Reluctantly sitting on the porch of my balcony, with a seemingly benumbed firmness of my volatile mind, I lift my hand, stretch my fingers and move them smoothly in the air to feel the invisible. Filling the gaps of my fingers, the touch said something to me. Which I know is never going to be the same again.
The change is there. Yes, so much has changed. The dense seriousness of the atmosphere today once used to be a light breeze of pleasing warm wind.
When everything seemed so meaningful. When flowers were more important than Ferraris, when special was not just a word; it meant life, when ‘pehla nasha’ was the song to die for, when every cinematic screenplay seemed so realistic that life started running into reels, where a negative held the key to a positive, the time when I had only three things to do ‘Eat, Pray, Love’.
And yes, I laboured for it.
Love is like a plant. It needs to be nurtured in the beginning. And once it rooted its
elf deep in the red soil of your soul, you are done. It doesn’t need you anymore.
You see someone and you feel something (love at first sight). You meet someone, talk to him/her, while away some time and gradually love take its course. But the reaction is always the same. The thrill and the aftermaths; all are same for every one of us.
With love, you enter into a relationship. Then come responsibilities. Many would say that this is the final chapter in the book of romance and two people somehow develop a sense of strong connection and sexually bonded love to seal a relation for seven births. But deep down somewhere in their conscience, they all know they are lying.
Some couples find this phase of their relationship much more subtle and stable, though they still cherish the nostalgia of their chemistry before this mature boring bonding.
The days when a smile used to be six inches long and a laugh had sixty four teeth. Cell phone had the warmth of the beloved’s lips, and memorable embraces.
But in this concrete jungle of social animals, excitement and uncertainty are probably the most detested demons that should be terminated as soon as possible. We even have insurance over the most uninsured aspect of time i.e. life.
But what good an apple is if it is not being tasted by an Adam.
We all love this demon named cupid to pierce our hearts.
The 'chemical locha' which gives one the same high as being on a toxic drug starts to diminish with the stability in hormonal procreation.
Then comes the phase in one’s life, where the hypocrisy engulfs our being and we start to hate cupid. An act of holding hands, kissing in public, touching, caressing and every other gesture which depicts love, becomes a taboo and a strict no-no for the culturally civilized beings.
People who’ve gone through the experience always suggest younger ones not to jump in this burning river.
Is love a feeling so wild and uncultivated that our society which called itself civil, sovereign and spiritually religious, indulges in acts like honour killing?
In the words of Louis de Bernieres-
"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are.”
Don’t love if you can’t live with it throughout your life, because to love is to be divinely beautiful as a human. Love is the beauty of the soul and not just a food for the body. As someone very rightly said, “To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the whole world.”
We must secure the other’s place in the eternal temple our heart; else it might just be Love’s Labour Lost.
