You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In the recent shocking incident at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, Akash, a 23-year old student armed with a gun, axe and knife furiously attacked the object of his “love”, a young woman who battled in the hospital for many days for life. The young man with a promising future is dead, having consumed poison after the brutal attack. The more comforting course is to read the incident as isolated - the work of a “psychopath”. However, it is the link between the “normal” and the “pathological”: the teasing apart of the dynamics at play in “love” and attempts to unravel the possible sources of the rage which can point towards steps which could be taken to prevent situations from escalating to points of no return.
Another incident this week on the same campus, of 24-year-old Abhinandan trying to throttle and push a young woman in front of a moving vehicle reifies the need for such enquiry.
The popularity of legends like Laila-Majnun epitomizing “love”, folk tales like Kissa Tota-Maina (The Story of the Parrot and the Starling) and staple Bollywood cinema, one of the most recent being Raanjhana offer us insights into notions which shape the outlook towards love in our society. The story of Laila-Majnun is of being entranced and bewitched at first sight. Stories of intense bewitching love of star crossed lovers ending in tragedy seem universal. Romeo and Juliet is perhaps the most well known. In the Greek myth of Artemis and Orion the goddess of the moon falls madly in love at first sight and is deceived into killing Orion. Artemis then places Orion in the sky so that she can forever see him while flying through the night on her chariot. The fluttering of the heart evoked by stories like Anthony and Cleopatra, Paris and Helena, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde, Orpheus and Eurydice seems to reflect the appeal and attraction of such “true love” in our own lives.
Twemlow and Gabbard (1989) writing of lovesickness and the myth of Narcissus in the context