LOVE, UNLIMITED

If there is one thing that can make us feel more alive than others,

If there is one thing that can make us relevant to all times,

If there is one thing that can free us from the shackles of pride,

It is love.

Love that at times oozes from the mortal chambers of the heart, and at other times emanates from an eternal space no eye can reach nor thought can fathom.

Love that at times is so human that we seem to be caught in a maze, going around and reaching nowhere. And love that at other times seems so all-pervading, that giving and receiving it becomes as natural as breathing.

My love is esoteric. It is snow, water and vapour all at once. It is so human at times that I simmer in its slow fire, and so spiritual at other times that I feel I am deathless. And there are times when they come together, the human and the other, and all I feel is a lightness in the head that not the best wines in the world can offer.

In all my experience of human love, I have categorically known that it cannot be selfless. It is the most selfish of all human aspirations, for we love not for the other’s sake, but for our own. We love not because it brings joy to the other, but because it brings us the pleasure of loving and being in love. Love is an investment that flourishes only on the return it brings – physical, material, spiritual or emotional. But then again, this selfishness has no profanity in it and will not invite retribution. This selfishness is a prerequisite to human existence. It is perhaps the only vice that upholds a virtue.

Ask me why I love and I would have no reason to give. Ask me how long my love would live and I would say, ‘as long as I can feel it in my being’. One either feels love or one doesn’t. There is no third alternative. There are no half measures in love. When I feel it in every fiber in my body, it stops being just another emotion. It becomes my elixir to live.

My love is free. It is independent. It is like loving the hills. When one walks down the woody path of the hills, all one feels is the power of her deep connection with the elements around. Do we pause to ask the pines if they love us back? Do we enter into a trade-off deal with the mountain breeze? Don’t we walk through the wafting clouds without trying to capture them and take home with us? When love goes unrequited, ask yourself these questions, and continue to love, like you would love the hills. Your love will return in an unexpected form, one day or the other.

To all those who say true love doesn’t exist, let me reiterate this. It does. It exists with all its simplicity and complexities woven into it. It is easy when we let go of all self-pride and allow love to stream unrestrained.

It is complicated when we tag it with prerequisites, when we put checks and balances, assess the pros and cons, weigh it against tangible rewards, seek perfection, define parameters, and try to customize it to our needs. When we stanch our love with narrow thoughts, it festers in our veins.

Our love has been tarnished by our own limited ideas of what it should be and how it should be accomplished. Love isn’t a means to an end. It is our quintessence. In creating our notions of human love, we have lost sight of the real thing.

Loving and being in love without needing endorsements is what real love is all about. All else are charades that we participate in, unhappily. The real thing doesn’t seek anybody’s approval, not even the approval of the objects of our love. It glows in the inner precincts, like a lamp in a shrine. Gently, forever.

A dog's life. Why not?

My mother is a very orthodox lady. A lady whose childhood was spent in the confines of a large family and its conservative diktats. Steeped in religious beliefs like many others of her generation, she is still a person of curious theories and conclusions, which sometimes border on the superstitious. Although I had learnt to write off most of her irrational notions when I became an adult, and she too had accepted that her beliefs couldn’t be imposed on a grown-up daughter beyond a point, she still held sway on many occasions and I merely complied to avoid a pointless conflict. Wisdom is in knowing which battles to pick and which ones to quit. Moreover, it’s not my place to change her creed. To each, her own. Among the many things that she still insists that I follow, at least while I am on her territory, is the rule that I must not get up in the midst of a meal. Food is supposed to be had in one sitting. She staunchly believes that violating that rule would result in our being reborn as a dog in our next birth. Although she has no rational back-up to prove her claim like most other deep-seated ideas, to her it was a despicable and dreadful consequence to have. Especially after a human life that as per our religion is the highest in the order of births for the chance it gives us to evolve to our most refined form. A proverbial dog’s life, who would want that, given a choice? I would. It is my newest aspiration for the next birth. If there is such a thing, that is. But my aspiration is tagged with caveats and conditions. What I want to be is not a pampered furry friend or an over-fed hound. Not a poodle sporting a bow ribbon or a lab or a pug with an indulgent daddy or mummy. I want no fancy dog houses nor food in silver bowls. No shampoo baths and pedicures. No long walks on leash or cuddles in the couch. I want to be a stray dog. The consternation it brings on one’s face as I mention it is not misplaced. One may find it even cringe-worthy, perhaps? Apparently, it isn’t among the most desirable ways to live in the world; it’s prospect doesn’t evoke awe or excitement in us. If anything, a stray dog conjures up an image of a miserable mongrel with nothing of its own; left to fend for itself, a picture of squalor, shunned and shooed away. Treated like a pariah, it is a loathsome existence that one would never wish for willingly. It is precisely what my idea of a street dog was too until I saw Chotu and his siblings on my trip home a couple of months ago. A threesome who always hanged out together, our street and the one behind it was their territory. Although there were other dogs roaming in the colony, these three rarely strayed out of our street boundaries. They patrolled this area, chasing each other, jumping over walls for no reason, frolicking in the sand heaps left in a construction site across our house, accosting us when we stood at the gate with their wagging tails and beseeching eyes, eagerly waiting for the bread, biscuits or rusks we fed them, and when sated for the moment, trotting away with gay abandon. Watching them and following their activities became a major recreation for me during that time. They waited for the fish vendor in the mornings, following him till he stopped at a buyer’s gate and as he cleaned the fish for the customer, waited patiently at a distance, slavering perhaps, but never once showing gluttonous instincts. If the fish man was generous on a day, he would flick a piece of waste to them and they would amble down politely and lap up the scrap. If he didn’t, they waited for him to leave and fed on whatever leftovers they found. It seemed as if even the scent of fish on the ground was enough to satisfy them. Among the other things they did was escorting the ladies in our lane when they went on their regular evening walks, quietly following them as if it was their assigned job. When they were in mood for some friendly banter, they teased each other and got into mock fights. When they found one of them missing among them, they combed the area and in no time got him back into the pack. They were a team that nothing could ever split. The bonhomie among them upended the ‘dog-eat-dog’ maxim that has come to exemplify our warring human world. They played and pranced around as if there were no tomorrows, they ate what they found by the largesse of people, they slept in their car sheds, they roamed about without fear or favour, they loved as they wished, they hated no one, they were unfettered, they led their lives as prescribed by nature and were subservient to no one else. Boy, isn’t that something! I envied their lives like I have envied nobody in this world. To me this was as far as ‘thinking big’ in life could take me. If, per my mother’s belief, getting up in the middle of a meal could give me even half a chance of being reborn as a dog like Chotu and his siblings in my next birth, I would not mind having all my meals standing. I may not attain ultimate liberation at the end of my human birth, but I could at least try for a new lease of life as a zippy stray dog whose life exists only in the present moment. No Past to mull over, no future to behold, just the ‘now’ to savour and surrender to.

