Dancing about Architecture

For some people, LOVE can be a very dangerous word and for some it might be quite an overrated one. There has never been a fixed definition of this word and many people say there never will be. Fair enough! I think everyone has his own definition of love. Like, my boss defines love as when he kicks away his pet cat at home and she still comes back to him, that is love. I ended up laughing my lungs out after listening this and a little shocked when I came back to my senses. To some extent it might be true but I don't think I will go all the way with his theory. Anyways, he has such interesting albeit a little shocking stuff to say sometimes.

I have observed recently that this word is slowly loosing its charm. It is being used very cheaply these days. I see people starting and ending their relationships based on Love. Some people who even once said they loved each other, sometime down the line declare that they are having a clean break-up. Now, with little brain that I have, I was never able to understand such scenarios. Is it really possible that if you really like and love someone, then one day you have no feelings for him/her and don't love each other. Was it really love to begin with? Is it just a kind of switch that you press on and off at will? I never understood such concepts. Moreover, I feel that these days, the society is slowly putting in a lot of pressure on people who really define and believe in the true value of love. A guy writing a poem for his love or expressing it in similar ways are sometimes looked down upon as gayish or even that the guy is such a loser. The same goes for the girl. A girl truly and deeply in love with someone is seen as unambitious and giving up his personal life for a stranger. The bad is the new good these days, I believe. Specially with the new generation TV programs which I see people liking sometimes make me redefine many things around me.

Anyways, I think I already did a lot of blabbering though I really wanted to revive some old folk love stories. I can talk of some which I am more familiar with because of my social background. Maybe there are many more and interesting ones from other cultures. Would be great if people share some. The most popular ones which I know are Heer Ranjha, Sassi Punnu, Sohni Mahiwal, Mirza Sahiba etc. But the one which had always fascinates me the most and close to my heart is Laila Majnu. The true story of virgin love which therefore also appear in a lot of Sufi poems. It is a very interesting story and I am sure many of the readers might also know it. But only a few people know that this story is originally from Arabic literature, later got its Persian version and then at end came to the subcontinent with its own version. But the basic idea and the main characters remained unchanged on their journey. Not many people also know that Laila was actually not very fair and Majnu was always teased over this aspect. And to which he always replied that people don't have the eyes to see what I see as mentioned by a poet in one of his poems:

kise keha jad majnu teri laila rang di kaali

aggon maju jhath kurlaya, akh na dekhan waali

Laila means night and Majnu means crazy though Majnu's real name was Qays. But true to the meaning of their names, Qays went crazy for Laila after he got to know that she was married to someone else. Rest we know is history. Qays died in a desert searching his love and Laila due to illness. Of course there are other versions of the story. But what hit upon me was the similarity to some extent which I saw in this Bollywood movie lately, Rockstar. The movie was okay in the sense that it left the judgement of the story totally on the audience to make at the end. That is how such a movie should be and I believe everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion. So at least speaking for myself, the movie was quite a contrast to the story I mentioned above. The only thing strange for me was that when the characters in the movie had so much feeling for each other then why did they not had the courage to end up together in the first place rather than doing it later ? In a modern day world, why would anyone end up in a loveless marriage as the girl in the film. And if for any reasons the lovers end up with different partners, why to go outside the institution of marriage later ending up in adultery. The characters in the movie doing it and people praising the story made me realize that maybe it has now become socially acceptable to take such steps.

A similarity I sometimes find in unfulfilled love stories is that the guy at the end finds resort in poetry or music. Maybe this is his way of expressing himself. Qays also wrote poems when he was lost in the desert, the character in the movie becomes a Rockstar. Another example coming to my mind right now is Shiv Kumar Batalvi, a famous poet/writer of Punjabi literature. The love of his life was married to some other guy and this guy then started writing poems which now takes an important place in Punjabi literature. From modern day life, I have a very close acquaintance who wrote a book (in 2009) about the untimely death of his fiance´ before getting married. The book turned out to be a bestseller in India. 

I might be totally wrong or naive in what I said above and maybe there is more to love than just words like madam Jolie said in the movie, 'Playing by Hearts' .... talking about love is like dancing about architecture.


P.S: I have no idea what I have written above !