What Really Is Love?

                                   

Love is fun and it is amazing, like little children splashing water on each other. It is deep in its meaning, that it confounds even the wisest of scholars. It is like the tastiest cheese filling inside a hot cheese-burst pizza that drips down your lips at every single bite. Love is solid, sometimes moves like fluid, but most of the time - it is found in the gaseous state, formless. It smells like flowers not found on earth, flies like how the albatross takes flight, and is as sour, tangy and spicy as the pani puri water that you gulp from the street-side shops down the road.

Love is not two people having consensual sex - it is more than the pleasures of the bed. Love is not sending text messages late in the night, because love cannot be contained in words and is not just of the night. Love is not taking the ones you like to the places they like - it is exotically home-bound. Love is not the deep french kisses - for love is the most tastiest, before the tongues could meet. In simple words, Love Is Action Defying Convention.

Love is noticing a strange kid in the railway station bitterly crying not knowing what to do - because she lost her parents in the crowd, and you don't want to leave the child all alone - so you stay with her till her parents show up and you finally see some smile on her lovely small face at the very sight of her mom who comes running. Love is running to help the collapsing old man, carefully placing him inside the stopped autorickshaw and going along with him to drop him at his residence - located in a place you have never been to before. Love is having a gentle evening conversation with the transgenders standing next to their rented brothel and taking them to the nearest A2B restaurant so they could eat good food - while the onlookers throw suspiciously disgusting looks on you.

Love is the real scars you carry because the stitches have left a long mark that would not fade till you die. Love is washing the clothes of all the thirty kids in the children's home everyday - because the caretaker woman who is paid to do the daily chores is pregnant with a fully bulged belly. Love is flirting with danger, not for the fun of it, but to prove a point to the ugly thugs that the poor cannot easily be treated that way when you are around. Love is an epileptic donating blood thrice in a month. Love is giving away everything, even if it would mean - to the last drop of your blood. Love is Precious. Divine. Magnanimous. Always Resides In The Hiding. The Most Beautiful. Modest. Sacrificial. All-bearing.

And very rightly - God is Love!

Let The Fever Go!

When he came back home from work, she was sleeping - shivering with fever - fully and tightly covered inside that warm quilt. He did not want to disturb her, carefully kept the parcel food he had brought along on the table next to the bed, wanted to go out and sleep in the hall. But something brought him back in. He wanted to check how bad her fever was - wake her up slowly, help her complete the food, then the medicine and put her back to sleep to the usual strumming of his guitar. But she woke up - all too suddenly - right when his hand touched her forehead.

He looked at her, asked her if she was okay. She smiled, told him that her fever would never go - if he couldn't help. He did not understand what she meant - at first. Told her, he was no doctor. Mandoos mandoos, she playfully teased him. He still could not get what she was trying to imply. Okay, have to admit - he was feigning ignorance now. Totally unable to hide it for long, he blushed the romance out. She triggered the wild riot right away, made the first move with the most unexpected kiss in the most likeable peck spot and the music followed.

The fever left her instantly leaving her to fall sick again - but now in intense love. With that severely naughty smile, he was running after her, chasing - wanting to pull out her saree fold that had carefully been tucked right below her round and beautiful belly button. She hit him hard. Aiii - with a shout, he left a solid pinch with the reddening mark on her wheatish waist skin. He held both her hands firmly, pinned her to the wall whispering sweet-nothings into her ears, then a few sugar bites on the lobes - I am definitely going to kill you, kill you with my kisses, he threatened her with much love. What happened next is completely left to your imagination!

He had always been that innocently upright person - keeping away from all such things calling them - cha cha wrongs and chi chi wrongs, but now the more he breathed in the fragrance from her jasmine-flower clad long hair locks - he was stoned, helpless, left only to more willingly do all those things he once considered chi wrong - in the most sweetly mischievous way possible.  Whenever they sat in the fields surrounded by the green of the mountain, and as the tunes from the flute and the tabla fogged the scene leaving refreshing dew-drops on the love-stricken surfaces of their minds, they just stared into each other's eyes in silence. The rest followed like magic - swelling her belly with their babies, one after the other. Lying on her comforting lap, he wrote her a poem that ended with a question - 'After thoroughly ravaging my heart, why do you even vaguely think that the gold, the wealth, much money, societal norms and other things would take me away from you; or that those vain things would pacify the ticklish unrest that gets sweeter by the day and grows intense by the night?' In reply, all that she knew to do was to remind him that they were already married and kiss him instantly - a little harder than usual. Then, they both laughed their heart out lying down there - gazing at the stars and counting each other's moles as the night once again covered them in its loverly warmth.

