Always Aditya

This post has been blogged by Bineeta Fialok with inputs by Siva Aditya

A spark in your eyes, the skipping of a heartbeat, butterflies in the stomach, a tingling in your toes. Oh my there you are! You have caught the disease they call ‘love’. Now, doesn’t that sound like the typical Mills and Boons definition of love? So very clichéd. Many a thinking souls have wondered about this phenomenon called ‘love’ and failed to define it even to their own satisfaction, let alone to the satisfaction of anyone else. So what makes two people tick? Loads of studies, statistics, calculations and theories later we are still hankering after that one elusive definition that would satisfy us all. The word is still a chimera eluding humanity. One of the biggest mysteries (Of course, apart from understanding a woman) of our universe that many of us yearn for the whole of our lives and probably never solve or never understand.

The agony of Hell or the ecstasy of Eden, the torture of deception or the bliss of the first passionate kiss, hot tears of separation or the boundless joy of meeting. How do we define love? For any layman in simple words, it means many things, apart from the obvious one i.e., having a girl/guy to love. But on a more serious note, it’s that intense feeling, that passion which can be thunderous as a stormy sea or calm as the blue sky bereft of a single cloud and, which ironically, can find its expression in as simple a gesture as a light holding of hands. It’s something to be savored, FELT, relished, enjoyed and admired for its complex simplicity. We seem to be talking in oxymoron but that is how we have or have not understood love in all these years of our existence.

Love is probably one of the most violent of emotions known to humanity. Violent, not in its expression, but in its inception, in its existence. A feeling even more intense than hatred. Something, which thrives on one’s lifeblood, one’s life force, and in some cases, to such an extent that it becomes the reason of one’s existence. It doesn’t require you to have a Swiss bank account or the best features even though it would be a bonus if your loved one had a Swiss bank account in addition to a golden heart.

A simple caress, an “I love you” whispered in the ear, a little chat in the balcony, reading a book together, a spur of the moment slow dance or sending the person you love, a love letter (a practice which has vanished into thin air these days) shows that you really care. In fact describing your lady love in a poem or may be a small after dinner walk can be enough to convey to her that you need her and your life is incomplete without her. Interestingly all these small acts are indeed big players in expressing your love and definitely go a long way.

Love is what Rhett and Scarlett had (In ‘Gone with the Wind’ By Margaret Mitchell). Something, which most of us realize after having lost it or maybe never. One wonders how Margaret Mitchell succeeded in defining love so completely in a war romance, as something, which makes you writhe in anger and smolder in longing, not carnal but emotional and mental.

Love to some is more prime than anything else on this earth. Love is the passion of Mirabai for Lord Krishna. Imagine a woman choosing an idol over a living, breathing man and even agreeing to drink poison for that faith/love. (Of course one would be foolish to relate the incident with today’s life but we would just like to concentrate on the strength of her feeling.) The enigma of so completely giving yourself up to someone is what love is capable of. True love chooses. It chooses those whose hearts can burn with its passion and rise again to resurrect themselves like phoenixes.

When we start expecting love to be only sweet then it is better to stop loving someone and continue loving ourselves. Take for instance, the Valentine’s Day. What is it that the whole world craves for on this one day? Apart from being a day for love (which we feel is unnecessary) it has been made to appear like a birthday wherein people celebrate with a party and forget about it the next day and start thinking of the arrival of the same day the next year and what with the media going into frenzy again at the start of February. From all we know, majority of the people see it as a day meant to have a companion and show off. One startling fact that we found out is the increase in sales for condoms on Valentine’s Day. Holy Hell! Does that mean, at least in some sense, that Valentine’s Day has to end with the two of them in bed or does the day have to start with the intention that the day should end with both of them in bed? It may not be the same with everyone but at least for many of them.

An old couple sitting hand in hand in a park, a husband reading out a fairy story to his pregnant wife, a wife cooking her husband’s favorite dish or a guy bringing that one book his girl has been hankering after or vice versa. This may sound a little filmy but if you actually look at it, aren’t these situations very common day-to-day ones? Haven’t you ever seen your mom cook something especially for your father or talked to your grandma about what kind of a person your grandfather was and seen her blush? How does one define that? There aren’t any words for it…It’s love…in its purest form…indefinable yet obvious.