Mandira Pattnaik
Sixteen Steps to Reach a Point of Singularity
1. Spot. Mark.
Because Edinburgh University found that, women, during the fertile part of their cycle, found pictures of men with enlarged pupils more appealing. Many believe that is because, pupils dilate when focused on someone they find attractive.
2. Imagine you’re an archer. He’s the apple on a tree. Think apple marmalade. Think apple juice.
Eye contact makes us feel good and connects us. Prolonged eye contact has been thought to release phenylethylamine, a chemical responsible for feelings of attraction. It has also been thought to release oxytocin, the love chemical most closely associated with longer term bonding and commitment. Looking at each other’s eyes is a sign of love.
3. Hope to stir him, aspire to win a target. Your weapon is your piercing gaze. Aim the park bench where he sits. Walk across the vast lush carpet of grass in-between.
Scientists from UChicago’s Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology and the University of Geneva found that people tend to fixate on the faces of the images of people that elicited a feeling of romantic love, and tend to fixate on the body of those that elicited sexual desire. Eye contact indicates lasting love. Harvard psychologist Zick Rubin found that couples who were deeply in love after a decade looked into at each other’s eyes 75% of the time while talking.
4. Pay close attention. Like chequerboard. Like Chessboard.
Chess is a board game, like chequerboard. 64 squares, 8 rows (called ranks), 8 files (called files). In algebraic notation, using White's perspective, files are labelled a through h from left to right, and ranks are labelled 1 through 8 from bottom to top; each square is identified by the file and rank which it occupies. The a- through d-files comprise the queenside. As the queen you’ve always imagined yourself to be, take charge. Run through the e- to h-files comprising the kingside, his.
5. Read him. Like poetry. Like a book.
Behavioral scientists think 93% of human communication is reading the body language, and only 7% is speech related. Before this moment, you’ve read him like poetry, now read him like a novel.
6. Smile. Breathe. Deep breathe. Repeat. Think a simmering soup. Think brewing coffee.
You’ve been told about your smile. By him. You’ve stood in front of the mirror, practised this moment, because Amma said women shouldn’t be the first mover; shouldn’t be so bold, or desperate, to propose. Woman should wait for the man to say. Sulk if he never does, and marry someone else.
7. Approach him like rowing. Steady. Fast. Slow. Repeat. Like slow-cooked biryani.
You think he knows how to row? So, when you go to that picnic in Ooty Lake on your honeymoon, he can row you out. Away from cousins and elders eager to eavesdrop on your conversations, because they’re gauging your compatibility index.
8. Stand in front of him. Let him be awkward when he stands too. Talk. Ask. Listen. Say Goodbyes. Turn back. Walk solo. Think. Think. Think.
There’s a chance you two might click — instant, like butterflies, or maybe you two will have nothing in common to talk about, like crickets.
9. Take the plunge. Dive. See him again. Talk. Talk. Talk. Listen. Listen. Listen.
It takes several meetings, they say, to fall in love.
10. Love? Love!
Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship is like the holly-tree —
The Olly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom more constantly?
--- Emily Bronte
11. Fall. Fall. Fall.
Fall in Love.
Love’s not Newton’s apple. It’s — air, bubble, chorus.
12. Did he just kiss you? Yes?
Imagine a pan of milk. Just bubbling, boiling over, frothy.
What makes you think of milk now? A huge vessel on the burner stove, ready for some sweet payasam. And how milk is a food, liquid, produced by the mammary glands of mammals, a primary source of nutrition.
13. Walk the aisle. Sing a duet.
There are 14 reasons, according to a study, why couples who make music and sing together, stay together. One of them is that musicians are the most honest people on earth.
14. Remember a bed of roses. Think a dinner table for two. Think of a home for many.
Plant roses, alternate with jasmine, then pansies and chrysanthemums. Line the pots to sunshine. They say, tired-from-work people love to return to friendly, green homes. Husbands included.
15. Love. Laugh. Be childish. Be possessive. Be jealous. Be careless. Love. Repeat. Live. Add adventures.
Someone counted sub genres of romance novels to twelve. Stubbornly disagree.
16. The final step is to reach a point. Of undisputed ‘Singularity’. Singularity as in union. As in fusion. As in combustion. As in amalgamation. Like the world curls into a whorl and vanishes there. Where we’ve come to stay.
Recent theory relates to ‘loop quantum gravity’ in the case of cosmic studies. It is a delightful release to know the theory that says space and time may be extremely curved, but gravity, or the pull of attraction, increases to infinite proportions. Don’t dispute that perfection.
Mandira Pattnaik's fiction and nonfiction work appear in Wigleaf Top 50, Iron Horse Literary Review, Emerson Review, The Rumpus and Columbia Journal. Visit her at mandirapattnaik.com
