I was on my way home after a long day at work listening to my playlist on the bus. The raindrops were mischievously sliding down the window I was resting my head against. ‘Mileya Mileya’ starts playing, and I take a deep breath to acknowledge my love for the song before putting it on a loop.
The song is from an album I don’t remember or care for (from the film ‘Happy Ending’ which I later found for this article), but it’s close to my heart. It is one of those songs you go to when you need to cheer up without loud music. Soothing it is.
The song talks about the secret love in every heart and the fruitless human effort to locate it. The lyrics are warm and comforting, especially if you are in new love, or on a road trip sitting with your head out feeling like the protagonist of a movie as the wind caresses your face, before escaping with the scent of your hair.
The lyrics ‘Mileya Mileya Mujhe Par Meinu Janeya Nahi’ translate to I have found (love) but (he/love) doesn’t know me. These well-penned and seemingly innocent lyrics struck a chord in my heart, and I realised that finding love and knowing love are two different things.
Finding love is rather easy. You can find love in a person you have known since childhood, a person you met at a friend’s party, a stranger at a bar, a cafe or a bookshop, or simply by swiping right at someone’s profile on dating apps.
Two people talk, meet, get to know each other and meet the commonalities they share or at the bridge that connects their two opposite personalities. It’s that common ground or the bridge that I have come to call love.
The harder part about love is knowing love. Don’t worry I’m not gonna strike the age-old questions like ‘What is love? What is life without love?’ etc. There are no right or wrong answers to some questions, the key to finding the solution to these is the process of navigation (Safar khoobsurat hai manzil se bhi).
If there is one objective explanation for love, then it’s the chemical one. It’s all about a series of reactions and the release of some chemicals. I’m sure you know this from all the dance reality shows in India where the judges criticise the contestants for the lack of ‘chemistry’ to back the ‘outstanding’ choreography.
Knowing love is different for different people. It might not be something we inherit with genes from our biological parents but it is something that’s nurtured by the variations of love we see around us, including the form of art, entertainment, and literature we indulge ourselves in.
First love is supposed to be special, that’s the commonality in almost every classic love story. Romeo was Juliet’s first love and Laila was Majnu’s first love. Regardless of how these stories end, first love is conceived to be the purest. For a person who thinks along these lines, love is eternal. “Mera pehla pyaar adhura reh gaya Rifat Bi (My first love remained incomplete, Rifat Bi)” is the most dreadful chapter of their lives.
Some might see first love as a pilot project before their dating life takes off. Bing silly and hopelessly romantic is the only mode of expression of this first dip. love, for them, is like a bee dancing around a sweet flower on a bright spring morning. Love is the dew drop that settles down on the grass blades late in the night. Love is the wind that takes their kite-like life high up in the sky.
However, this is the polar opposite for people who overthink and see people around them in turbulent relationships. They try to be calm and take the pilot seat for their pilot project. Love, for them, is about nurturing the other person’s life. Love is like the sun shining on the person. Love is the string that navigates the flight and ensures the safety of the kite flying freely below the clouds.
Reckless is the other way people know love to be. It makes them do things they otherwise would not imagine doing. This kind of love is spontaneous but has roots that go deep. For people who know love this way, love is the high tide of the ocean on a full-moon night. Love is the light at the end of the tunnel. Love is the bobbin that lets the thread loose for the kite to take its height.
There are very few people who know love as the chemical reaction it is. It’s a part of life and not life itself. The idea of two incomplete people coming together to complete each other is only poetic and not realistic, for love is a force that brings them together and not the adhesive that holds them. Love is the giggling of a child and the smile it brings to the parent’s faces when they see it after a long day at work.
Love is being aware of the love a kite has for the sky, the efforts of the wind to take it high, and the support of the thread and the bobbin to keep it afloat, while accepting that the kite eventually has to come down or detach itself from the thread and wander in the sky before reaching the ground. Love is the uncertainty of the wandering kite’s next flight.
Finding love is like a kite runner scanning the sky, running down streets chasing a kite. It is all about the exhilaration of anticipation.
Then what is to know love?
To know love is to let everything go. ‘Je Mein Janiya Janiya Tujhe Phir Te Mein Bhuliya Sabhi’ translates to ‘as I got to know you (love) I forget about everything else.
To know love is not about not knowing anything else. It is to understand that there is only love and everything else is but the absence of love. Just like there is only light and darkness is a mere absence of it.