Thursday, June 27, 2013

What is Love




Love is like life; once switched off nothing will bring it back. Love is “an obsessive, all-embracing passion for another person that strikes seemingly from no where and makes life a hell of uncertainty, punctuated by brief moments of ecstasy”. The urge between two people of opposite sexes is without doubt physical because it usually manifests itself on the approach to puberty. It is also often entirely a yearning of the body without any mental or emotional over tones. Both male and female pass through such a period when compulsions of the body are so explosive that they will seek their fulfillment through the most readily available persons without the slightest affection for them. This is lust not love.

Love is more subtle than lust and while lust can be fulfilled by expending the lust, love has more frustration than fulfillment. Most people fall in love with people very much like themselves. There is a strong element of narcissism in a person’s choice. It has been noticed that many couples in love resemble each other like brother and sister. But as often, a couple totally unlike each other in their physical make up is strongly drawn towards each other. This is the negative aspect of narcissism.

Love is initially stirred by physical attraction and is born in the eye. It is on the physical that the emotional and mental relationship is built. The emotional is frequently reinforced by appeals which are essentially physical. Love is not man’s quest for an idealized Helen. It is elevating a girl who is available to Hellenistic height. That is why men do not roam the world looking for the girl of their dreams but weave them around the girl next door. She is there, others are not. In love people get what they deserve. However idealized the love may become its consumption is in the act of sex.

Whoever loves, if he does not propose?
The right true end of love, he’s one that goes
To sea for nothing, but to make him sick.

The romantic edifice of love has to have sex as its foundation stone. Once that is gone love becomes something else; companionship, friendship or whatever else. The circumstance in which a couple meets each other often compels them to fall in love. The same couple in a different setting might not even notice each other.

A man in an excitable state is amore prone to fall in love than when he is calm and placid. Apparently, excitement causes chemical changes in his blood and brain vessels which make him more receptive to emotional stimuli. High altitude brings about similar effects. Hence there is high incidence of marriage between air hostesses and passengers.

Speaking from personal experience I can say that all this theorizing about love is hog wash. People fall in and out of love all the time in all kinds of places and make the most impossible combinations. There is nothing exclusive about love because people can be in love with varying of intensity with many people at the same time. I do not know if other people suffer anguish. When they are rejected; I have an exhilarant sense of release.
There was young man who was famed among
The lovers, and was for his deeds renowned.
His name was momin, faith idolatry,
The worship of idols being his sole concern,
No thoughts he gave to world of religion,
But cared for lovely ladies charm alone
He spent his time in leisure, love and joy.
Lost in life’s pleasure night and day
Foe ever happy, gay and drunk on hope,
For even smiling like an open bud;
Green like the flask of wine laughing when
The sparking liquid is poured into the cup

                                                    ----Momin (d.1851)
I am a lover of breast
Like pomegranates;
Plant them no other tress
On my grave but these
                                          ---- Lucknowi, Nasikh

Whenever a bubble
By another bubble rose         
I thought of her brassiere
Of finest gauze.
                                     ----- Atish

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