A LOVE OR AN INFATUATION?
July 14, 2009
Hi Ash,
You know,
recently I was thinking about my past life. The kind of person that I had been,
I never believed in love. For most of my life I considered love to be a fool’s
dealing. I laughed at people who did stupid things in love. I always wondered
how can a person be so naïve so that he becomes ready to commit his whole life
to just a single person. Never did I believe in love, nor did I had the
slightest idea that one day I will be the prey of its darts. Now I know what a
fool I had been. To assume that I will not fall in love. To think that I was
above these petty emotions. It was a stupid notion. Who knew that of all
feelings, love is the most powerful? To challenge love was to challenge Nature
itself. And how can one win against Nature?
But I swear,
loving you has not been an easy job for me. Only I know how much pain I bear
each day since I have loved you. The pain – it sometimes becomes so agonizing.
Each day I look at you with a sole thought in my heart, “Does Ash feel anything
at all?” and one and only prayer on my lips, “Please read my heart through my
eyes.” The day I loved you, I realized - to love is not so easy. Because love
is not just about liking someone. It is mostly sustaining that like.
It’s very easy
to fall for something or someone. We feel attracted to many things in our life.
We like them. We adore them. But with the passage of time the intensity of our
liking diminishes. We get engaged into new things. A little later, we
completely forget about the previous thing. That’s the normal course of our
likes.
But love –
it’s different. When we love someone, we love them inspite of all their limitations & weaknesses. Maybe we are two completely different people,
maybe our thoughts do not match, maybe my expectations & your efforts do
not match, but we will never stop liking each other. We will always be fond of
each other. Because we love each other. Isn’t it, Ash?
So, you may
ask – Do I like you or I love you? To speak the truth, I don’t know. I don’t
know how to differentiate between the two. How do I tell them apart? If it’s
only the duration that we have to consider, then perhaps I have sustained my
like long enough so as to promote it to love. What should I say? I think about
you day & night. I see you in my dreams; some of them I do see with my eyes
open. My heart leaps every time I see you smile. Every pore of my body radiates
an ecstasy unparalleled, when your eyes meet mine. If this is not love, then I
don’t know what is.
Long ago, I
had heard a charming Chinese folktale. It’s about a young & pretty damsel
who falls in love with a ghost who is always in a coat. Every night they meet
in the woods, where they talk for hours until the Eastern horizon is painted in
the hues of red & gray. They play in the sparkling waters of the spring and
swing in the branches of the stooping trees. They sing and dance & the
whole nature joins in with them. Thus the slothful days of warm summer &
leafless autumn pass away quickly to usher in the cold winter. And then there
is a snowfall so heavy that the lovers are unable to meet for many consecutive
days. Feeling restless, the damsel scuttles out to meet her lover one day,
forgetting to take any warm clothes with her. Shivering with cold, she reaches
her lover who is waiting for her in the same coat under the same sycamore on
whose branches they swung in the summers. The ghost looks at his love – her
lips blue & her eyes closing. And without any second thoughts, he wraps the
damsel in his coat. A smile plays on her lips. But soon it grows fainter. Because
before her eyes, her lover slowly fades away into the air. For oblivious to her
was the verity that her lover, the ghost, was under the curse to depart from
the confines of this world on the touch of snow – the reason he always wore a
coat. The apparition fades with the final goodbye, exchanging his existence for
her – giving her a new life forever. And the nature sings an elegy in honour of
the ill-fated lovers whose love was doomed from the beginning.
I don’t know
why but this tale touched my heart. It’s a simple story. But still it’s so
poignant, that I can’t help remembering it. For it tells that even in death we
can find meaning. Someday, I wish even I would cover you with my coat. Perhaps
that’ll be my ultimate ode to you. And perhaps that’ll depict whether I like
you or love you.
With Love,
Forever Yours,
Ascetic Wanderer
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