I wonder as always at the beginning of this month called February (the month of my birth, the second month of the year, the Valentine’s month), what it really means to love and to be loved. In today’s world of hyper connectivity and instant online ‘love’- is there really a ‘thing’ called ‘Love’, love – in its purest form, without any adulteration and editing, that exists around us? Is it the same globally or is it different in every continent or it surpasses all the limitations and boundaries of language, colour, religion, culture……? This four letter word has baffled us from the times immemorial. Poets, artists and writers have been intrigued and fascinated by it since the dawn of this civilisation. It has been the cause of many a wars and peace treaties too. It is the driving force behind many of the greatest achievements and feats of mankind.  It has moved mountains and conquered unimaginable heights and depths. Think tanks and scientists have tried to analyse it from all possible angles but it still remains a mystery, so simple, yet so profound. All religions start and end with love. Everyone seeks it in some form or the other. Everyone needs it – and that I realised quite early on. All living organisms, need a dose of this elusive love, to survive and to flourish. History is the witness.

For me, growing up in India as a teenager and getting my overdose of Bollywood on a regular basis made me believe that love is all about looking into your beloved’s eyes, all love-sick, singing and dancing around the trees. It promised candlelight dinners, beautiful bouquets, rainbow-coloured balloons, heart-shaped candies, cuddly toys, red roses, romance, poetry, French perfume, sweet kisses, moonlight walks holding hands, star gazing on the beach, feeling the cool sand between your toes, opening doors, sunset cocktails and all those countless dreamy fluffy things. You fall in love with everyone and everything. You fall in love with the whole feeling of love. You are in a constant state of rapture and you get heartbroken every so often. As a young girl, I was always falling in love, always in love with the feeling of love. It felt so good, so heavenly. And one fine day, you do actually fall in love, quite hopelessly…..it becomes difficult to concentrate or focus on anything meaningful but then love becomes hell and love becomes heaven…and love becomes your only saviour too. An incurable romantic, that’s what I was and I still am to a large extent.

Fast forward few years and I am a young woman who realises the package called love includes heart ache and tears too. Most of all, it includes a lot of hurt and pain, and in fact it is a lot of hard work, sweat and blood. I learn one has to make willing sacrifices along the way, to let go of ego, to grow up fast and overcome envies, jealousies, insecurities, and face one’s own big bad demons.

As I got older, I realized love is a life long journey and is directly proportional to one’s true happiness, contentment and peace. I realized how fortunate and blessed you are when you find your soul mate, your true friend during your lifetime.

You might be fortunate enough to come across someone with whom you feel a sense of freedom, freedom to be just yourself. You can remain silent for hours together and yet feel no need to talk. Words are not needed anymore, you somehow feel complete with the person. You know in your heart, mind and soul that you have found a true friend, a soul mate, and your life partner. You have a taste of happiness and contentment. Suddenly, you find meaning in your life and your life becomes meaningful. The journey of life seems easier and bearable and less exhaustive – you have someone with you to share it with you. The joys and sorrows, ups and downs, highs and lows, along the way keep you thoroughly amused and you laugh at yourself, at each other and at this strange but exhilarating journey called ‘life’. You two have your personal jokes about life et al and everything related to it, where words and the punchline are not needed anymore, just a fleeting glance and you get each other. You both smile and then you laugh out loud, you both realize what happiness is and what togetherness ultimately means. It all somehow makes sense. ‘Togetherness’ gradually becomes ‘one-ness’. Two hearts start to beat with the same rhythm, same sound and same melody, a lyrical rhapsody of love. You two become ONE! – One mind, one soul, one heart. You could hear the heartbeat of love from miles away – it has the sound of blissful, all-consuming silence. Your whole being start to hum a song called LOVE.

So the journey continues, you wish to spend the rest of your life with your soul mate. You look forward to spending every minute and every nano second of your day and night together. Lying in bed for hours talking about anything and everything under the sun. You don’t edit, you don’t stop and think, you flow like a river, without any hindrances. You feel like a child, running through the green meadows, trying to catch the rays of the sun, with eyes half closed. You realise you are in LOVE!

Before you know it, you are suddenly a grownup – a worldly-wise, intelligent, resourceful, mature woman and of course there are days, when you want to hit someone in the head with a big piece of wood. It’s another thing that you don’t act upon your thoughts, and you mope around the house with your hair all over the place with your stretched-to-the-max pyjamas on, resembling a dishevelled, dirty and an annoying beggar from a third world country. You have days when you use bad and abusive language in frustration…. ‘F’ this and ‘F’ that and you find faults with everything and everyone. You have drunken daytime ramblings about the dire and sad state of this world. You become a walking source of negativity with a grey cloud hanging over your head. There are worse days when you are insensitive to everyone’s needs around you and there are days when you desperately need to be left alone. You want to be left totally alone. Despite all this, you realise there is still someone who loves you, someone who  gives you your space, someone who puts up with your innumerable mood swings, someone who smiles amidst all the madness and chaos, and gets busy with the work related papers whilst you are listening to your gloomy music with your head phones on. You thank your stars and consider yourself the luckiest being alive on this planet.

