To me, love is a lot of comfort. It is comforting for me to know that, at the end of the day, I have a shoulder to rest on. Someone to spill everything out to. Someone I can count on to make me smile, even if I’m exhausted. Someone to simply make me feel better when I’m down, or feeling crummy for no reason at all. Someone who will understand that I need comforting, and solace, and someone who will unselfishly provide that, without asking or needing, or expecting anything in return.

Now, this reminds me that there is a most beautiful love song, by Placido Domingo, and John Denver called ‘Perhaps Love’.

Anyone who has not heard this, has surely missed out! Look it up, and listen to it, or ask Jagadish or me for it We will be happy to share it with you. Here’s the lyrics from this most touching, soothing, revealing, simply awesome song:

Perhaps love is like a resting place, a shelter from the storm
It exists to give you comfort, it is there to keep you warm
And in those times of trouble when you are most alone
The memory of love will bring you home

Perhaps love is like a window, perhaps an open door
It invites you to come closer, it wants to show you more
And even if you lose yourself and don’t know what to do
The memory of love will see you through

Love to some is like a cloud, to some as strong as steel
For some a way of living, for some a way to feel
And some say love is holding on and some say letting go
And some say love is everything, and some say they don’t know

Perhaps love is like the ocean, full of conflict, full of pain
Like a fire when it’s cold outside, thunder when it rains
If I should live forever, and all my dreams come true
My memories of love will be of you

Some say love is holding on and some say letting go
Some say love is everything and some say they don’t know

Perhaps love is like the mountains, full of conflict, full of change
Like a fire when it’s cold outside, thunder when it rains
If I should live forever, and all my dreams come true
My memories of love will be of you

I cannot agree more.

Perhaps l o v e does this to you

Related posts:

1. Love in India: Salim-Anarkali
2. Music & love
3. Love in India: Shah Jahan & Mumtaz Mahal

Reading Jagadish’s post reminded me of a poem I read when I was still in high school. My favorite English teacher, Edward Butscher, taught it to us. He, by the way, is a brilliant teacher. I believe he has even published some good books. He’s so funny and slightly eccentric. Smoked a lot-so much that you could smell it a few feet away. Ugghhh-cigarette smoke and smell still never fails to disgust me and cause me to go into a coughing fit. However, he favored me greatly (that always matters) and I graded the entire class instead of him (except myself; he graded me, of course). I remember how he kept saying how he missed times when students knew how to spell!

Moving on to the poem, the subject of this blog, it was by Edmund Spenser, called ‘Ice and Fire’, and I still remember it vaguely, which is really saying a lot (Jagadish would fervently agree).

Well, I looked it up and here it is for your reading pleasure:

My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congeal’d with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.

For everyone who anguishes in love, desperately wanting to bare their hearts, and fearing cold wrath in response, this poem will strike some chords. The ‘fire’ is the man, and the ‘ice’ is the woman, and the poet is writing about how his warmth, desire and love do not ‘melt’ the woman’s heart. Despite this, her ‘coldness’ only spurs him on even more, ‘kindling’ the fire in him.

The play with the words of ice and fire, and the images they conjure up in one’s mind is really pretty amazing! This is really a beautiful analogy describing the power of love to bind even entire opposites. I love the last couple of lines especially. Love is really, truly very powerful, and those touched by this wonderful emotion will, I am sure, agree with me.

Related posts:

1. Perhaps Love..
2. Private: A Walk to Remember – 2

I am not really a person who loves poems mostly because I don’t understand them. Recently I saw a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in a magazine and was really impressed. Even though the poem seems simple in its meaning, it seemed like there was a subliminal meaning hidden inside it. The way the poet exclaims in the end saying, “Ah, What then?” made me think a lot. Here is the poem:

What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in you hand
Ah, what then?

– Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Related posts:

1. Of fire and ice

It was cold winter morning. He was lying half naked on the bed with the bed sheet covering his bare torso. There was a serene smile playing on his lips. You could tell he was dreaming, dreaming of a girl. She was not a dream girl like in the movies dancing in scantily clad clothes. She was a lot different than that. He believed that she was his guardian angel. She comforted him every time he was troubled. He never shared his problems with anyone. He was a closed book to everyone else. He didn’t like to be seen as a sorry soul. Everybody was busy with their own lives anyway, so nobody bothered to make him talk. And that morning, he was lying in her lap while she patted his head gently. He was feeling better already. She had kissed his troubles away, like always. His angel always made him feel better. Except that his head was suddenly full of a ringing noise.

