Love : what’s true and what isn’t?

 “ The one who is in love always wins. It doesn’t matter if the heart is broken; you are living, and if you are feeling, you are alive. You know, the sun doesn’t care whether the grass appreciates its rays, right? It just keeps on shining. That’s you.”

~Ethan Hawke’s relationship advice on unrequited love.

I came across this quote by this man who is recognized as an actor in Hollywood. His words brought to mind an old song by the Hindi/ Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianvi. The song was picturized on Shubha Khote and Sunil Dutt in the movie Didi released in 1959.

The lady here is deeply in love with the man. The man’s priorities are different. His focus is on helping the world. There is a tinge of sadness in her heart about the apparent unrequited love. But she comes to term with this reality in her own way.

तुम मुझे भूल भी जाओ तो ये हक़ है तुमको
मेरी बात और है मैने तो मोहब्बत की है
तुम मुझे भूल भी जाओ तो ये हक़ है तुमको

If you choose to forget me, you have the right to do so. It’s a different matter for me, since I have loved you. 

मेरे दिल की मेरे जज़्बात की कीमत क्या है
उलझे उलझे से ख्यालात की कीमत क्या है
मैने क्यू प्यार किया तुमने ना क्यू प्यार किया
इन परेशान सवालात की कीमत क्या है
तुम जो ये भी ना बताओ तो ये हक़ है तुमको
मेरी बात और है मैने तो मोहब्बत की है
तुम मुझे भूल भी जाओ तो ये हक़ है तुमको

What is the worth of my heart and my feelings? What is the worth of complicated thoughts? Why I loved and you didn’t love the same way? What’s the value of such worrisome questions? If you choose not to answer these questions, you have the right to do so. It’s a different matter for me, since I have loved you. 

ज़िंदगी सिर्फ़ मोहब्बत नही कुच्छ और भी है
ज़ुलफ ओ रुकसर की जन्नत नही कुछ और भी है
भूख और प्यास की मारी हुई इस दुनिया मे
इश्क़ ही एक हक़ीकत नही कुछ और भी है
तुम अगर आँख चुराओ तो ये हक़ है तुमको
मैने तुमसे ही नही सबसे मोहब्बत की है
तुम अगर आँख चुराओ तो ये हक़ है तुमको

The man’s thoughts are expressed in this next stanza. Life is more than simply falling in love with someone. It is more than finding heaven in the beauty( hair and pretty face) of someone. In this world riddled with hunger and thirst, romantic love is not the only reality. There is more to it. If you want to shy away from reality, it is your choice. I love all, not just you. If you cannot accept this fact, it is your choice to make. 

तुमको दुनिया के गम ओ दर्द से फुरसत ना सही
सबसे उलफत सही मुझसे ही मोहब्बत ना सही
में तुम्हारी हूँ यही मेरे लिए क्या कम है
तुम मेरे होके रहो ये मेरी क़िस्मत ना सही
और भी दिल को जलाओ ये हक़ है तुमको
मेरी बात और है मैने तो मोहब्बत की है
तुम मुझे भूल भी जाओ तो ये हक़ है तुमको

You may not find time( for me) out of your concerns about the sorrows and sufferings of the world. I may not be the sole recipient of your affection. I have given my heart to you, I should consider that plenty for me. It may not be my fortune that you consider your heart to belong to me. If you bring me more grief than I already have, you have the right to do so. It is a different matter for me, since I have loved you. 

It seems like an interesting situation. Both people seem to harbor affection towards each other. But their priorities are not the same. One thinks with purely the heart, the other with the brain and heart. Yet each one is selfless in their own way. Not sure who may feel more pain when their paths diverge. 

दोन ओंडक्याची होते सागरात भेट, एक लाट तोडी दोघा पुन्हा नाही गाठ. पराधीन आहे जगती पुत्र मानवाचा! 

I am reminded of these lines from Geet Ramayan by poet Ga Di Madgulkar. Bharat has come to the forest with the news of their father’s passing and the hopes that he may convince Ram to return home and take over the throne that was unfairly taken away from him. Ram, the wise one, tries to make Bharat see the bigger picture. There are several things that control each person’s destiny. Two people temporarily come together by a stroke of luck. Like two logs of wood bumping into each other in the ocean. The next big wave comes out of nowhere and pulls them apart in a way that they never again get to see each other. 

Ram was an evolved being who could love everyone yet contain himself from attachments. Bharat was a devoted brother who didn’t care about the kingdom or personal pleasures. But he was attached to his brother. His brother was his life and God. His whole world revolved around Ram. Ram was trying to make him see beyond personal attachment. To have a higher ideal of truth. While Ram in his steady wisdom was able to digest the loss of his dear father, Bharat struggled to live without his brother.

