Come February and all of us are keen to show the world how lucky we are in love and what this intimate emotion holds for each one of us. But then, this is perhaps the only emotion in which the permutations and combinations of feeling and fostering it, are infinite and inexhaustible. While someone like me may find love, today, as a highly overt and heavily hyped emotion-commodity, I do come across instances and interpretations of love that are subtle but immensely sustaining.
Grand Gestures!
With the passing of age, the lens through which we look at the vast repertoire of love and its manifestations changes. I can certainly vouch for that. Looks are deceptive, and little did others know that during my growing-up years, I harboured within me a heart that craved grandiose declarations of love. You could certainly blame that on my love for English literature and the commercial (particularly Bollywood) films I binged on. So, there I was imagining a ‘blue’ scene (it was my favourite colour back then) on the Brooklyn Bridge and my man walking towards me with a ‘blue’ rose in his hand and the bass notes of the ‘sitar’ strumming in the background! Must admit, I am guffawing even as I write about it.
OR Calm Companionship?
In the fourth decade of my life, love means differently and does not require a spectrum of colours to be sensed and savoured. It does not need to be hinged on high drama or intense interactions to live and lean on.
For almost a decade, I have quietly admired the way an elderly couple care for each other in our neighbourhood. ‘Mashima,’ as I endearingly call her, has been doing the so-called ‘man’s job’ for years as her husband has serious health concerns, but never has anyone heard a word of complaint leave her lips. She cooks a special something for him every day while he reads and even sings to her. They are very happy to have visitors, and together they radiate a calm companionship that embraces the arbitrariness of life with open arms.
My maternal grandmother was bedridden for the last many years of her life due to chronic osteoarthritis but not a day passed when my grandfather would come back home and not sit with her. Sharing their stories showcased the power of presence and the consistent effort that strengthens the fabric of love, which I could appreciate only much later. She passed away just after he did.
“If I should not see you again, / If we lose each other in / The labyrinth, / I will wait for you each summer / Beneath the flame trees / Of Ranthambore.”
(The Weeds that grow in Cemeteries by Nirmal Ghosh)
Lonely in a Relationship?
Nonetheless, the other side of the love coin may not be as pleasing and peaceful as the one mentioned above. It can throw up situations of love (or its counterfeit) where one stays and settles for a love that apparently feels safe and stable. Many women of the previous generation and innumerable men, too, have silently carried the burden of ‘arrangements’ for financial, social and myriad known and unknown purposes. A friend’s mother, despite the abuse she faced in the marriage, could never muster the courage to walk out of it. An erudite and efficient woman by herself, she did not know how to live otherwise.
On the other hand, we must acknowledge that second chances in relationships and second marriages seem to work better these days. Perhaps because by then one has been able to let go of the years of conditioning, which equated and eulogised love as adjustment, endurance and keeping quiet. The individual has internalised the fact that love does not mean effacing oneself but blending into a whole where a presence of one never overpowers the other.
An equal partnership, indeed, dissolves the modern woman’s dilemma by displaying how deftly love and independence can coexist and thrive. Of course, it is pivoted on the sharing of the visible physical labour and the invisible emotional load of work, children, ageing parents and caregiving activities, to say the least.
“Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.”
(Rabbi ben Ezra by Robert Browning)
OR Left Alone…
But nowadays, a love relation looks less like a daily practice, more like positioning and most like a deal. The obvious outcome is feeling lost, often low and eventually lonely. In today’s relationship scenario, teenagers as well as adults are victims of technology-driven love powered by dating apps and virtual parallels. Of course, the options are boundless but choice overload often leads to confusion and chaos when seeking real connection. The parameters of selection too, are fundamentally curated and are hardly ones that could create a natural unfiltered bond. Lack of trust, loss of self-worth, ghosting and exhaustion of every sort are some of the unavoidable consequences of this manoeuvred construct.
Choosing Yourself as a Love Story!
Whether your love is intentional and not innocent; whether you are comfortable in the familiarity and not intensity of love; whether you prioritise availability over romance; whether you value the love that respects boundaries and buttresses; whether you find love in family and friends; whether you propagate love that swells and shirks shrinking; whether you have been in long-term partnerships or experienced the soft, slow fading of love; whether love to you means being seen, being heard and showing up no matter what, loving yourself is, unabashedly, the most full and feeling form of love.
As for me, I recently assimilated certain novel nuances of love through the narratives of the novella, Blue Sky, White Cloud and the movie, Train Dreams. Both the presentations underline the love that permeates nature and the everyday world around us. I held on to the lines, which made me believe that “You’d turn a corner and suddenly find yourself face-to-face with the great mystery, the foundation of all things.” Now that is love…wouldn’t you agree?
By Promita Banerjee Nag
An avid word enthusiast and content-churner, Promita is fuelled by novel writings, ideas and light-hearted banter. A teacher by passion, she treads the path of unequivocal learning with and through her students. Mother, music and ‘mishti’ mostly convince her. If you wish for a tête-à-tête, feel free to reach out to her at promita033@gmail.com.
