It may not have begun as love, it may have faltered in the middle, but at the end it feels a lot like love. We have names for temporary feelings of love. They are puppy love, infatuation, crush, affair and fling.

In the end it’s all the small measures we take that count; an hour in the gym, a short walk after dinner, a couple of healthy supplements. They may or may not keep a big illness at bay but these small actions make us feel better in the long run. Even decadence is welcome in small bouts, an exotic resort or an extravagant purchase. As long as we do our bit by reusing the towel to save water or switching off the extra bulbs to conserve electricity. Even though the scope of making big changes lies outside an individual’s capacity, not doing anything makes it defeatist. In the absence of great solutions and fantastical revelations, we survive by looking after the little things. We may as well work with what we have than look for a big break or a dream project. Just as we say a small prayer every day or practice a little bit of mindfulness instead of waiting for a Messiah. In fact, small steps not only keep us going, they’ll add up to become the long way we’ll have travelled, when we look back at our lives someday.