Let's Celebrate the Spirit of Love
By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
11 Feb 2025
“Let’s meet in our dreams tonight.” — Anonymous
Muhabbat aur ibadat
Batayee nahin jaati
Bas ki jaati hai
(Love and worship cannot be expressed in words. They are emotions you can only feel. They are actions we need to take, not just talk about).
Koi samjhe toh ek baat kahoon
Ishq taufeeq hai gunaah nahin
-Firaq Gorakhpuri
(Let me assert if you can understand, love is power/strength/capability, not a crime)
Now when the air has the soul-gladdening, sandalwood fragrance of love as Vasant and Valentine's Day coincide and furtive looks are exchanged, one wonders why love, the most sublime of all human emotions, is frowned upon by the wet blankets? Why're we so squeamish about the love that exists between two lovers and why do we always try to sublimate and spiritualize simple man-woman love?
We often feel apologetic about love that makes our hearts lose its moorings and marbles. Do lovers commit a crime by falling in love? That's also love. In fact, that's the real love. All other types of love are offshoots of the primordial love that thrives in the hearts of two lovers. We needn't spiritualize simple and mushy love into something esoteric and intangible.
To quote 'Nashtar' Nishapuri's quatrain, " Muhabbat ko samajh aashiq ki nigaahon se/ Us ki tadap, us ki aahon se/ Maana ke ishq ka rutba hai buland/ Ye ishq parvaan chadhta hai dil ki raahon se " (Understand love from the eyes of a lover/ From his restlessness and his sighs/ Granted, love has a great stature/ But it becomes sublime when traverses through the lanes and alleys of heart). All the world loves a lover is a famous saying that underlines the impact of love. It's not for nothing that Vasant, the season of love (Madan Ritu/ Mausam-e-Bahaar), and Valentine's Day exist simultaneously. To quote Firaq Gorakhpuri, " Chalti ho basant ki purvaai jab/ Dil na dhadke toh gunaah hai " (When the zephyr blows during the spring / It's a crime if the heart doesn't throb). Ghalib celebrated love in Basant and wrote in Chagatai, " Tan qeez be-shumad Farazim nee mad " (Love and Basant arrive together; Farazim: Spring in archaic Persian, Pahlavi and Chagatai dialect ). En passant, Ghalib belonged to the Chagatai tribe and this is one of his twenty one surviving lines in Chagatai. Love is a palpable feeling, understood by those who're in love or have ever fallen in love. A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and a man (and also a woman) cannot live without love. Hearts reach their zenith when they fall in love for, love is a sacred emotion that transcends all other concerns, considerations and emotions: Pyaar har rang mein logon ko sada deta hai/ Pyaar ke parde mein hum sab ka Khuda rahta hai (Love echoes in every form/ In love, resides the God). Today's faux spirituality has hardened humans and tried to inculcate in us a wrong notion that falling in love is un-spiritual just the way, all man-made religions and spirituality have condemned love-making and advocated celibacy. That's rank nonsense and arrant stupidity. Love (man-woman love sans pretensions) is a recurrent subject in world literature; it has been approached in several ways. Sex, which is an integral part of love, was a topic of predilection for many authors, Lord Byron was part of them. So were Algernon Charles Swinburne and the French poet Charles Baudelaire. Jaun Elia, Abdul Hamid Adam, Ahmad Faraz, among others celebrated love in Urdu poetry. Byron was one of the poets who knew how to shepherd the mechanism of men-women relationship without isolating his egoist aspect. He (Byron) believed that worldly love (Ishq-e-Majazi) of man and woman prepares human hearts for a greater and sublimated sojourn of self-discovery undertaken together. He never recoiled from physicality and intimacy in love. See this,
"Wedded She was some years, and to a Man
Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;
And yet, I think, instead of such a ONE
'Twere better to have TWO of five and twenty,
Ladies even of the most uneasy Virtue
Prefer a Spouse whose age is short of thirty. (Don Juan canto 1 -V62).
In love we discover ourselves. So, don't be indifferent to love. Don't look askance when a damsel coyly looks at you and smiles bashfully and don't be rude when a lover serenades you. Wooing shouldn't be cold-shouldered. The world would be devoid of the riot and rainbow of ecstasy and euphoria if we remain insouciant to the gentle force of love. At this juncture when the world is ravaged by wars, violence and hatred, love is all the more relevant. Go out. Blush and smile in tandem. Love is in the air, beckoning all those who want to 'succumb' to its myriad ways. It (love) is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination. There are no accidental meetings between two individuals of opposite genders. Remember, Kaavish-e-kaainaat hai ki dilon ko joda jaaye (The Universe attempts to unite hearts).
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A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/celebrate-spirit-love/d/134583
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