Like The Touch Of Warm Sunrays

Your soul speaks to you in its loudest voice when you are at the most quietest place of your life. Something takes you away to the worlds you have never been to, takes you out of all the precepts of societal clauses, makes you numb to all the decrees laid out by the men of the old. You close your eyes and all you could see is the ocean, the Sun taking its ritual dip in the evening only to rise up again the following morning - with its more vibrant rays. You open your eyes when you hear the owls howling, the mind in slight trouble - because they had taught you that the sound of an owl is sign for bad omen - but all you see now is the moon up above shining in its loveliness - moving in all directions you try to step away and run, and then there are stars twinkling everywhere lighting up the cloudless dark sky. It is time you whispered into your own ears
that every little thing your eyes could see has been made beautiful and perfect in its own
sweet way. There is no need to burden your heart with all the worries of the world. Because in its
time - like how the buds open up to become beautiful flowers, like how the touch of
warm sunrays sustains life on earth, it would all become fine, straight and alright - because
not one prayer prayed for the goodness of people goes in vain!

                                                                       The sound of the dice rolling on the table and the coins moving up and down the ladder board - sometimes bitten by the painted snakes, sometimes escaping them. You might wonder and ask yourself why not redraw the board and recreate the whole game without the snakes? But then, the thrill extinguishes with the disappearance of the snakes - the venom in its fangs actually adds meaning to the game played within the board. A close friend of mine always says that in life there are no accidents but only incidents. It might take some time to grasp the truth behind this saying, but as the ripples fade and the waters reach its stillness, and when you see your own reflection emanating from the surface of the lake, you will then understand - noticing to your  amusement that your countenance has actually grown in its august brightness. They say - if what comes out of a furnace doesn't shine, it isn't probably gold. It is verily verily true that
ordeals - when they end - always bring out the best in a person!

The beats of your heart!

I'm one of those lone wanderers who loves to go on long rides alone - just me and the bike. The moment I get up from my bed every morning, I mumble a short prayer - after which I say a brisk hi and good morning to my soul. I respect my private space. I like to sit in the quiet to spend some time with myself even in the middle of the busiest day. Last month, I covered two thousand kilometers in three days. Of course - on my bike, and yes - alone. On the second day, I was in Kerala - on top of one of the tallest hills of the western ghats. All through the journey, I was running and re-running scenes from my life because I had so many questions I needed answers for and I was on the verge of making one of my life's toughest decisions. But when I saw those clouds and all the jaw-dropping green around, I quit thinking. Yes, I went blank. The chilly mist was shaking my bone and marrow, and it was hurting me - but it felt strangely good. Something brought all those legions of butterflies in multiple colors towards me and the creaking sounds of the wild crickets were growing higher in their pitch. I smiled my best smile of the year standing there surrounded by that divine calmness of the morning. 

Those sweet whispers from my soul resonated in my ears adding beauty to the moment. It solved all the puzzles just like magic. I was immensely happy. The decision was made. I spoke it out - to the butterflies first that were swarming around me. Then, to the air that was refreshing the morning. And, to all the vegetation and the lovely green my eyes could see. I repeated whatever my heart wanted me to say. I said it aloud. Louder still. Then the Sun started coming up and its rays filled the morning sky. And I kick-started my bike, continued with the journey more happily. 

To be truly happy, you should follow your heart. You need to trust and blindly obey your heart. The whole world might toss you with truckloads of opinions both ways, but it falls on you to carefully train your mind so you listen only to the beats of your heart. Before you do any thing - you have to believe from deep within that you can do it, it should occur to you naturally straight from the deepest portals of your heart - or just quit doing it. See how the little birds learn to fly! When the time comes, they just jump out of their nests closing their eyes, flapping their wings - slowly and quickly and then slowly again till they find their right rhythm, and in the end - there they go flying and singing to the most beautiful places!

It might sound extremely illogical but it is absolutely true that your heart never lies. You could try a thousand tricks to misguide your heart to believe a lie to be the truth, but it wouldn't oblige. It wouldn't allow you to wrong anyone either, because compassion flows out of its all four chambers. How I wish the viles of the mind are completely doused as the human race continues to progress and evolve through history! We don't need great inventions anymore - all the advancements we have seen in all these years are enough! What we sincerely need is for all men and women to carry the fervor of the soul's warmth in their lives every breathing moment! When that day arrives, we would - in truth - see that utopian world where kindness, laughter, fun and love would be found in bubbling abundance.

