Celebration of Love

Celebration of Love
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Highlights

Dressed in their \'Sunday\' best, lovers meet their heartthrobs at their favourite spots or hangouts, reveal love to them and exchange trinkets.  When love is accepted, they find themselves on cloud nine and create a world of their own. 

Dressed in their 'Sunday' best, lovers meet their heartthrobs at their favourite spots or hangouts, reveal love to them and exchange trinkets. When love is accepted, they find themselves on cloud nine and create a world of their own.

Perhaps for this reason, Shakespeare said, “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact.” But balked love turns out to be a curse to both the partners and often scripts out a tragic end in their lives. The lives of historical figures like Laila and Majnu, and that of fictional characters like Parvathi and Devdas amply brings out the pleasure, pain, pining, suffering and sacrifice that are some of the attributes of the thing called love.

Love, love, love! What really is it all about? The dictionary meaning of the term is very simple- 'To like someone or something, to care about someone very much'. It is more than that. For some people it is sheer magic and for others it is just a 'four letter' word. For some it is a boon, for others it is a bane. The reflections of some poets and great personalities on this sweet and sensitive thing are worth a look on this Lovers' Day.

In matters of verses on love, the first name that comes to our mind is that of 'The Bard of Avon' in his plays and numerous poems, Shakespeare have penned immortal lines about the "fever" called love. His Romeo and Juliet have become universal love symbols for more than one reason.

Theirs is a love story of opposites, contradictions and opposing pairs. Again the lovers are remembered not only for mouthing many memorable passages but also for undergoing all the trials and tribulations in their passionate and tragic love affair! Here is one famous passage, which talks about the elements of purity and pain in love:

"Love is a smoke and made with the fume of sighs being purged. A fire sparkling in lovers eyes; being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers tears."
Another passage from the ‘In Midsummer Night's Dream’
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."
When it comes to love between a husband and a wife, we must read a sonnet written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the ailing wife of poet Robert Browning. Her poem, ‘How Do I Love Thee’ shows her profound love for her hubby and in fact it has been an inspiration to countless people.
"How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach…
…I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life…
If God choose I shall but love thee better after death."

If you want to know about different types of love, then read the classic book, ‘The Colours of Love’ by J A Lee. In all types of love, the basic and underlying thing is a relationship, physical, emotional, or spiritual.
In ‘Symposium’ Plato makes earnest attempts to map out the genesis of the feeling of love and its evolution.

There he talks about a type love which inspires the mind and the soul of the lover and directs the mind towards spiritual things. Such love is called "Platonic Love". The love of Radha or Meera for Lord Krishna is a fine example of such 'Divine Love'

The mind plays a vital role in our love relationships and it is up to us to choose between the physical love and the Platonic love. And finally for our teenagers who think that love is everything and it is the only purpose in their life, here is a message in the words of John Milton from his epic ‘Paradise Lost’:
“All is in our mind
we can make hell out of heaven
heaven out hell.”

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