Late in the night, I was sitting at my computer yet again (yes, production woes continue)when I see an ex-colleague online. We start having a mundane conversation and he asks me somewhere towards the end, "What is love? How is one supposed to feel when they are in love?" I couldn't give him an answer in complete honesty (he wasn't interested anyways) but I went back to re-feeling, if there is any such possibility, the feeling of being in love.
The first time I actually felt love as a woman was on my first Valentine's Day with my husband. Since we spent most of our waking hours together, we had a pretty clear understanding of what we liked or disliked. Despite it being almost a year later, it was difficult to surprise each other. And yet, when he walked in through the door of the flat I used to live it, cake in one hand, flowers in another and a shy, reluctant smile on his face to let me know how bothersome the whole ordeal had been... I felt very special. He sat down on the only chair in the room and waited patiently for my roomie and me to finish squealing about th flowers he had got and then for her to leave the room so we could be alone. It was a brief moment, my roomie had just stepped out to get plastic plates from the shop next door but it was well-measured. He opened the box containing the cake with my name written on it and planted a soft small kiss on my smiling lips. "Happy Valentine's Day," was all he said. I felt loved.
I have felt love on several occasions after we separated. There was the biker dude who sat me on his Royal Enfield and proposed marriage on a foggy winter night at the head of Shanti Path. He had hidden a bunch of roses along the road for me to find as we walked... yes, it was love. It was also love when another partner read out poetry to me. It is an experience that cannot be put in words. Lying there, in his warm embrace looking up at the blank ceiling carving images out of the poetry he read out to me with great enthusiasm, he had hardly noticed when the first tear ran down my face. I remember holding him to me and sobbing softly for a while and I remember how moist his voice had become seeing my affection. I asked him to read it out to me again, this time we held each other and felt the emotions he had read run through us like the love. Yes, that was love too.
If you ask me to write down what it feels to be in love, I could write verses but if you ask me to pin-point the exact nature of love, I would fail... for it is meant to be experienced, not analysed. Yes, it is agony but is joy as well. It is everything that we have heard about and read about and yet, it is more. It is thirst. How would anyone define thirst? How would one explain how it feels when one is thirsty?
To my friend, all I can say is that love is also fear. Unlike Thanatophobia, love is a disease that makes you want to live. It makes you want to suffer the world for yet another day only because you wish to see the one you love for one more time, spend some more time with them, make them proud and even if they are no longer with you, make everything that they stood for, mean something to those who might choose to forget. For me, I can say love is what has kept me alive. I was born out of love that my parents had for each other, and it is love that makes me want to go yet another day in this insufferable world... just to prove that loves makes life worth living.
The first time I actually felt love as a woman was on my first Valentine's Day with my husband. Since we spent most of our waking hours together, we had a pretty clear understanding of what we liked or disliked. Despite it being almost a year later, it was difficult to surprise each other. And yet, when he walked in through the door of the flat I used to live it, cake in one hand, flowers in another and a shy, reluctant smile on his face to let me know how bothersome the whole ordeal had been... I felt very special. He sat down on the only chair in the room and waited patiently for my roomie and me to finish squealing about th flowers he had got and then for her to leave the room so we could be alone. It was a brief moment, my roomie had just stepped out to get plastic plates from the shop next door but it was well-measured. He opened the box containing the cake with my name written on it and planted a soft small kiss on my smiling lips. "Happy Valentine's Day," was all he said. I felt loved.
I have felt love on several occasions after we separated. There was the biker dude who sat me on his Royal Enfield and proposed marriage on a foggy winter night at the head of Shanti Path. He had hidden a bunch of roses along the road for me to find as we walked... yes, it was love. It was also love when another partner read out poetry to me. It is an experience that cannot be put in words. Lying there, in his warm embrace looking up at the blank ceiling carving images out of the poetry he read out to me with great enthusiasm, he had hardly noticed when the first tear ran down my face. I remember holding him to me and sobbing softly for a while and I remember how moist his voice had become seeing my affection. I asked him to read it out to me again, this time we held each other and felt the emotions he had read run through us like the love. Yes, that was love too.
If you ask me to write down what it feels to be in love, I could write verses but if you ask me to pin-point the exact nature of love, I would fail... for it is meant to be experienced, not analysed. Yes, it is agony but is joy as well. It is everything that we have heard about and read about and yet, it is more. It is thirst. How would anyone define thirst? How would one explain how it feels when one is thirsty?
To my friend, all I can say is that love is also fear. Unlike Thanatophobia, love is a disease that makes you want to live. It makes you want to suffer the world for yet another day only because you wish to see the one you love for one more time, spend some more time with them, make them proud and even if they are no longer with you, make everything that they stood for, mean something to those who might choose to forget. For me, I can say love is what has kept me alive. I was born out of love that my parents had for each other, and it is love that makes me want to go yet another day in this insufferable world... just to prove that loves makes life worth living.
its interestin to read this...somehow i hv always wondered...wht does it give you...the word 'love'...even though u cant define explain thirst...but u hv a desire for it...a need rather...but sometimes i wonder..is dere a need for a thing lik that...can u get time out from the sufferings of this world to take time out for it....n suffer more....cuz at the end of d day...nothin is for ever...derez just no forever...once again..its just a thought in the wee hours of mornin....over smoke and a can of soda...cheers
ReplyDeleteYes, as you mentioned above.. you may not be able to explain or define thirst but you have a desire for it. As far as suffering goes, I mentioned above that yes, love makes you want to suffer. It adds a strange delight in all things mundane and insufferable. There is no forever without love and there is no now without it either. Cheers.
ReplyDeletealthough it is hard to define or explain what love is, you have beautifully expressed this difficulty.. love the way you express the inability to express or define love.. :)
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