As you two spend more and more time together, you take on each other’s interests and likes. You find yourself trying things for the first time like listening to jazz; you start watching news for hours; you try your hand at guitar; you try to get the lyrics of the songs liked by your partner; you taste ‘Vegemite’ and try to understand its lure; you try to understand a totally different culture; you try to learn and understand the language of your partner’s parents; you try to learn about their family’s religion; you try to read and comprehend complex philosophical concepts; you try to enjoy mandarins and oranges as much as your partner does; you start to take interest in foreign affairs; and so much more. You realise you are changing, you are growing, you are becoming a better version of yourself. You try your best to be a better version of yourself in all spheres of your life. Making love also becomes a spiritual experience, intimacy takes another level of fulfilment – spiritually, emotionally and intellectually. You become a person with a fantastic sense of humour. You are prepared to do anything to make your partner love you forever. You start looking more beautiful. There are times, when you two fight like cats and dogs and argue non-stop for the sake of it. You get all enraged because you care enough for each other. You let each other experience something truly special. You know in your heart of hearts that everything is finally going to be OK. You both hold power, power to make each other a better person.

You learn that acceptance is true romance. Romance is, to feel accepted and loved when you are behaving horribly and unconventionally. You know that you have someone staying by our side when the whole world is sitting in the judgement seat. You let go of the desire to be in control, you let go of your interests and your desire to dominate. You are free of everything and you start seeing the bigger picture. A bigger, colourful, love-filled picture. You start accepting and loving yourself too. Your love extends to everything and everyone around you.

The decision to build a little nest with someone who is just an extension of you becomes easier and comes as naturally to you as a dream. You make few little versions of yourselves, a reflection of you two. Miracles happen – big and small. You become a parent. Love teaches you how to be a parent, how to take care of little helpless, fragile beings. You become less selfish, you become more willing to sacrifice your own comfort so that your little miracles of love can flourish. You don’t mind sleepless nights and total take-over of your lives by little tiny beings. There’s no greater joy than when your little miracles look at you with complete trust reflected in their big, twinkling, shiny eyes. You start to see beauty in everyone and everything and your definition of beauty becomes broader and broader. Somehow the world doesn’t seem such a gloomy place after all and you see hope at the horizon for the humankind. Somehow everything that has bothered you since you became an adult, seem to fall into the right place, things start to make sense. You start to fall in love over and over again…..love becomes an all-consuming feeling and you have faith again in everything under the sun which seemed so doomed when love was a non-existent entity in your meaningless life.

The viral video of a five year old, the biggest fan of Lionel Messi, kicking his football in the war-torn Afghanistan, wearing his makeshift blue-and-white-striped jersey made from a plastic bag, cheers you up and you feel surrounded by positivity, hope and love. The father of the boy says football shirts were too expensive for the family to buy. The Barcelona stars decides to meet the boy and present him with a real football T-shirt. Love teaches you to see beauty in the most mundane things and in the most wretched and miserable places on this planet we call home. Your soulmate, your love shares this bit of news with you at 6.30 am in the morning whilst you are preparing your little one’s breakfast before school, because he knows in his heart of hearts that you would love it. And you do. Rest of your day is filled with love. Love is sharing and appreciating the little things in life, simple things in life and life looks beautiful and you kiss goodbye for the day. The rest of the day is a blessing. Love accepts you as you are with all your flaws. It gives you hope and faith. The world is beautiful and you are beautiful and everyone around you is beautiful! Love conquers, it cancels all your misdeeds and innumerable sins. Love always wins……that you are sure of now and it lasts for eternity and beyond! And you keep this loving faith – forever!

This Chinese New year, which falls in the month of Valentine, is the year of the Red Fire Monkey. It will be a bright and blazing year, predicts the Chinese astrology. It represents passion, and is said to bring joy and creativity. I look forward to it and I pray for an eternal fire of love – bright and blazing –reaching the stars and the heaven above with its soaring flames.

There. Straight and simple. 1+1=love. That’s what everyone wants, right? Straight and simple, ‘we are on the same page’ love?

I am a believer in Love…..

Vibha Das-Singh