Love Unbound: The Politics And Poetry Of Loving

What is love? We often ask ourselves this question. Is it a fog of emotions, a trembling maybe, a word too small for what it tries to hold?

Love is a mirror that opens into another world. Suddenly, you begin seeing yourself, yet unexplored. You whisper in surprise, “I never knew I could feel this strongly.” There is a honeymoon glow, soft and golden. And then, the thump of reality. You wonder whether what you felt was merely a heightened pitch of longing, or the deeper sense of becoming one.

“I loved him more than he loved me.” But who decides what is more and what is less? Love does not obey mathematics. If there were a scale to measure it, what would it weigh, the effort, the restraint, the admiration? The way the world can fall apart and yet you remain ready to stretch your beliefs for one person?

Perhaps what makes someone special is not perfection, but the desire for an alter self, someone who witnesses your life so fully that even the thought of resting beside you in the graveyard feels less like fear and more like faith. Too poetic for ordinary days, perhaps. Yet devotion has always carried this intensity.

The Bhakti poets called it surrender. The Sufis called it annihilation of the self. Like Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and Amir Khusrau, a bond beyond possession, beyond names. Or the fire between Rumi and Shams Tabrizi, where love was not romance but transformation.

Love remains an unresolved question, no matter how many centuries attempt to answer it. In a reflective Valentine’s Day special edition of Outlook exploring this very uncertainty, the question of love is revisited with nuance, intensity and introspection, Arundhati Subramaniam writes that Bhakti poetry is not dewy eyed infatuation. It is a scorching, all consuming desire that cauterises, purifies and eventually illuminates every crevice of human consciousness. This is not the softness of roses. It is fire. It is surrender that strips the ego bare.

Through another lens, Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, in his reflections who writes on romance and revolution reminds us that from the mid nineteenth century, socialist and communist ideals swept through Europe and America carrying radical ideas not only about labour and ownership but also about love and sex. Love was no longer merely private emotion. It became political, ideological, even revolutionary. The personal was never just personal. Ashutosh Salil pens the Beloved Books And Driftwood Art: Of Wills And Wishes. We read about a world that two lovers conjure together in 'Songs Of Love And Longing' translated by Meena Kandsamy

Between devotion and revolution, where does that leave us?

Our ambition to seek love somewhere keeps us searching for the one who fits, as if the heart were a shoe and destiny its measured size. We are taught to look for the right person, as though compatibility were a fixed formula handed down by family, culture or society. But perhaps that is too simple, or too rigid and too convenient.

And then there are loves that remain without demand. Amrita Pritam and Imroz, a companionship so expansive it made space even for her unspoken attachment to Sahir Ludhianvi. What kind of love smiles at another’s memory and still stays? A love secure enough not to compete.

And what of Radha’s devotion to Krishna, a love without marriage, without possession, yet infinite in surrender?

Chinki Sinha says A will is a love letter. An answer to all those questions.

For let the grave decide what you leave behind and what you choose to release first.

Here are the ashes I will let go of, but let my belonging, my essence, hold on to the one I love.