Remembering broken hearts on Valentines

Recently some of us celebrated Valentines. I say ’some’ as it is not one of the main celebrations in the country. Some say, we celebrate because we are hopeless romantics, some rejoice to show their love and others find it just too expensive to indulge as everything is overcharged and thus making Valentine’s rather overrated!

Not to sabotaged a romantic interlude but there have been stories of unrequited love or ill-fated relationships that have galvanized the whole world because they were so passionate, so matching, so true and yet not destined to be fulfilled.

But such bizarre and sorrowful tales of unhappy love were actually real life happenings as I found out from WAN HUA CHAPOUTHIER’s article titled Tales of Two Cities: Paris.

Have a read:

To begin with, there was Alain Delon, the dangerously handsome French actor and Romy Schneider, the talented and beautiful Austrian actress. In the 60s and 70s, their Paris-based and much-publicized romance ended in each going separate ways until, at the early and untimely demise of Romy in 1982 in Paris, some form of redemption finally came by in the form of a long, handwritten letter of adieu written by Alain Delon who confessed that he had lost the love of his life and placed the letter on her coffin.

Much earlier, in the 1940s, Edith Piaf (1915 - 1963), the late French singer whose signature song is La Vie En Rose fell in love with Marcel Cerdan, France’s middleweight boxing champion who won the world title in 1948. Marcel was already married with three children. Then suddenly, an unforeseen plane crash took Marcel away from Edith. Took him away from her, forever afterwards.

Edith Piaf never recovered from the loss and she delivered the heart-wrenching Hymn to Love which many regard as even more unforgettable than La Vie En Rose as it evokes the searing, inconsolable pains of a broken heart.

Before spending ebbing years in a nursing home in Grasse near the French Riveria, Edith Piaf used to live in a ground floor apartment at No. 19, Boulevard Lannes in the 16th district in Paris where for a while, she tried to carry on, boosted morally by sincere friends, by the attention of a much younger companion and by the rare and forgiving attitude of Marcel Cerdan’s widow who used to visit her with her children. But she finally passed away like a burnt-out candle with no wick left to be rekindled.

Not far from Boulevard Lannes, the great diva, Maria Callas (1923 - 1977), breathed her last inside her apartment along avenue Georges Mandel near Place de Trocadero. Except for two faithful and long serving domestic helpers, she was alone. Her solitude epitomized her great destitution. Fate robbed her first of her voice and then of Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping magnate for whom she left her first husband and manager.

When a heart breaks, life’s vital force is also shattered and any inherent talent also flies out of the window. So, when gifted persons stop to sing, to act, to paint, to write and even to rule, their entourage should take heed of the crippling effect that can be caused by sentimental deception and grief.

Get a CD where you can listen to Maria Callas singing the role of Norma. You will weep with her and comprehend this Greek melodrama of our era.

As the whole world saw it, Onassis dumped Maria Callas and married Jacqueline Kennedy. But, shortly before he passed away at the American Hospital at Neuilly, just outside Paris, Onassis returned to Maria Callas and the latter held a press conference at the chic Maxim’s restaurant where she was dining with Onassis. The press conference retrieved her loss of face, so to speak. Nobody likes to be jilted and especially, publicly jilted.

But illness overtook and this great passion was snuffed out into another unhappy ending.

Next in line is not an apartment haunted by a sad love story but a gigantic gold-painted torch. Like a flaming Olympic torch, it stands above the tunnel near the Alma Marceau metro station where Princess Diana and her friend, Dodi Al-Fayed were killed in a freakish car accident around midnight of Aug 30, 1995.

At that instant, you cannot even wish for a fairy godmother who, with the wave of a magic wand at midnight could save Cinderella from any impossible situation. Tragedy struck so quickly, so unsparingly and with such cruel fatality!

I saw a few, faded flowers placed near the base of the torch which is still regarded by tourists as the landmark for the famous “romance that was nipped in the bud”. It only convinced me that in the awful, cutting cold of February, Valentine’s Day is also as a day to remember such broken lives, broken hearts and broken dreams.

There is no remedy or substitute for such shattered affaires even if you join me in humming “And when I grow too old to dream, your love will live in my heart”.