"पोथी पढ़ि पढ़ि जग मुआ, पंडित भया न कोय, ढाई आखर प्रेम का, पढ़े सो पंडित होय"

In this famous couplet(doha) Sant Kabir speaks a profound truth. There are a lot of learned people who have studied vast literature and several scriptures in a bid to gain the highest wisdom. Yet this wisdom remains elusive. Such seemingly unattainable wisdom reveals itself readily to the mind that understands what love is. 

Prem in Hindi is what Love is in English. Kabir cleverly compares the length of this small word with only 2 and half syllables to pages and pages of scriptural texts and gives it more value. Speaking in English one could say, a four letter word called Love, when understood deeply, can reveal God to anyone, much better than any holy text.

Those who know, know!

It’s all about surrendering yourself. To love something or someone is to become a slave to that person or ideal or value. When love reaches the highest intensity the mind cannot bear to survive apart from its object of love. It seeks to merge and become one. And become one irreversibly! 

Such a thing is impossible when you identify yourself as the physical body. You cannot merge with another even at the intellectual level. As long as your separate identity remains whether at body, mind or intellectual level, you cannot merge irreversibly with another individual. This is a fact that cannot be negated. 

Love and happiness are very primitive human needs that connect one to the core of their existence. Being able to love someone truly and deeply is a huge huge blessing. It has the potential to reach that core if you go deep to find the truth. Alas not many people are willing to lose themselves entirely. Either they are not ready to give their physical existence, or intellectual freedom or commit their emotions completely and unconditionally. Whether it is a human you love or a stone idol of God, the core is the same. The essence is the same within you and anything else in the universe. If you can love that core with such intensity that you are prepared to truthfully give up all sheaths of your existence for that core, you will have won the lottery of all lifetimes. People give their lives for someone in ignorance, thinking that the person they love is the shape and form they have known or the form plus the thinking. Nope. That’s not their core. When you come to know their core, you will know your own core. And if your love for them is so strong that you cannot live without them, you will give up your identification with your outer sheaths, including your thinking and merge with the core of your being to become irreversibly one with the one you love. 

If you want to love, love all the way. 

I have realized that our core is like the ocean. Our  individual self is like salt, crystallized out of that ocean. Someone is like rock salt, another is coarse ground salt, a third person medium grain salt, another fine grain salt, someone is iodinated salt, someone pink salt…..as many different people as can come out of the infinite ocean. Not one is like another.  One wise one, say the pink salt, realizes that the ocean is the parent body, starts loving it and yearns to get closer to it.The ocean welcomes its child lovingly. And guess what, that child and the parent become inseparable in every sense. The rock salt loves the pink salt deeply and wants to follow it. But when it sees what happened to it when it went too close to the ocean, it is scared to let go its own individual existence. And decides that the ocean is not for it. It can never meet the pink salt because now the pink salt is the ocean. And the ocean scares away the rock salt. 

All the saints have jumped into the ocean. If you dare to take a dip, you must love the ocean more than you love yourself. 

The journey of salt is not easy. It is dried out of the ocean waters, laid out in the scorching sun for days, then packed into bags and carried on mules in India, may be a bit more comfortable modes of transportation elsewhere, then processed through machinery, mixed with chemicals, again repackaged in different containers, sold in the market, picked by some customer, taken home, added to cold and hot foods or used for dirty jobs. In the long journey, no fellow-salt-grain remains steadily in its company. Each grain has its own destiny. The lifecycle is long, lonely and unpredictable. Who knows when it may return to the ocean? 

Anyways. 

Whether you are the rock salt or pink salt or iodinated salt or whatever, that is whether you trace your origin through mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry or spirituality, you will arrive at the ocean. At that point you will have to make the choice, whether to stay back as the salt or jump in and become the ocean. 

The ocean neither calls you nor abandons you if you go to meet it. It takes you in if you seek to become one with it. Choice is always yours. 

It is like the sun that Ethan Hawke is talking about. It doesn’t care if the grass is appreciating its rays. It keeps shining.

Or it is like the woman in Ludhianvi’s poetry. She will go on loving whether her man makes her his priority or not. It is also like the man in Ludhianvi’s poetry whose love is not simply on a single physical human body, it is for the larger universe.

It is Love that Kabir is talking about. It is what brought Bharat to the forest to beg Ram to come back home. It is also what Ram is practicing towards his father, mother, Bharat and everyone, including himself. It is there. Whether you feel it and know it or not. You will become it when you know it. Then you will not need anything in return.