Why I Like The Prostitutes More?

On the starry evening of that serious day, we were together. My dad and I. The cab was racing the twenty six kilometers to Coimbatore so I could drop him at the railway station, say tata to him as he boards the Blue Mountain train to Chennai, and come back to the hostel before the closing bell of the much silent study hour. In the cab - we talked about life, the universe and a lot of other things. But what awed my dad more was a statement I made when we discussed in length about the idea of marriage. I told him -"Appa, I wouldn't mind marrying a prostitute if that is where god leads me to!" Though I have been slowly reeling away from the concept of religion day by day, I have always been a firm theist. I was, then, a nineteen year old and the girth of my ideologies had already started bulging in shape with its toughness and strength.

So yes, I wouldn't mind marrying a prostitute! There are strong reasons behind this positive assertion. From all the conversations I have had with the sex-workers as part of the many activism drives, I am affirmative of the fact that they are all awesome women out there - caged by the curse of the disparities born out of the vehemence of filth and debauchery emanating from the very same society that we, as proud members, are party to. Everyone has a story to tell that would just move your soul and break your heart to pieces. In the world of a prostitute, the words - love, kindness and care - take an altogether different dimension and meaning that are much practical compared to the hypocrisies of the many households where you hear frequent theoretical rants about morality and upright behavior.

Prostitutes, despite the cruelties they are being subjected to almost every day, are modestly simple and honest about their lives. You have no idea of the shame, torture and abuse they have to bear from various cruel men who come often to jizz out the heat. The majority of the society sees them as scum, but to me, they are just like every woman - only that they are more beautiful. Yes, they have feelings; yes - by virtue of being women, they are more sophisticated than the men; and yes, they cry quick - but when they cry they do not do it to create a scene, twist the truth or solidify a lie. There is absolutely no falsehood in them. They present themselves as they are - without any underlined caveat. They do have their own value system - the more you observe and learn from them, the more you would be enamored by the depth in the character they tacitly showcase.

It is truly disheartening that the statistics behind the success rate of rescuing these wonderful girls from the red-light area is not so glamorous. There is a certain rehabilitation center in Badlapur - now functional but without legal license - because the government was pressurized to shut it down. Reason, the pimps who run the show have ministerial connections. You should go there and see it for yourself. Every woman rescued from Kamatipura tends to go back to being a sex-worker again because the society does not accept them. These pretty women, when they are out in the world, meet two kinds of people - there is a larger group that sees them with disgust and there is a smaller group that sees them with sympathy - both extremes from two different spectrum of thought. Imagine how dangerously unsettling would this be to their minds that are, in real, quaking like a fish freshly out of the already troubled gutter water. How idiotically unscrupulous even the supposedly good lot amongst us also are - that we tend to show that lax sympathy to people who are in critical need of compassion and acceptance!

There are people amongst us who would hide their deviant present, just to look good in front of the world - but quickly point judgmental fingers to taint others when they make a far lesser mistake. Believe me, there is no such cheap drama and vanity seen in these women. They are like pearls stuck inside the suffocating flesh of the sea shell. They need to be loved just like how any damsel in distress from those fairy tales would yearn to be loved by her knight in the shining armor who would valiantly come crossing all the seven seas to rescue his maiden and take her away. Away - into the woods, to a place where there would only be bliss and the story would end with the lines - and they lived happily ever after. From all the tenets of love that I have known over the years - a person's present should not matter much as long as she is sincere about what she does and regrets her mistakes, the very thought of giving even the slightest damn about the past to judge somebody's character is highly sinful by any standard, and appearances do not count at all - because a lovely woman is not the one who is flawless by the set norms of the society, not the one who has an attractive shape and skin tone, not the one who has a lot of wealth - but the one who by her magical strides simply adds beauty to her man's life by the truth she brings in to beautify the relationship. I bet all these women who have been forced to live their lives in those small dingy private rooms quenching the lust of strange men just to win their daily bread are quite capable of being those ideal women the heart of any young man would want to woo and take home - only if you could be wise enough to see the roses beneath the thorns.

We hear lectures on true love everywhere, our movies wouldn't sell without love, all the songs we listen to are dipped in love. But what is depressingly sad is that none of us would want to imbibe the essence of love into our souls and show it in action that one could truly love. It is time we got up from our slumber and lived our lives on a higher note, for a higher purpose - negating all hypocrisies and moral deviances.

