by Tirna Sengupta
I am reminded of the adored ‘hearts’ – the lovely flawlessness of their curves – that appear on everything from gift-wrappers to coffee mugs and even on ice-cream cups like a celebrity. I wonder how many times I have been enticed by them, how many times I have bought something for their marvelous appearance on it.
Love wafts in the air. And Februaries are absolutely soaked in it. Pictures on the Internet (hardly ever of our browns, but of the whites in pairs that please our sight), love songs and romantic pieces innocently plagiarized as Facebook statuses define love today. Love has become identical with the flip-flop of relationship statuses. Love is expensive. Love is fancy. The whole world wears the hues of love. When I peer through the illusions to look for real love, I meet a brilliant engineer who says that he has neither appreciation nor time for love, but a fling once in a while shores up his work. I see grand weddings being arranged, based on the collection of pixels in a profile and information of property. I see couples who were apparently doing very well suddenly “breaking up” and leaving behind their times together almost effortlessly.
I dwell in a world of pomp where only the props of love amuse people. The heart has two impeccable curves with a hollow within. It is a disappointing void inside a delicate enclosure. The world is often loveless. I think of commitment in love as something more profound than the loud announcement of it. It ought to be something more private than the in-vogue display of charming snuggles on social networking sites. Maybe it is all about colouring up the heart from either end with understanding, compassion, compromise, and forgiveness.
Courage is the true response to love’s beacon. It is the courage to go against norms and obstacles. It is the struggle of two against the world. It is the perseverance of Snehamoy and Miagi in The Japanese Wife – who had never met being fettered miles apart but fallen in love through letters – to make a marriage work across a bad communication system. It is the unwavering fortitude of the gay/lesbian couple to endure social ridicule and rejection for love. It is the fearless unison of the Hindu and the Muslim against the meanness and threats of a conservative society.
Love has the power of the wind, the swiftness of a brook, the heat of a flame, the impulsivity of a cloud and the depth of an ocean. It is a force that disturbs and destroys all calmness and steadiness, setting the lovers on its wild passionate rhythm. Love is a jhamela and we are too smart to get involved in it. Those who listen to the dictates of love are hardly smart. But they are wise, insanely wise. Doing the silliest things in love makes them happy because love subdues the craving for worldly fame and drowns one in the yearning for the other. Love is the only religion to the lover. Holding the beloved in their arms is so gratifying that the lovers can denounce the whole world to attain that moment. Love is truly divine, but we are more taken by its signs in a consumer space, too preoccupied with the mundane course of exams and career-making to experience it.
Tirna Sengupta, based in Siliguri, is waiting to get into college after high school. A former Coordinator for the VOICES section of The Statesman, she has published over a dozen pieces on different issues there and in Spark as well. Tirna enjoys participating in debate, extempore and photography contests, and has been training in Bharatnatyam for the last 10 years.
Genuine and bold, crisp and pithy. Look forward to longer pieces in the future.
My comment will hold absolutely no phenomenal remarkability. But then it is a intimidating piece of literature mixed with emotions, reflections and deep observation. In short, I love it.
And thus, I’ll provide my own view.
Love is a matter of perspective, and thusly varies. Love can be just the physical attribute or personal attraction, or it can be the abyssal romance, or it can be the warming comfort, or it can be the liberty from self dependence. More than mere names the perspective of people is their identity. As Friedrich Nietzsche had wisely mentioned, “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
Love is a matter of perspective, so is freedom and dependence, richness and poverty, apathy and empathy, and is we look deeper… even life and death.
The piece it purely unique. As is the thought behind it.