Live to Love!

To write about ‘love’ is something, I can vouch, most of us will find it to be easy and effortless. In fact, you can be effusive about this emotion since you’ve been doing it since your tender times in school. Remember those compositions we had to write on ‘The Person you Love the Most…’ There would even be all kinds of variations where ‘The Person…’ would be replaced with ‘The Food…’, ‘The Place…’, ‘The Thing…’ and so on and so forth. A little later, you must have also written those one-of-a-kind love letters as you grew up, embellishing them with elliptical verses that would put even the Brownings to shame!

But the other day, when I sat down with the intention of labouring on love, the 40-year-old sagacious self of mine, felt forlorn and futile. Take one close look at almost anything around and you are certain to realize that love has devolved into the most overrated and undervalued feeling. While the world is being torn apart by wars, within and without, to foster February as the ‘Month of Love,’ an aspect that has gained serious momentum through media and advertisements in recent times, I conjectured, was a rather mindless and mercenary act.

And then that day itself, I came across a friend’s status update where she shared a picture of a restaurant in Tokyo, delightfully called the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders. As the name suggests, you may, in all probability, not get what you ordered as the servers are special. They are people coping with dementia and while you might have to eat something that you never thought of, the food is, nonetheless, delicious. Interestingly, 99% of the people, after a meal, leave the place, pleased and with a liberating lesson in acceptance and altruism.

The aim for such an avant-garde initiative, launched in 2017, was certainly to promote empathy for people living with dementia and similar other inarticulate conditions. Its scope, however, was not confined to that singular purpose. The attempt was to spread the feeling that it is okay if things go wrong (around 37% of the food orders in this case) and to show compassion during such times. Having read that, I was overwhelmed and wondered what could be better exemplars of love and benevolence than campaigns like these.

A singular, stirring update and that led us to further conversation till soon enough another instance of nurturing love emerged. Another friend mentioned an equally inspiring enterprise that goes by the name Dialogue in the Dark. She described her encounter there as unique and one that facilitated the accentuation of all the other senses when deprived of one. Here she was actually talking about a restaurant (which, by the way, is a 30-year-old brand that has its presence in 41 countries) where food is served in zero illumination by unsighted servers.

Unexpectedly pulled out of her comfort zone, my friend’s initial reaction, she confessed, was one of suffocation and distress. Slowly, she settled down as she was deftly guided by those who enabled her to get seated, order her food and actually eat it in pitch darkness. She mentioned that perhaps for the first time, she felt the texture of the food, absorbed the aroma, registered sounds while handling it, till she finally tasted it, one bite at a time. The choicest part was when she came out of the restaurant to face the light and the fact that all this while, she was interacting with visually impaired people. Stirred and humbled by empathy and emancipation, she left that day having gained knowledge of a new language of love.

Most of the time, we take our assets, which include our senses, for granted. We complain about almost everything in our lives, which could be our relationships, our job, our financial condition or even the cut of our jib or the fabric of our upholstery! The only antidote to constant cribbing and callous conflicts is to feel the love that is all around us. Not limited to a person or perfection but unfettered and all-encompassing.

You can be really fond of your cook, feel attached to a particular pillow, have a yearning to be at the Everest Base Camp, develop an infatuation with Lee Min-ho, play pickleball with ardour, show tenderness towards your plants and pets, be concerned about the depleting resources of the planet, worship your regional star (I had our very own Thalaiva or Rajinikanth in mind!), care for the safety of the stray dogs in your neighbourhood, cherish a family heirloom and feel one with humanity when faced with global crises. All of that was love whether you named it or not!

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.