LOVE?

Ever wondered what Love actually is, I don’t mean love that a parent has for their child because that is the only true unrequited love. I don’t even consider love the other way around, no child can ever love their parents as much as they love them. I am talking about love that we see in the movies, love that is projected on television and love that is between a man and a woman, That Love.

Oxford dictionary defines it as ‘A strong feeling of affection’, Affection as ‘A gentle feeling of fondness’ and Fondness as ‘Affection or liking someone or something’, this convoluted way of explaining a human emotion tells me that even these linguist haven’t been able to define it clearly.  

We all know that these definitions seem incomplete. Every one of us has had many crushes and loves. Most of us have felt the agony and the pain of losing it and those who haven’t, are blessed. 

I was confronted with this question sitting on LIRR going towards Manhattan. There was a couple, mid 20s, economically challenged if not poor but madly in love. They were standing just outside the carriage door and hugging, kissing and not letting each other go.  As and when people passed by them to come into the coach they just smiled and gave them a little space. They never came inside. But a lady who was sitting next to me on the first seat was staring at them with a look of amusement. She must be in her mid 40s, a big diamond was telling me that not only she was married but she looked a part of the Long Island community. Well dressed with a designer bag in her hand she was quite a sight. Here, I am thinking that the Gatsby era might have long gone but Long Island still hosts people who are financially secure. Though, the egalitarianism of New York public transport puts a variety of individuals in close proximity like this person next to me and the folks she was staring so intently. The staring was very unlike New York, I thought.

Suddenly she turns to me even when I am faking my deep engrossment in the book that I am carrying, says, “They look happy.”   

I felt relieved; I can now have a conversation instead of staring at her from the corner of my eye. I raised my head to look at them and nodded in affirmation. 

Her next question was baffling in a way but explained me a lot more than those words, “Do you think it will last?” I was puzzled. 

This time I looked at the couple with more intensity as if to see if I can find clues to answer that question. I honestly couldn’t, I wanted to believe that it would last but I knew that the world is a much harsher place than we tend to accept. 

I still didn’t speak, just shrugged my shoulder as if to say, ‘Sorry, tough question, do not know the answer.’ She smiled with an air of uncertainty, as if she was about to say something, then she paused for a few seconds and spoke again, “We were like this, me and my husband, just out of college, madly in love and got married right out of the university, moved to New York. Now I have a family, my daughter will be college in a few years and everything I imagined my life would be when I was young. But no love left.”

Now I felt sad for her, had more insight into that staring, that desire to talk to someone, that pang of jealousy that she might have felt towards that girl and above all that feeling of life passing without much ado. The rest of the journey was a blur, we didn’t even realise when our couple had gotten off as I was busy exchanging trivial pleasantries of my life with my sad but charming fellow passenger. Getting off at the Penn station we merged into Manhattan.   

But the story didn’t die there, it was at the back of my mind and when I asked myself, ‘What is love?’, the first thing that came to my mind wasn’t someone that I love or I had loved and neither a story from my own life but something that I had observed a long time ago. Why, did that incident, an incident which I had forgotten percolated through the maze of my memory and popped up is a question, whose answer,  no one would ever know. But my guess is that I associate Love with this episode.          

It was late 1980’s, for some reason that world seems far removed when I look back, almost like a dream and as if it really didn’t happen. The air in India was of restlessness. I really can’t place a date so I am not sure if Rajiv Gandhi was still the prime minister or V.P. Singh had already ascended on an anti corruption movement. However, the ground reality was, economy was as stifled as its people, I am not even sure that which was lower the growth rate of the country or the expectation of the public.

You were feeling, ‘Something’s Gotta Give’.

I was in my early teens, Steffi Graf and Gabriela Sabatini posters were already up on my walls. I had my crushes and had started to understand that most pleasurable of sins. Though we lived in MHOW but on that day I was with my father at the Bhopal railway station.

The railways are a lifeline of India, they still are. Its stations were a microcosm of India and the face of that city. From language to cuisine to magazine shops gave us the picture of where in the country we were and yet it bounded us together. They also brought in a lot of poverty; most shanty towns were built around them. As you travel across India you realise that poor people tend to live close to these railway tracks. The Bhopal station also had its share of homeless and beggars.

Like everything else poverty in India is also Grand. I am not talking about the western view of our slums but the hard fact of coping up with the humongous population which tries to survive on one meal a day. Poverty in India also has many layers, a poor is not just a poor. He or she is poor with many shades of grey. One of the great quotes that I had read somewhere came from Premchand, the great Urdu/Hindi writer. He had written, ‘That year they became so poor that even beggars started to go empty handed from their door.’ That’s India for you, where sometimes it is more humiliating not to be able to give alms to a beggar than begging itself.

