Ishq

I'm sick of the type of conformity that results in helplessness. It kills original thought. Worse, it seizes you by the nape of your neck and drags you through thorns. Popular culture is a myth, a massive entity spun by the psyche's desire for change. So to hell with the chasm between romeo and juliet, heer and ranjha, sassi and pannoo - the chasm created centuries ago that has long since been morphed into a symbol of popular culture.

The biggest realization that I've been coming to terms with is that love is not ishq and ishq is not love. Ishq is not a blazing fire, a rising thread of mercury, nor a seminal spurt of emotion. For if it were, Ishq would be ephemeral, here one second and gone the next.

No, I think Ishq is slow, Ishq takes its time. Ishq has constancy, like land or baked sands...or maybe a song that never gets old. Ishq is massive. That mass makes it slow to start, but once it is moving, it is impossible to stop.

Love is a turbulent foam, enwrought with anxiety and ecstacy. Love is the ever-swinging pendulum, the screaming ride of extremes. Love is a high, its sorrow an addiction. But Ishq is not like that. Ishq is not like that at all. No sir, Ishq is no quick fix.

You can fall out of love. You cannot fall out of Ishq. It can be created, but not destroyed. And if it is destroyed, I don't think it ever existed to begin with.

And all this makes Ishq very rare. One place to find it would be in the hearts of mothers. But from what I've seen, lovers are usually just that - two people in love.

'Tis what I believe now anyway.