What is love anyway?
My grandmum(I'll call her dadi) got married when she was 13. I think I can safely assume that it wasn't by choice. I was aghast when I found out. I didn't get to see the beginning of her life, only the end. And this is what I saw...
My dadi and dada would wake up every morning. He'd go out into the backyard and exercise, then he'd go pluck out a few jasmine flowers - and on certain days, a rose - which he'd take indoors where he and my dadi would have the breakfast that she'd prepared. He'd present the flowers to my dadi who'd adorn her hair with them. Then they would go for a morning stroll around the neighbourhood. I joined them sometimes, tiring of their pace, running about like the crazy monster that I was. I don't remember many conversations; they were content in silence.
The entire day, they'd stay in touch. If he went out to work (and he did way past his retirement age), he called at least thrice to see how she was doing. They would pray together, side by side. They sat down together, they ate together, they watched TV together. In the later days of his life, my dada found out he had lung cancer. They tried treating it but they gave up. They gave him a few months to live, perhaps. But he lived for 8 years after. My dadi died before he did and he died soon after.
A few nights ago, I discovered some of the poetry he'd written after my dadi died (I can't believe my mum didn't show it to me earlier) ... and though I don't understand it fully, I can sense the pain in it. He was a broken man without her just like she felt incomplete without him.
What is love then? Is it dependence, is it compromise, is it devoting yourself fully to another by sacrificing your dreams? Or does it have fantastic beginnings and romantic candlelit dinners, signs aplenty telling you that you've found "the one"? I don't know...
I come from a civilization obsessed with love. Every film they make is about love, at least their version of it. Every book I read talks about it. I had a discussion with a friend about how languages have a tendency to reflect what is truly important to a society (my friend is Russian and he told me about a word that means "someone who invented something clever or thought of a brilliant way of doing something"). I can name at least 6 different levels of love, words varying in intensity all of which would translate to "love."
And I come from the land of the arranged marriage. Le plus grand amour que j'ai vu dans ma vie était celui de mes grandparents... and it was arranged. What, then, is love? Someone once told me that love is something that can only be truly identified in retrospect which means that in our lifetimes, we will never be able to identify true love... undying love.
"Abb to buss tasveer hai qalb-e-khazeen main jaagazeen
Asl kaa lekin badal tasweer ho sakti naheen."
My dadi and dada would wake up every morning. He'd go out into the backyard and exercise, then he'd go pluck out a few jasmine flowers - and on certain days, a rose - which he'd take indoors where he and my dadi would have the breakfast that she'd prepared. He'd present the flowers to my dadi who'd adorn her hair with them. Then they would go for a morning stroll around the neighbourhood. I joined them sometimes, tiring of their pace, running about like the crazy monster that I was. I don't remember many conversations; they were content in silence.
The entire day, they'd stay in touch. If he went out to work (and he did way past his retirement age), he called at least thrice to see how she was doing. They would pray together, side by side. They sat down together, they ate together, they watched TV together. In the later days of his life, my dada found out he had lung cancer. They tried treating it but they gave up. They gave him a few months to live, perhaps. But he lived for 8 years after. My dadi died before he did and he died soon after.
A few nights ago, I discovered some of the poetry he'd written after my dadi died (I can't believe my mum didn't show it to me earlier) ... and though I don't understand it fully, I can sense the pain in it. He was a broken man without her just like she felt incomplete without him.
What is love then? Is it dependence, is it compromise, is it devoting yourself fully to another by sacrificing your dreams? Or does it have fantastic beginnings and romantic candlelit dinners, signs aplenty telling you that you've found "the one"? I don't know...
I come from a civilization obsessed with love. Every film they make is about love, at least their version of it. Every book I read talks about it. I had a discussion with a friend about how languages have a tendency to reflect what is truly important to a society (my friend is Russian and he told me about a word that means "someone who invented something clever or thought of a brilliant way of doing something"). I can name at least 6 different levels of love, words varying in intensity all of which would translate to "love."
And I come from the land of the arranged marriage. Le plus grand amour que j'ai vu dans ma vie était celui de mes grandparents... and it was arranged. What, then, is love? Someone once told me that love is something that can only be truly identified in retrospect which means that in our lifetimes, we will never be able to identify true love... undying love.
"Abb to buss tasveer hai qalb-e-khazeen main jaagazeen
Asl kaa lekin badal tasweer ho sakti naheen."
posted by Moi at 9:46 p.m.
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