The Gardener

I have been meaning to write a post about this for quite some time but then why should I seem like a person who always thinks about this topic? But yesterday I binge watched the series “Modern Love” (definitely recommended, available on Amazon prime video) and I have so many thoughts that I HAVE TO write them down. So, if you have some free time and happen to come across this post, I hope something here resonates with you.

So, where do I begin? After watching the show, I started asking myself, “Do I know what love is? How many kinds of love are there? Have I experienced it before? Rather, were the feelings that I assumed were love really love?” etc etc. So, I thought about these and here are my findings.

It seemed as if love is of different kinds at first but I realized it’s the simplest thing at the bottom. Let me give some examples to begin with and I will build upon it. Recently my 80-year-old maternal grandmother fractured her thigh bone and had to undergo surgery. She was admitted at the hospital and was kept under observation. The old body needed some time to jump back up from this. Anyways, I visited the hospital and when they allowed me inside the observation ward, there she was, in a green gown, on the bed with oxygen mask strapped to her nose which I could see was a bit tight and pressing down on her nose and wrinkling the already old skin at her cheeks. She had her eyes closed. Truth be told, I couldn’t see her like that. Felt like crying but told myself “Not here, not now”. I walked up to her and gently said, “Ammamma?”. The next few seconds gave me the purest and simplest definition of love. I watched as she slowly open her tired eyes. She turned her head to find me and boom!

I SAW LOVE! The way the corner of her lips lifted the cheeks up creating wrinkles towards her eyes that shone the moment she saw me, said my name and lifted her hand to reach me. I SAW LOVE. In fact, it felt like I was at the receiving end of a humongous Kamehameha ball with LOVE written all over it thrown by this tiny fragile woman.

Ahhhh!

I MET LOVE, when I saw my mom have a serious fight with dad almost entire day, house shrouded with silence but mom makes sure dad takes his medicine at night while he is angry and refuses to take medicine, acting like a kid.

Sometimes, my mom cracks some lame joke. Nobody is laughing but she finds it so funny she can’t stop herself from wiggling her pony tail and laughing without end. I KNEW LOVE when I saw that look on my father’s face, the one where he can’t stop but smile looking at her and starts making fun of her as if he is trying not to let others know he adores her.

I FELT LOVE when love commanded me not to go to the edge of cliff to take a pic and cried when I did anyway. My bad but hey, quite a memory isn’t it?

I HAD LOVE when I wasn’t able to answer whenever somebody asked or I asked myself the question “Why do you love that person?”. Because that’s what love is.

You know, one might feel parental love, sibling love, romantic love all are of their own kind. But turns out, they all have the same foundation. People use the term “Unconditional Love”. But does love need an adjective? Isn’t it absolute? Can there be “Conditional Love”? It won’t be love then! It’s like this. A gardener takes care of the flower helping it to blossom to the fullest potential. What’s in it for for the gardener? He won’t have an answer either. That is the foundation of love. Foundation for all the kinds I listed earlier. It is something you and me we all know. We can’t put it in words.

The difference lies in the design of what is above this foundation. Think about this. Your parents love you and you love them back. When there are some rough times, they CHOOSE to wait it out and keep the structure strong upon which you are resting. When that happens, the good things outweigh that small periods of fight, anger, disagreement etc by a tonne. They won’t let you leave and you don’t expect them to let you leave. You bounce back to them. Happy!

In romantic situations, the structure is maintained by both individuals equally. Here is the difference. If even one chooses to let go, there is no structure left. The movies and TV series show all this crap about one sided love, or when even after a break up one claims they love the other. Utter nonsense. Without reciprocation, this won’t sustain. The same holds for siblings and friends too. Reciprocation is the key. You need people who, when things get rough, take a pause (Reference to Lily and Marshall from How I Met You Mother), sit down and say, let us work through this. Not the people who are either impatient and/or stubborn.

Hope this conveys what I am trying to say

Now that I feel I acquired so much insight (* cue self appreciation applause), I started thinking about the people in my life. I have lovely grandma who is the definition of love. I have parents who will be by my side no matter what. I have younger brother whom I love so much, I feel like I am his parent too. I have a friend who is more like my brother and we have been going strong for years now and I intend to keep it that way.

Now I will keep my eyes open for that person who is out there, I don’t know, maybe reading a book, maybe doing yoga, maybe sketching, maybe lazying around, maybe watching Naruto and going gaga, maybe wears specs and has curly hair, maybe designing buildings or heck, pulling a push door! Maybe she is reading this and knows its her (far fetched but meh :P). I know she is out there. One who will grab my hand when the wind tries to blow us apart and keep the structure strong.

The one for whom, I’ll be the GARDENER. :)