PARENTS, TEACHERS, PLEASE LEVE THE KIDS ALONE

My biggest woe as a highschooler was having to wear a uniform that I detested: a long, pleated skirt made of terry cotton tied at the waist with strings and a shirt with big collars. The change from the simple pinafore to the long skirt and the inconveniences it caused were my greatest grouse as I crossed the threshold of middle school, not studies, not exams nor homework. There was least concern about grades or rank, about classmates who made better cuts and I had zero clue about what lay ahead of me in the future. My parents set no benchmarks nor did they foist unrealistic expectations upon me. School and college years passed like a long excursion despite the minor frustrations immanent in that age.

Let us cut to the new times and take stock of our children who are busy trapezing between school, special classes, extracurricular activities often thrust upon them, endless tasks, tall expectations and unsolicited advice on their career from all over. Saddled with all of the above, they are now a mass of messed-up brains, with the words ‘stress’ and ‘pressure’ rolling off their tongues at the drop of a hat. What changed in the last few decades apart from the entry of the internet that our children are under constant duress of the kind we have not known in our childhood? And how sensitized and responsive are we towards it?

From the numerous conversations I have with young people, I am noticing that the fulcrum of pressure is slowly shifting from parents to peers. In the beginning, there was a lot of din around how parents imposed their dreams on their children and excellence was non-negotiable. It is a matter of some relief that many parents have now begun to realize the adverse effects of making their children the natural inheritors of their dreams. A number of children now admit that while parents still insist on good results and performances, and they do not compromise on grades, there is no apparent force to pursue fixed paths. And that is some solace, to say the least.

It makes me safely conclude that what is wiping the smiles off our children’s faces is the pressure that they are taking up from others in their own fold. They are feeding off each other’s ambition and eagerness to succeed. Their fear of failure is augmented by the prospect of a peer’s victory over them. It all seems like boiling down to their position vis-a-vis the other person’s position in life. Their reference points have shifted from their own capabilities to their peers’. And this completely changes the way they view their self-worth and their place in the world.

The fact that we live in a world of cut-throat competition and only the best will survive cannot justify the amount of pressure children undergo to make themselves counted on the planet. The theory of natural selection cannot be cited as a reason for our children to be striving for distinction at all times. Every parent will instinctively want their offspring to build a life of affluence and prestige but let not these aspirations become the sole purposes of their lives. Coercion by parents may not be overt anymore; but their influence can work unobtrusively, playing on the children’s mind, reminding them repeatedly of their obligation to bring home the trophies and later, handsome salaries.

At 15, I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. Today at 14 and 15, children who still can’t figure where their heart lies and what their inclinations are, are expected to make blueprints for their future life. Their panic at being warned by parents and teachers that their indecision, inaction and lack of clarity about their end goals could prove to be disastrous makes them feel like losers even before they have set off on their journeys. It is a condition that vexes me and one I wish to rectify.

Our children must have a secure future for certain, but it should not be built on pressures that obliterate the sweet naiveties and simple joys of childhood. Success must not be linked to money alone, and self-worth should not be gauged by their power to beat others. For this to actualize, we adults must first step back and look at life’s bigger picture and know what really matters to us and to our children. They do not deserve to go to bed every night with the fear of lagging behind and losing the race. They must be handed the kaleidoscope and encouraged to watch the patterns, so they know there are different ways to design their life and myriad colours to embellish it.