“Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar, jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar” (Love is like a river that runs against the current. Whoever steps into it, thinking to stay afloat, is swept away and drowned. And yet, the one who truly drowns is the one who reaches the far shore)
Today is Valentine’s Day. The day of pink colours, teddies, greeting cards, fancy chocolates, and redolent notions of operatic love. Days like Valentine's are based on the notion that love is a destination. That it arrives organically, settles after some conflict, and then stays deterministically. There is an implicit belief that in relationships, endings are not messy and beginnings are cinematically serendipitous. Valentine’s Day assumes resolution and celebrates love that has arrived somewhere – with certainty and public recognition.
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But what about the love that defines the modern era: unnamed, unresolved, quietly endured, and which finally disappears without ever becoming official enough to be mourned. For most of us, love ends neither in union nor separation but in flailing suspension. That is why it would not be remiss to say that we live, increasingly, in the age of almost.
The Talking Stage: Intimacy Without Stakes
“Kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahaan nahin milta, kahin zameen to kahin aasmaan nahin milta” (No one is given everything. Love always withholds just enough, so even in fullness, something still aches)
Modern love begins without ceremony or pomp. There is no proposal, no intention that is declared. Just conversation. Long, thoughtful, deceptively intimate conversation.
Two people start talking, often after a chance meeting, sometimes after nothing more than mutual curiosity. Messages stretch past midnight. Calls lengthen. There is a gradual exchange of interior worlds: hopes, disappointments, ambitions, anxieties.
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