LOVE... Is of all Kinds...

LOVE. I have always felt the power of this word, strong enough to linger in the air all day. Everyday. Thinking about that person gives us the flutter in our stomachs, that warm feeling in our hearts, a smile on our faces, a shine in our eyes, a bounce in our walks. It makes the day seem all the more bright... Love is an everlasting charming season, following its own course. It is that immortal song we want to hum, all the time. It gives us a reason to wake up in the morning, looking forward to unfolding the day. That rush we feel when we get a glimpse of the one we love or when we hear their voice. That elation we feel when we know they are around us, or catch them glancing our way, trying to catch our eye. We cherish the moments we spend with them and desire to have more time to create many such memories to last a lifetime.

Doesn’t all this sound familiar? To me, it sounds like the befitting description of our ‘Love for our Partner’. Let’s be honest we all have felt something like this, for someone, at some point in time, in our own lives! I mean, c’mon! It isn’t that love needs a specific timeline to blossom, yet only ‘February is celebrated as the month of Love’, making it feel just right to talk about it today. For in this month we see love being celebrated all around us in full fervor! Think about this. When we see a couple holding hands, walking on the road – clearly unaware of all the other scowling and staring eyes – don’t we just smile or glare at them for their ‘public display of affection’, label it as Love and leave it at that? Somehow February legitimises such expressions of this emotion all the more. Would you agree?

Love, like any other emotion, is a divine gift for me. A feeling born in our hearts out of our trust and respect for someone. For that friend who we can always call when we run into trouble. For that colleague who embraces us without asking another question when we share our pain with him. Or that neighbour who you can count on, even if it is midnight. Then how does this wonderful emotion become disgusting for us to endure? When does this beautiful feeling become ugly in our minds? What makes this virtue transform into a crime in our opinions?

Here’s a revelation for us to consider. The expression of love I described earlier, is relatable for a homosexual couple as equally as a heterosexual couple. That’s because, irrespective of their gender orientation, either partner in any relationship feels the emotion of Love with the same intensity as the other. The obvious logic! They are, first and foremost, Human Beings! Why does this fact elude us when we are pushing the homosexual men and women into cages of social rules, created out of our generalised biased opinions? When some of us are unable to relate with their relationship, why should the relationship lose its identity? Why should anyone have the right to tell us what we should feel and how we should feel it? Why should anyone have a problem with Love?

Our societies even today accept the prevailing ‘normal romanticism’ only if it evolves between a man and a woman. That’s why, questioning the plausible authenticity of any other relationship, the emotions involved in it, or whether it will run its due course in time or not, comes very naturally to many of us. Well, the factual explanation to this doubt is that every human being is capable of feeling a myriad of emotions. But what we often forget in our stubbornness to stick to the age-old definition of ‘normal’, is that no emotion can be seen or touched, weighed or measured. Emotions can only be felt. Then how do we gauge the appropriateness of any feeling? Can we even authenticate whose emotions are genuine and whose are not? Why do we take it upon ourselves to guarantee longevity and decide the eventual fate of a homosexual relationship when we aren’t even involved in it in any way? Why should love need the society’s approval to begin with, when the society is otherwise oblivious to their existence?

If I apply the same logic of authenticity to the other relationships existing around us, how will we define the other kinds of love? How much love should be considered appropriate? Where can we draw a line for something intangible like Love, beyond which it will be considered inappropriate? What will establish the genuinity of the other kinds of relationships existing within our societies? Love for our parents, siblings, families and friends and their love for us? Our love for our pets even and their love for us? Considering the ‘appropriately acceptable normal’ relationship can only exist between a man and a woman, would we expect a father to only love his daughter and not his son? Or would we expect a boy to only love his mother and not his father? Would the love between 2 sisters be atrocious compared to the love between a brother and his sister? 

Some may quip that by social regulations, a legal marriage resulted in their biological parenthood and hence the relationship between the siblings is appropriate. I agree! But then how do we validate the love of a mother for her children? Or a father’s love for his kids? Why would a mother’s love be any less for her children based on her own sexual orientation? She is a Mother! Or why would a father’s love fall short for his children based on his own sexual orientation? He is a Father! Can parental affection only develop when a couple conceive a child biologically? If so, then the beautiful initiative of adoption would have to be scrapped forever, because no one would give up their child. Don’t you think? It will become difficult to explain the affection single unmarried men and women have towards their adopted children or foster kids. Parenthood, in my understanding, is any individual’s submission into unconditional love. This love leads to taking up the conscious responsibility of another life - a child.

Some of us may feel this to be more complex to understand than the way I’m expressing it. But from where I see it, there are 3 intertwined opinions creating a vicious loop which will continue until WE break it. One, the majority of the society doesn’t accept homosexual relationships as normal, so they are automatically stamped as inappropriate. Second, the legal system doesn’t feel comfortable legalising such relationships, lest the judgement may upset the normal balance of the society. Third, since homosexual relationships aren’t legally approved, a part of the society is unwilling to support it or even speak up for it.

The flip side to this fact are the reprehensible incidents we hear about couples who are murdered in the name of family and social honour - even when they meet the criteria of ‘a man and a woman’ in the relationship. Though Cupid (or Kama Dev in Indian culture) should be blamed. But the brunt is borne by humans falling prey to this unassuming emotion. We witness heinous reactions of communities and families towards the men and women falling in love with someone outside their caste, community or even religion. I stumbled across one of Dante Alighieri’s poems ‘The Divine Comedy’ in which he wrote - “Beauty awakens the soul to act.” This quote reminded me of one of Shakespear’s quotes - “Love is blind”. Both expressions though misunderstood, misquoted and eventually misrepresented for generations, proves that the one in love will break all social bondages. But, abandoned and pushed aside, they are forced to live in fear, neglect and isolation. They are brutally persecuted and are socially cast out much like the homosexual couples. Then how is the scenario between these 2 social collectives any different?

Someone once told me that a man and a woman can never be friends. It always made me wonder if all men and women working together within an office setup fall in love with each other simultaneously or consecutively? On what basis can we confirm that a normal friendly relationship is more than that? Knowing that this idea sprouts from the conversational gossip-vine existing within every community, does it give us the right to demean the pure integrity of friendship between colleagues?

I want to believe that we are now moving forward to a time where ‘Love’ holistically as an emotion will be given the consideration and the respect that it deserves. That this sacred emotion won’t have to endure the hate because mere opinions segregate it into a Sin or a Virtue. We as a society created these norms at a time and condition we were living in, both of which have changed today! Then why aren’t we allowing these outdated norms to be changed? Have we settled in them comfortably enough to completely ignore a better change? How can we bring in the change in our society that we want to see, if we do not overcome the biases in our own Unconscious Perspective?