It was his alarm clock, which had rendered its services to him for months now. Waking him up every morning at the time he asks it to. All it required was little winding. A faithful servant it had been. His hand stretched, involuntarily, trying to reach for the snooze button. It had become a reflex action by now. He was so accustomed to hitting the snooze button that, he could do it without even having the sense of being awake. He started to position the clock far from the bed, once he realized what was happening. The hand kept searching for the snooze button, which was consequently, too far away to reach. He had to wake up now and he knew that the damned alarm wouldn’t let him sleep or anyone of the final year students next to his room who didn’t wake up until it was past lunch time.

He finally woke up and hit the alarm silent. His head was clearing up now. He was smiling again thinking of his dream. He knew things are going to better today and he took his brush to start the ritual of getting ready to classes. All the while, he couldn’t stop wondering what was the meaning of the dream. But he could sense something good was gonna happen. Its been ages since he woke up with such a clear head afterall. He was the only one awake in the wing. It was only 630am after all. The BOGS wouldn’t be full until another hour.. sometimes even upto afternoon.

He pulled his favorite shirt out of the closet where he had kept it, neatly ironed, over a month ago, as if saving it for an occasion. He didn’t know what occasion it was gonna be today but he wanted to wear it. He wanted to look good for no reason. He rushed off to the freshie wing to douse himself with some perfume. After hunting through the entire wing for the best brand of deodorant, he was happy with Brut. It wasn’t very strong like Axe or Denim. Now he was feeling good. He put all the notebooks (which never served their purpose in class), into his hardly used, dusty bag. He slammed it against the wall to rid it of the dust and dusted the rest of it with his hands. He shoved the books into the bag and was ready to go.

It was only 7 am, and an unusually foggy morning for Chennai. He could see wisps of vapour coming out of his nostrils and mouth each time be exhaled. He had loved doing that as a kid, when he imagined himself in the place of his favorite hero from a movie, puffing away at a cigarette (Not that he enjoyed smoking, he was asthmatic as a child and allergic to cigarette smoke.) It was too early for the class but he wanted to walk amidst the fog. It gave him a feeling of walking into unknown territory, marking an unchartered course; he was thrilled by the unknown because you never know where it would take you or what it would do to you. He descended the stairs expectantly. He didn’t know what he was expecting to happen, but he knew something was going to happen today. Something that might change his whole miserable life. He kept wondering, if it was what his Guardian angel told him in his dream. He didn’t know; he wouldn’t know unless he went out there and found out.

He stood near the entrance to the hostel, gazing around, waiting for something to happen.Looking around, he found no one except a lone security guard, fast asleep. He waited. Restlessly. Fiddled around with a Tamil magazine that featured a pot bellied actress on the cover. Ten minutes later, he was still waiting, now disappointedly. It was just a dream, he told himself. Nothing happens like it does in a dream. He descended the stairs near the entrance walking sullenly towards the department. Frustrated, he kicked stones around, marching through the fog as if it were non existent. He then found bigger stones, to practice his non existent footer skills on. He had stopped thinking about the dream. He was himself now; he wanted to turn away and go back to sleep. On the other hand, he was already awake and so wanted to go to the class.

Going about on the road he knew too well, with the fog not impeding his progress, he continued kicking those stones around until he kicked one too hard. He watched it disappear into the fog and he followed its apparent direction. Suddenly, he found himself looking at a pair of feet, wearing the most beautiful sandals, walk out of the fog. Out came a girl, wearing a white chudidhar and red dupatta. She had a mesmerising smile on her face and for a moment, the world stopped still for him, and he was stuck in the moment with her. And suddenly, the world was on fast forward when he heard the sweetest voice say hello to him. And it took him awhile to realize that the girl had indeed walked all the way upto him and said hello when he was stuck in the moment.

(To Be Continued…..)
Note: My apologies to the readers for the late post. My broadband had given me trouble for the past couple of days and it took me awhile to compose this master piece. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as archana did .