All the world loves a lover: Valentine's Day special

That brings me to snow. Yash Chopra gave Hindi cinema the heroine that does not feel cold and sings love songs clad in chiffon sarees in the snow, and heroes in knitted jumpers and mufflers, gloves and hats. Had they done consumer research when his movies were released, they would have known mothers would buy tonnes of wool and watch the movie again and again so they could figure out Rishi Kapoor’s sweater patterns - everything from cables to yokes - to inflict upon their children and husbands. But by that time I had learnt to not laugh at spotting men of dad’s age sporting those sweaters (in bizarre colour combinations), I was hooked on to a book that was made into a movie (saw the movie first, and insisted that my first crush give me the book as a present). That movie made me fall in love with snow, and I promised myself that I would live in a place where I would make snow angels.

Oliver Barrett IV and Jennifer Cavilleri made love come alive, both in the pages of a book and the big screen. And their laughter and kisses in the snow is a thing that will drive images of sandy kisses out of your memory. In the film, you want to be Ali MacGraw and fall in love with Ryan O’Neal and tease him into buying you coffee or falling off cliffs. Erich Segal’s words still resonate after all these years.

"You don't know about falling off cliffs, Preppie, she said. 'You never fell off one in your god-damn life.'

'Yeah,' I said, recovering the power of speech. When I met you."

Love Story is a novella everyone in love, hoping to fall in love should read. The book also is a reason cited by those who do not wish to touch ‘Love’ with a bargepole, because ‘No real-life love can be like this!’

Love written in books - especially books like Wuthering Heights - sometimes does not translate well on screen. Where will you find corrosive passion like Catherine and Heathcliff?

"He’s not a human being, she retorted; and he has no claim on my charity. I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death, and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen: and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.’"

Shakespeare gave us Taming Of The Shrew, and even though the play makes women seem like wildcats, the film Ten Things I hate About You gave us a reason to sigh over Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles. Katherine in the film flounces off in disgust many a time and we don’t fall in love with Petruchio at all. But Heath Ledger’s Patrick Verona buying Kat a guitar and then kissing her or following her on the track when she says to him, 'Do you even know my name, screwboy?' makes Shakespeare’s romance pale in comparison (yes, I said this here!). I have only seen this film every time I need to drown in sighs and did not think I would remember dialogue after Casablanca. But I do, and here it is:

Kat’s admission in class: 'I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair. I hate the way you drive my car. I hate it when you stare. I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much it makes me sick; it even makes me rhyme. I hate it, I hate the way you're always right. I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry. I hate it when you're not around, and the fact that you didn't call. But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.'

When such movies can be made, and such dialogue can be written, I fail to understand why acrobatic kisses on movie posters, threats of jumping off bridges in love, singing songs with inane lyrics of heartbreak moves this generation. I don’t think these are timeless, that’s all. But to be fair, the love fest that every one a generation or two before me talks about even today - Woodstock - offered great music, but I cannot bring myself to imagine a love fest in the slush and the mud among unwashed, drunk humanity at all.

But give me a movie where they kiss in the rain, and it turns me into a happy mush puddle. In the film Sweet Home Alabama, where they show Jake and Melanie kiss as kids, I was a tad alarmed to see that kiss accompanied by thunder and lightning, but the dialogue stumped me more.

'Why would you want to marry me for anyhow?'

'So I can kiss you anytime I want.'

This is the best reason to get married, I think. But sometimes confessing to love does not evince the response you are expecting. Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice shows a love-drenched confession of Mr Darcy…

You know what happens after that... But those who are in love and do not want to be married, you will remember Hugh Grant and his rain-soaked declaration of love in Four Weddings And A Funeral or his confused reaction to Julia Roberts’s, 'Don’t forget I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.’ And when they do love you back, sealing it with a kiss, the world changes for you. Just like Carrie in Four Weddings And A Funeral, you realise 'you hadn’t noticed the rain’. You forget that there is a cat you just rescued and you kiss as Holly Golightly kisses in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. ‘Let it rain, you say, as you walk with a spring in your step just like one of cinema’s most iconic love songs, 'I'm singing in the rain! What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again!'

Come September showed us how you had to fight for your love, When Harry met Sally showed us how love is a slow burn, You've Got Mail makes you wish, ‘I wanted it to be you!’, Brokeback Mountain showed us how the intensity of love makes your heart beat harder than ever. And one of my all-time favourite films, Roman Holiday showed us you can let go in love, but first:

And what happens if someone does not kiss to show that they love you? Is that cinematic? You judge. Watch the scene where Kevin makes pollo a la plancha for Chiron in the Oscar-winning Moonlight, you will realise that you are being slowly seduced as he chops cilantro even.

Yes, seduction by food is another trope altogether and books and movies use food to talk about love... And I have not even started talking about music being the food of love. All I know is that for someone like me, it’s always the season of love. And no one knows the effect of this emotion we celebrate on February 14 every year like yours truly. I guess it’s love that makes you so weak-kneed and addle-brained you ask for a coupon of Pani Gappa instead of the rational ‘gol-gappa’ or as they say in the city, ‘pani puri’.