The Bhopal Junction station is situated in a poor neighbourhood of Old Bhopal, it seemed quite far when I was young.  Though like most stations there are two sides for you to enter but we always used the old Bhopal area through the Hamidia Road. The entrance to the station is actually very narrow and though Bhopal had autos since the time I can remember but mostly this alley was used by ‘Tongawallas’, a tonga is single horse driven carriage, which has become a rarity now. There were lots of small shops on one side and the 10 ft. high iron fence on the other. This was to bifurcate the road to the station. This is the kind of iron fence that symbolizes railway stations across India. In those days the road wasn’t wide, must be around 20 ft at the mouth. As you came in it turned narrower and then  turned into a paved platform before you could enter the main gate of the station. The shops on the other side sold all kinds of trinkets, from lock & chains to samosas, from soap strips to paan.

It was dusk, how do I know? It’s because in those days I suffered from a weird melancholy at this hour. It was much much later when I was in the US I realised that it was because of lack of brightness in our evening lights. Our electrical lights barely used to glow, they brightened enough for us to see, but actually never enough for us to be happy, we had to wait for the Sun to rise the next day for that. As each of these shops started to turn on their lights with old style incandescent bulbs, instead of things becoming brighter they became sadder.   

On this platform I was standing leaning against the same iron fence, with the train platform right behind me, I could peek inside and see that there was no train on the platform. Daddy had gone inside for some work, I can’t recollect what was it, did we go to buy some tickets or to pick someone up but I was left outside just to hang around. Everything around me seemed dull the platform was empty, there was no train at the platform and the way things looked there was none that was scheduled to come. Most stations become quiet and dull and then crescendo of people and noise picks up to a very high crest from this low trough when a train arrives. It's a sight to behold, you can't imagine from where have these people suddenly turned up.

I was standing amongst a few homeless people. Most of them sitting with their back to the station and carrying all their stuff. You can clearly identify them as compared to the passengers who were temporarily using this platform as their refuge. I hadn’t seen her yet or even if I did I was paying no attention to her.

He was the one I observed first, coming across from the other side he walked with caution. It seemed he was coming right at me but his eyes were somewhere else. Though he didn’t give any negative vibe I didn’t like him. He looked poor but not as poor. He was clean and but not clean enough. Wearing a shirt and trouser, they were clean too but not as if they had been washed and ironed the same day. However, I knew he was underprivileged, but surely better off than all the homeless around me. I thought, he looked in his mid 20s, not young but not old either. He wasn’t wearing any kind of porter's uniform so I assumed that he didn’t work in the station, though it was clear that his livelihood was dependent on the Station.

He came right at me and even before I could get alarmed he sat down right next to me, almost squatting. This is when I observed her for the first time. She was sitting right next to where I was standing. She must have been around 18 to 20 years old. She was surely poorest of the poor, really at the bottom of that grey scale. She was haggard and unclean, her clothes were dirty and her hair matted and tangled. Her face was dirty and dry. Yet, she was charming. You could make out she was good looking and had a twinkle in her eye as if to say ‘I still have not been beaten by this life’. She sat there with all her belongings, but I could make out that she had family around.

As soon as this guy sat in front of her I was alarmed, I wanted to save her, somehow I felt he didn’t mean right or was it because I had found her attractive enough. Don’t know but I felt uncomfortable.

He spoke to her, “Tu mujhe bahut achchi lagti hai.” (“I like you a lot”)

She looked at him and smiled.

I became more comfortable now. Maybe it was the tone of his voice or maybe what he said, I felt like he really liked her.          

He looked at her again, looked intently and said, “Mujhe se shadi kar le” (“Marry me”)

She still didn’t say anything, she just lowered her eyes, I could tell there was a feeling of admiration in what he had said.

He repeated it again, “Mujhe se shadi kar le” (“Marry me”)

He waited for a few seconds for her to respond, and when she didn’t he spoke again, “Dekh, tu mujhe sach mein bahut achchi lagti hai, mujhe se shadi kar le to main yahan basti mein qamra le loonga, mere ghar bana de” (“See, I really like you, marry me, if you will marry me, I will take a room in this area, make me a home”). 

He was pointing towards the slum at the back of the railway station. She looked up as if she likes what she is hearing but she still didn’t say anything. However, her smile was a little wider with appreciation.

He felt a bit better I guess and then he said which has made this narration possible, it has stuck with me for all these years. He looked at her again and said, “Hum qamra le lenge to tujhe yahan nahin rahna padega, mujhe bilkul achcha nahin lagta ki tujhe yahan rahna padta hai, yahan sona padta hai.”  (“If we take a room you don’t have to live here, I don’t like it that you have to live here and sleep here.”)

That made sad and happy at the same time. There was a pang in my heart then and there is a twinge in my heart now. That was it, I actually do not remember what happened after that, I don’t know if I walked away or Daddy came by, I don’t know if she ever said ‘Yes’ to the guy. I don’t even know if religion came between them because it was obvious to me that she wasn’t of the majority religion as he was, but my guess is that is not why she would have refused. It didn’t matter to her when she looked at him.

Though I want to believe that she agreed, he found a room and a job, they had children which grew up in a better environment than their parents. They would be around 20 years old, and they would grow up in a different India. They would live where days are bright and evenings brighter, where the hope for a successful future is still alive, and the young India which could be brash but has the confidence to take on the world.   

But above all I want to hope that they would inherit the guy’s charm & empathy and the girl’s grit & perkiness.