Love and more…

In view of Valentine’s day, I am feeling strangely mushy with all the declarations of Love around me and the need to decode the mystery around the most feared and revered L-word (no.. not that one 😛 ), Love, is more than ever. Now many who have started reading this post would think to themselves, “Ugghhh! Another silly piece on the most confusing human emotion!” To them I say, “Relax… Hear me out! And don’t be so cynical!” …
What is love? Sooo many have tried to perceive it, the chemical definition of this emotion that can be incredibly frustrating at times and equally simple at others. Is it only hormonal? My pheromones calling out to yours kind of thing? When I was young and naive, I thought I understood love, like we all do in that age with raging hormones. Yes, I am talking about the uncomfortable teenage years. I was convinced that I was in love with Leonardo di Caprio or the easygoing, flamboyant Jack Dawson to be accurate. I know many of the women of my age can relate to my predicament. I was so far gone infatuated with him that it broke my heart when he friendzoned Kate Winslet and went on to date many supermodels. I am not proud to admit it, but there were tears and torn diary pages scribbled with I <3 Leo, full of newspaper cutouts. But one day, I woke up and decided that it was stupid to be this brokenhearted over a fictional character. So I mended my little teenage heart and fell head over heels in love with Justin Timberlake. 😛
When I was over all of my various obsessions with movie stars, rock stars, pop stars and physicists, I realized what I was missing and why I was missing all of that. Even though my parents were and are super cool people, I grew up with a lot of body image issues, and multitudes of other issues. I like to think that I lived in my own little world of make-believe because I was so damn scared of looking for the real thing. And to top it all, I have a very complicated personality (that’s my nice way of putting, “I am a difficult person.”). Recently a very close friend of mine quoted the Bard and said, “The course of true love never doth run smooth” and it resonated with me so deeply. Because it is true! If you are not ready to invest in Love, mind, body and soul, then sadly it is not Love. You cannot go into this thing with only your body because that is lust not love. Without soul, you cannot invest your heart and without the union of minds there is no point in investing at all. Many have wondered (some loudly and others not so much), how me and Rama work? Well, there is your explanation. 🙂
Now there are very many different kinds of Love. Cynics might try to shush me, but it is true. You see a dog and its owner on a snow covered street, in sub-zero temperatures, where the owner is waiting for the dog to do its business so both of them can go back to the warm sanctuary of their apartment, that’s Love. You see a chef in a tiny cafe baking pastries with her grandmother’s recipes in the hopes that anyone who eats them would cherish the taste and would be transported to their own childhoods, that is Love. You see a boy and a girl hanging out in the park, shooting hoops, laughing and competing with each other, not caring for one second what society thinks of their unique friendship, that’s Love. A girl and her best friend trek up the Table Mountain and sit on a cliff overlooking the ocean, just enjoying in the companionable silence, that is Love. When you see a friend who comes out to march in the Pride parade of the city to support her LGBTQ friend, that is Love. An old couple, holding hands, walking together stopping to pet the head of a stranger’s child, just because she/he reminded them of their own grandchildren, that is Love. When you see a hapless mother, dragging her toddler who is on his third tantrum of the day, who has, previously, rolled on the street, kicked and punched her, and instead of just leaving him on the road side (LOL), she still picks him up, braves through the screaming and scratching and biting, and takes him home (maybe to give him a good dose of spanking, or cry her eyes out in the privacy of her bathroom), that is Love.
So, ladies and gentlemen, Love does come in many forms, shapes and sizes. You may interpret it as that feeling you have when you finally bite into the chocolate cake you love so much but couldn’t have because you were on a “diet” or take the first sip of tea/coffee in the morning or the petrichor emanating from wet earth after the first bouts of rainfall. You may interpret it as the feeling, when you are lying next to your partner, making a list of your shortcomings in your head, and she/he turns around and hugs you sleepily. The feeling of elation when I asked my 4 year old son, “Agastya, what is love?” and he came running to me and hugged me! It is all that and so much more. But it is all worth the pain and hardship, the messiness and tears, the joy and peace. It is the big things and the very small things, it is honesty, empathy, kindness and compassion. It is remembering the good along with the bad. Having the heart to ask for forgiveness and a big heart to forgive. Love can definitely not be defined in a few words on a mediocre blog. It needs to be felt, in every fiber down to your bones. And I hope all of you feel the proverbial “Love in the air” not just on this day, but everyday for the rest of your lives.
Happy Valentine’s Day everybody.. <3