Love should be the only transaction!

I am one of those poor souls highly disillusioned with the world. Sometimes I find myself totally at odds with what is happening around that I tend to blink thinking if my thoughts are ahead of its times or that the world is way too ahead of my thoughts. I find it extremely difficult to cope with even the basic rules on which the world is made to function. 

The very idea of working for someone to earn paper currency disgusts me. You have to go to a place they call office everyday, sit in front of that computer screen and do things that you dont really like, tolerate all the nonsense from fake people, play games, taint others to make yourself look good, do things your heart does not approve of and kill your conscience to win favour from people who hold power - all of this cheap drama to get that package that gets credited to your bank account end of every month. Oh yes, it disgusts me more to get myself sunk into the quagmire of hypocrisies that brutally murder morality with this socially acceptable sense of right and wrong.

Money cannot make me happy. You can pour a lorryfull of fresh cash right in front of my house and ask me to take it, no exaggeration - I would certainly hesitate and leave the place. There is more to life than dying suffocating deaths everyday stuck inside huge heaps of mechanisation and boredom.

Sometimes I envy the hunter-gatherers of the past. They, in their times, had lived the most wholesome lives. There had been much thrill and adventure. But somehow down the line, this decay and rot in the thought process has seeped into human history and has taken us a zillion miles away from the colourful affinity and blend we had had with nature. 

I have been waiting to make a move and cut myself down from all the connections of this world and go away. Go away in search of a place where there is no rule of money, where people are respected for their character, where there is much kindness and no self-love. In my pursuit, if I happen to not find any such place - I shall go to a deep forest, mix with the natives there, make my best effort to sow seeds to build the civilization of my dream and watch them grow to become that ideal society where love would be the only transaction.

Parent an orphan child!

There is nothing more horrifying in this world than being a child growing up without a mom and a dad. The child takes shelter and lives in multiple charity centers, not knowing parental care at all. There is exposure to constant hunger, torn and used clothes, poor personal hygiene and sanitation, and pathetic education. I have also heard of gruesome stories of few filthily evil caretakers having laid hands on some of these children to satisfy their uncontrolled sexual urges. They have to suffer all of this in silence - in addition to the excessive disciplining. Life has its own way of treating the innocent and the good in the most unbearable way.

The child cannot share too much of whatever she goes through with anyone. Trust is an altogether different equation - as her mind reads and memory knows. It is depressing to see a beautiful young mind that is meant to fly freely like a happy butterfly - kept under lowly subjection. There is insecurity covered in smile, restlessness masqueraded by the quiet and abuse that goes unnoticed in extreme obedience. People from outside come once in a while to see them, show them so much love - but they leave in some time to go back to their homes. Some children who want to leave as well, try to make their escape. But the world outside is more cruel than the world within the walls of the orphanage - and they land in deep trouble losing it all.

From all the time I had fortunately spent with the orphaned kids, I know for a fact that life on the other side is not so easy. There have been times children have cried their hell out to take them away. Few, after knowing that you can be trusted, open up and speak about sexual abuse. There are things that I have seen with my own eyes that have triggered new perspectives and shaped ideologies. My heart has ever since started beating to the honest wish that no one in this world should spend his/her childhood as an orphan. Every child deserves a home, a mom and a dad.

Time has come - to stop acting as though we never noticed any of this, to have some passion to do good, and get into real action. This is a humble call to strongly recommend the advocating of child adoption - across societies and cultures. One might find obstacles to this from the highly conservative lot whose minds are mostly corrupt with old love-less ideas of the past and other rants on practicalities. Keep them all out - when you make any decision rooted in love. To do something selfless and nice outside the restrictive rules guarding the circle of life - would make one special, bold and adorable. We need to stop limiting our causes to mere talks and allow love to guide our action.

How long would we love only the things that are our own? What really is the use of giving heavy lectures on love and other wonderful things - if we cannot extend our arms and have the heart to call the mean and the rejected things of the world as our own? Love goes beyond the inner craving that looks for 'what's in it for me?'; it goes beyond blood, race, culture and even national boundaries; it is driven by the ever-burning passion that cannot be quenched at all; it magnifies happiness and brings merriment to a weary soul; it gives without expecting anything in return; love embraces all, opens eyes, lights lives, rescues people from the shackles of bondage and allows them to be free and happy. They rightly say - there are no unwanted children, just unfound families! Please open your home and heart to a child and be blessed!

http://www.adoptionindia.nic.in/