“You know when you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Dr. Seuss
Even if we’ve had our heart broken a few times, and we believe that being cynic is easy, fairy tales portrayed in movies always warm our hearts. The best love stories are the ones that go beyond life and death. They not only foretell happiness or togetherness but they triumph over mistakes and missteps in life and arouse the feeling that goes beyond insanity that’s socially accepted.
Love is sacred and the greatest love stories provide the kind of feeling we always aspire to enjoy in our lives. I know you’ve heard stories of Romeo and Juliet, but there are more heart wrenching stories that are sure to make you emotional. Check out these 10 crazy real life love stories that would warm your heart.
1. Dashrath Manjhi – The man who broke mountains for love
“I would move the mountains for you.” If you’ve ever been in love, you might have heard soothing lines from your partner or chances are you might have told your loved ones too. Dashrath Manjhi, also known as the ‘Mountain Man’ did it for real. He split a mountain for his love.
Dashrath Manjhi, a destitute person in Gehlour, a small village in India lost his wife when he could not take her to the doctor after she fell off of a cliff. With strong determination, and often being called a ‘psychopath’, Dashrath took 22 years breaking stones in the mountains to pave a 400 feet long and 30 feet wide road that connected the village to the nearby city. His only motive was to provide people of his village with access to medical services so that nobody would lose a loved one like he did.
2. Faizul Hasan Quadri – The man who made the second Taj Mahal
Built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz in 1632, Taj Mahal is often considered as the epitome of love. A 77-year-old Indian man named Faizul Hasan Quadri also vowed to build his ‘monument of love’ for his wife Tajammuli Begum in Bulandshahr district in Uttar Pradesh, India. Faizul married Begum when she was just 14 and he taught her to read and write in Urdu. The couple had no child and his wife always worried if she would be forgotten after her death. Quadri promised to build her a mausoleum and that she’d be remembered for ages.
“We were together for more than 58 years, and love grows with time. Now that she is gone, she is always there in my thoughts,” he says. Tajammuli died of cancer in 2011.
3. Chadil Deffy and Sarinya Kamsook – Love that went beyond death
Chadil Deffy and Sarinya Kamsook had plans to get married soon after Deffy completed his studies. But his life was devastated after he learned the news of Sarinya’s death in an accident even before the two finalized a date to tie the knot. But death could not beat his love. Deffy married his deceased girlfriend in a combination funeral and wedding ceremony where he placed a ring on Sarinya’s hand, his girlfriend of 10 years and kissed her in a ceremony in Thailand’s Surin province.
4. David Hurd and Avril Cato – Two lovers who became one sharing letters
People write letters to their loved ones all the time. But, the story of two people who got close through letters and got married the first time they saw each other is pretty heart-welcoming. Yes, that’s how David Hurd and Avril Cato became one.
David Hurd moved to New York City in 1907 and that was when he started writing letters to Avril Cato, an unknown woman in the Caribbean who he’d never seen in life. The two started sharing letters and became close. A year later, David proposed Avril to get married and the two met for the first time on their wedding day in August 1914 in Jamaica. These two faithful pen-pals developed a deep and passionate commitment through their exquisite use of art of letter to become one.
5. Kurt Klein and Gerda Weissmann – Love during a time of war
Gerda Weissmann, a Polish-born American writer was forced to March by the Nazis for months along with 4000 other Jewish women. She lost 65 family members during the time of war and only 120 of those women in the march were alive and abandoned in a factory where they lived without proper food for days. She was one day shy of her 21st birthday, wearing rags and not bathed in three years when Kurt Klein, a Lieutenant in the United States Army force found her and rescued. The couple was engaged in September 1945 and married shortly after.
6. Anna and Boris – Two lovers who reunited after 60 years
Russian couple Anna and Boris were only married for three days, when Boris bid him adieu to join the Red Army Unit. Anna and her family were sent to an exile and the two lost contact with each other. Boris tried finding her but had no luck while Anna also had thoughts of committing suicide but remained hopeful that she’d find her man someday.
One fine day, Anna Kozlov caught sight of an old man moving out of his car in Borovlyanka in Siberia and she was breathless. She could not believe her eyes when she knew that the man clambering out was Boris.
“I thought my eyes were playing games with me,” Anna said. “I saw this familiar looking man approaching me, his eyes gazing at me. My heart jumped. I knew it was him. I was crying with joy.” The couple reunited and romance blossomed again after 60 years.
7. Eija-Ritta Berliner-Mauer – The lady who married the Berlin Wall
Eija-Ritta was only 7 when she saw the Berlin Wall for the first time on television and she felt head-over-heels when she saw the wall. Eija developed a fetish for inanimate objects and married the concrete structure in 1979. Her surname also means Berlin Wall in German and when the structure was brought down in 1989 she was in tears and said ,”What they did was awful. They mutilated my husband.”
Eija-Ritta was later diagnosed with a condition called Objectum-Sexuality. Though she remained virgin as a human, she insists she has a full, loving relationship with the wall for having married the structure for more than 29 years now.
8. Bonnie and Clyde – Two accomplices who loved each other
Love is blind and Bonnie and Clyde prove the same. Bonnie and Clyde, two lovers who disobeyed laws in the United States during the Great Depression robbed a lot of banks, small stores and gas stations while also killed nine police officers and several civilians.
The two met on January 5, 1930 at Clarence Clay’s (a friend of Clyde) house at 105 Herbert Street and became close friends in no time before confessing their love for each other. The two ran a gang and were known to be involved in a lot of notorious crime during the Public Enemy Era (1931-1935). The two remained loyal to each other during their life and even at the time of the violent death with gunshots they predicted as inevitable in 1934.
9. Helen and Les – A lifetime of love
Couples make promises to live together and die together. Helen and Les proved the same. Call it a matter of sheer luck or crazy true love, Helen and Les were born on the same day on December 31, 1918. The two attended the same school where they met each other and fell in love.
These high school sweethearts eloped and lived 75 years together. During the last days of their lives, Les was sick with Parkinson’s disease and slipped to coma while Helen was battling stomach cancer. She died on July 16 and Les passed away a day after without even knowing about his wife’s death. The couple were both 94.
10. Shah Hussain and Madho Lal – Two lovers together even after death
Shah Hussain, a Punjabi Sufi poet also called as the Sufi saint fell in love with a Brahmin boy called “Madho Lal”. Though gay marriage was not legal anywhere in the world before this century, the two shared a mutual feeling for each other and dared to confess their love in Pakistan, a Muslim state when they lived during their 1960s.
The two are often referred to as a single person with the composite name of “Madho Lal Hussain.” Thousands of people visit the shrine and the tomb during the “Mela Chiraghan” (Festival of Lights) where the two rest together in silence.
Featured photo credit: Kaboompics via pixabay.com
