Hearts Break

'Un-break my heart
Say you'll love me again..."

That was Toni Braxton crooning onto my ears today morning. Her silken, sensuous voice could have almost raised my body hair had I not been a woman and 'straight' at that. But that's not what I wanted to note down on my blog...not Toni Braxton or her voice. It's about heart...heartbreaks to be more precise. What's that strange thing? I wondered. What is the breaking of the heart? What do we mean when we say, "My heart will break"? The heart actually never 'breaks'..it doesn't even stop functioning irrespective of the emotional stress and turmoil it goes through. I wonder how we can be so sure that when we feel emotional pangs and pain, it affects our heart. Infact strangely enough, when I've been through the worst phases of my life and have lied awake weeping in my pillow for entire nights,I've woken up the following morning with a swollen face and a groggy head. But my heart always felt fine...there was no pain there. The lousy nauseating feeling came from a headache and badly swollen eyes. And touchwood, my heart was still intact! Well, yes, I know it's a figure of speech, just a way of saying. When we say 'heart-break' we dont mean an actual breaking of the heart. If that were to happen each time our numerous love-affairs broke up or some creep stopped finding us interesting after a point of time, we'd all be dead in our youth, perhaps in our teenage! Where does it affect us then? What do we name that horrible feeling of emptiness and numbness which overcomes us when we're hurt and in pain? Where do we 'feel' this pain? Strange huh? I wonder how many of us would actually sit back to think about something like this. We're all so conditioned to take what has been decided for us by our English speaking forefathers....well, only linguistically. I never meant to deny my Indian origin!

My knowledge of biology says that the brain is the seat of every feeling. Whether the pain is physical or emotional, we 'feel' it only because the brain tells us that something is wrong. Thats also the reason why mentally deranged people dont 'feel' anything. Should we then name it as 'brain-break'? How unromantic! How aesthetically unappealing! It doesnt sound quite as stylish as a 'heartbreak'. I guess somethings have a greater aesthetic appeal. The 'heart' has undoubtedly been unjustly over-rated as the seat of emotions when the poor brain does all the work. But then again, it's an unjust world! We can only hope that our brains will not have a 'heart break' someday!