As a lover of romantic films, I find the notion of ‘braveheart’ in the last week’s column very inspiring. Tell me how to become one in real life.”

— Rohan (18), and several others, who expressed similar sentiments.
More on the braveheart? I hope you know that it takes more than words to find your strength.
When courage meets love, you become a braveheart. The love can be for anything or anyone. The most intrepid ones find love for abstract notions such as “country” and “cause”. But theirs is a different story.
The braveheart of romance is perhaps the most overused and abused genre in Indian films. Most commercial movies have this notion embedded in them. The hero is a guy who “rises” in love, stalks his girl, fights her father’s goons, maybe elopes with her, faces calamities and finally wins against all odds.
It is very fake and also very boring. If you try and emulate the screen hero, you will become a real life zero, for there is only a fine line separating the foolhardy from the brave-hearted. Only a person who has all senses intact, including common sense, can stay on the right side of the line. If you lose judgment and mental balance, you will quickly slide down below zero into a minus moron.
How do you become a braveheart? Well, for starters, discard all the stuff you find in movies. Life doesn’t work the way a screenwriter compresses two hours of steamy fiction.
If you get inspired by movies to do silly stuff like stalking a girl, or eloping with her for instance, you could get into serious trouble and regret it for the rest of your life.
Here are three rules you need to know before you decide to become a braveheart. Don’t break even one of them.
n Don’t pursue love unless you have a reasonable chance of winning her heart. Be practical. Don’t start a battle you cannot win.
n Don’t pursue love unless there is an equally strong response from the other end. Most boys of your age tend to have one-sided love, where 90 per cent of the romance is happening only in your head, and she hardly knows you exist or is just a casual friend.
n Don’t pursue love until you know it is love. Most boys your age tend to confuse a physical turn-on, with emotions of the heart. So first find out where your love is coming from — the groin or the heart — and have the good sense to understand the difference.
True love happens when you give without any expectation of return. Where the act of giving itself is so huge a reward, that the thought of taking does not arise. Those who have been through this will know it, those who haven’t will never understand. When true love happens the heart becomes pure, and a beautiful fragrance of feeling surrounds your whole being.
The sad truth of true love is that it tends to be short-lived, like a beautiful flower that blooms at dawn and droops at dusk. Your brave-heartedness lies in having the strength to keep this fragrance alive.
There are forces that rise from within you to suffocate the true love that is rising from your heart.
The villains you have to battle are all in your head. They are all avatars of your inner-self — your worst fears surfacing your natural responses — the battle is going to be very subtle and difficult.
How do you do that? Well, watch this space next week.