A short dissertation on love

Over dinner a few days ago at a friend’s place one of the guests asked ‘What is the most powerful emotion?’ Of course there were several responses but the most common answer was ‘Love’.

For some of the people who responded with love, love was the not the initial response. Even for those whose first choice was love did not seem completely convinced with their choice. When probed each had quite varied justifications for their vote – love makes people do silly things, do insane things, love makes people violent etc.

Personally I have always shied away from expressing love; both in the quality of the expression and in terms of quantity. As a writer, of limited ability and even more limited experience I have attempted to write about love, in a voice which is both commonplace and bland. But on the other hand I have often got goose bumps when I see films in which love has been captured and portrayed with conviction, strength and form. I have not been able to explain this to myself. And this article is not about trying to seek one either.

Last weekend the world celebrated ‘Valentine’s Day.’ And there was pink, red, chocolate, strawberry and roses all over. A lot of us feel these celebrations are completely over the top and largely a marketing enterprise. While the message of the day of love between individuals across gender and age groups is completely lost, one simply wonders why people who actually want to express their love wait for that one day in the year to do so. As for me, I am strictly of the waiting type, and have a couple of times in the past been faced with situations where I was too late.

But more important than the day of celebrating love, last weekend was also the tragic witness to another indiscriminate bombing, by suspected terrorists and one more well planned merciless attack by Maoists.

I guess that is why love has been voted as the most powerful of emotions. Well both groups – the terrorists and Maoists – would with alacrity claim that their acts are mere expressions of their respective love for their beliefs. They may have remorse and regret, but that will not deter them from carrying out such missions in the future in the name of love.

Against this backdrop I happened to watch Ang Lee’s film ‘Taking Woodstock’, a film inspired by the true story of how youth, music, grass and acid bring about love and peace. And I was touched. It’s amazing how such common place ingredients can come together and diffuse the powerful machinery of government and war. And it makes me wonder, ‘Do we need another Woodstock?’

I’d like to close this piece with a wonderful couplet I read by Rumi.

“Your task is not to seek for love,
But merely to see and find all barriers within yourself that you have built against it”