In one of the sweeter stories I have read in a long time, a young man in Nagpur approached the cops, longing for some solution to, well, longing. He came in wanting to file a complaint saying his heart had been stolen. The cops were nonplussed and uncertain about the procedure for dealing with this kind of lost property. They could have laughed it off, but instead, consulted their superiors. Finally, they had to tell the young man there was no section of the Indian law — and probably no 48-hour constitutional amendment likely, unlike for dismissing CBI chiefs — under which they could deal with his problem. I wonder what the young man did.

As there are few more helpless emotions than love, it is not surprising that we constantly seek help for it: from agony aunts to cops. The difficulty and glory of love is that it is so abstract. After all, how can your heart be stolen when it is beating just fine in your chest? It's a puzzle that is the topic of many a Hindi film song: "Jaane kahan mera jigar gaya ji? Abhi abhi yahin tha kidhar gaya ji?" (hey, have you seen my heart/It was just here, now it's gone) being the most famous.