"Living Love" - what it means to love and be loved!

Yes, I remember the first time we talked. I was angry at him, and we talked about God. He had said something about a quality of mine that I never stopped reminding him for the rest of our life. Never you mind—you shouldn’t know that much. Just know that it was love. When we talked, love talked; love talked to us, and we talked to love. And we talked about love, and he’d tell me always that he did not believe in it; love was not for intelligent people, he’d say. Only I, of the billions of women in the world, had the honor to tell him, “You think you’re all that, but you’re not. Come down to earth. You’re worth no more than I am, and I believe in love.”

I remember, too, the first time he held my hand in his. I remember the warmth, the scent, the love, the respect. He said he could read palms, and so he took mine to pretend to read it. I knew he was lying. But it was the right thing to do with him—only with him. It took him several weeks to realize I could read his mind, because his mind was mine and mine was his and we were one, so he didn’t have to lie. Oh but how he lied! It was no Bollywood movie. I wanted him to hold it forever, and he did. He is still holding it.

I was not devastated when my parents wanted me to marry other men, all except the one to whom God had promised me since long before eternity ever began. I knew I was his—always was and always would be. I told him about each proposal that came for me, and, for the next five years, six months, and two weeks, he begged my parents for my hand. I never spoke up because I never had to. Five years later, my parents finally abandoned the idea of pressuring me to marry other men, and they accepted the one whom I could call my god and who could call me his goddess, the one who had blown breath into an empty soul—rather, into a soul that did not exist before his advent.

We had a beautiful wedding. I had specifically requested to have him by my side during the ceremony, but my parents said that was unacceptable because such blasphemy is prohibited in our culture. They would not make him and me an exception to the traditional rule that men and women were not to mingle. I acquiesced that time. The moment the ceremony was over and people were gone, I knew there would come no more days for us to be without each other. Even on those days and nights I was to spend away from him, I was with him and he was with me.

Yes. It was love. I loved him, and he loved me. We were one, and we made sure there was no empty space between us. All space was to be occupied by love, desire, passion. And that passion, it never died. It is still there. When I close my eyes, all I see is him and the undying passion between us. You can’t have love without passion, for passion is both the mother and the daughter of love. How can there be one without the other?

When I had him, I had everything. You know all these folks who talk about heaven and hell? Ahh, they don’t know what heaven and hell are! Hell is but the emptiness of a mind, the emptiness in the heart and in the soul. And heaven—heaven is the love of a beloved. It never begins anywhere, it never ends anywhere; it is eternal, and it is precious. Even now, with him gone, I feel his love; I don’t feel his absence. There is certain tranquility that comes with love. There’s satisfaction and happiness, and when either of these is missing, there’s no love. This ease, this comfort is so powerful that even when he’d be away from me, I wouldn’t feel any pain. That comfort allowed me to rest. People don’t know what love is, people who write about the discomfort, the hurt, the losses that come with love. No, love must not be like that. People ask who makes the “first move.” What is the “first move”? I never understood. In love, no one makes the “first move”; it is made on behalf of you. People say, “No, silly, don’t share everything with him! You’ll regret it.” But why not? I never regretted any of it. Really, they had no sense of love in them. They did not know what love was and what it felt like to love someone and be someone’s beloved if they really lived with such an affected thought. What is love if there’s fear from the beloved? What is love if there’s unrest in either soul? There is this divine connection between two beloveds. It can be felt only by the two and no others.

We often fought over who would cook the food and who’d clean the house. He hated both as much as I did. So we decided to hire a cook and a cleaning person. Then we fought over whether they would be male or female. He wanted females only: “Hell, if everything was in my control, I’d make sure there were no males in this entire city to see you, let alone in our house!” he once said. I loved the possessiveness, and so I did everything I could to instigate such marvelous comments from him. I asked him if he thought I would approve of a female cook in our house, and he said, “Yes, of course,” as if it was the most obvious choice. We later mutually agreed to hire females only.

I loved his voice. It made me crazy. I made him equally crazy with mine, too. I’d read our letters and emails, our favorite poems and song lyrics, our favorite books to him out loud, even if sitting next to him, and he’d read out loud to me. It was the magical spell of love, and it was between me and him only. Many things—rather, everything—was between me and him. And his laughter! It was blissful; it was the clinking of peace around us, music from heaven sent only toward me so that when he laughed, God laughed.

Before he went away, he would hold my hands in his when we’d walk down the stairs; he’d hold my hands when we walked anywhere. I never let anyone else take care of me—he was my everything, and he was more than enough for me; with him, I was fully taken care of. I never let anyone else take care of him, either. The last time he laughed while remembering a joke a woman had once told him, I didn’t talk to him for a whole hour. Really, was it necessary for him to remember that the joke he was telling me had been told to him by a female? My silence devastated him. It was the worst punishment I could inflict upon him, my silence of an hour. He never did the same to me, and I always loved him for that. But we knew we both enjoyed when I’d torture him. It was love. Still, some of our best conversations took place during our fights: we spoke of eternity, of love, of God, of people. The last discussion we had while I was enraged at him was about pain, when I asked him why an all-powerful God could not think of a more comfortable way to pain fertile women. Other times, I’d teach him how to love me, although he refused to learn and wanted to love me his own way, which was exhilarating. I would sing to him a song I’d created myself and he’d perfected. It went like, Zama janan la da meene chal na warzee. (Translation: “My beloved does not know how to love me.”)

To be continued...

- Oct. 5^th 2010