Yesterday, I watched Erich Segal’s Only Love on Hallmark. I read the book while I was in college and watched the movie some five years back. I remember the story touched most of my friends…Shifa in particular. I guess I was still in my tomboy mode and thus it didn’t register on me as something great.

I am however, not that girl anymore…in fact, I am hardly a girl anymore…as my mother pointed out with reference to my age yesterday. In any case, though the story was sadly touching…it really got me thinking about how much the world emphasizes on love while in reality it does everything to either alloy it or destroy it.

I believe almost every individual is at least at some point in his/her life, in love with the idea of love. I know I have been and at times, still am. The idea of finding someone and being someone that makes everything alright is simply mesmerizing. Maslow may not have been forthright but the need to belong can be linked to finding love and being loved.

I have come across various love quotes…such as ‘to the world you maybe someone, but to someone you maybe the world’. Another one I remember is this little rhyme…
Unremembered and Afar…
I watched you as I watched a star
Through darkness struggling into view
I loved you better than you knew.

And I read that the greatest compliment you can give a person is…
‘Because of everything you’re…you’re essential to my happiness’.

I admit being in love as well. And I will confess to a secret here…something I doubt I ever told anyone. Around the time I nearly got married…I wanted to give Umar something very special…something more than a perfume. I figured I had my whole life to buy him perfumes.

So I settled on the idea that I will buy him a compass and get in set into a silver fold…and inside I wanted to get this prayer engraved…
‘May you always find your way back to me’

Not very romantic...but it was the best I could think of.

So I was thinking…what can be considered the greatest love story I have ever read. Romeo and Juliet make a great stage play but somehow it has registered more on me as a rash act borne out of adolescence. Shakespeare will have to take a backseat here.

I have also read our folk lores of Heer Ranjha…where the beautiful Heer fell in love with Ranjha and though Heer marries another out of parental pressure, her love is so strong that she runs away with Ranjha and while she is being chased by her kinsmen, she asks for the earth to swallow her…the earth opens up and takes in both Heer and her beloved.

And that’s not the only story we have…Sassi Punno, Umar Marvi, Sohni Mahiwal…all our the rich folktales of love that we Pakistanis are all familiar with.

I sometimes wonder if their love could have survived marriage and in laws…outlaws as I generally refer to them now.

In my opinion…the greatest love story I have read is House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.

“The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth”

It’s a beautiful quote and an accurate description of the novel. I confess that by the end of it, I am always sobbing.

I believe a lot has been said about love…my blog can never do this subject justice. It’s too engaging…too consuming. And Erich Segal’s character Sylvia said right…

‘Poets say it better than us…Damn them!!!’