Saturday, April 1, 2017

on absence, love and relationships


contd......

She had written or should I say scribbled "Love is noticing someone's absence and hating that absence more than anything - more even than their presence". This paper itself looked very old and dull - must be years before she had written it and I had collected it. I am sure I don't remember reading this line ever! Even if I had I am sure I didn't understand it then...

"Understanding happens only at the level of words without experience to fall back on" she had said it so many times and I would wonder "Why does she say it so often? I am able to understand it even now!". But as many times, I was wrong even then. I hadn't understood. That I understood years later. What I thought I understood was no understanding from any angle. Now it all seemed to fall in place. But then....

May be age wasn't something that let me understand about 'love' though at that age that was the word most used and assumed to have been felt often! Now it took a totally different meaning. I saw what she meant. 

May be we had to live, experience and contemplate on various shades of relationships to actually get to know love. Now love wasn't just something that happened between two youngsters who wanted to get married with each other. It didn't have to have physical aspect to it. May be we had to cross the threshold of parenthood to know that! Even my pet taught me that! 

I didn't have to name my relationship with my pet. I didn't have to expect anything from it. I didn't have to prove my love or assert it to the world ...it just was and we both knew it. That was enough to seal our relationship. No conditions, no expectations and no heartbreaks. I understood a new dimension of love through this relationship.

Likewise, each of my relationships gave me much needed shocks, cushion, support and twists to understand that 'love' was ever flowing river that knew no bounds and that could envelop lots of people in its fold. 

contd.....

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