Love is a difficult and serious affair

Sleep eludes me. It happens these days. I can hear missiles roaring in Lebanon, the Promised Land of erstwhile days, the land whose cedar trees built Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. It could be from Ukraine that the roars came. The Great Terminator of Ukraine is now threatening to use nuclear bombs to ensure his victory. His victory! One man’s victory is the defeat of millions of people.

One man makes a lot of difference.

There is this one man who is giving an interview to a religious TV channel. A Christian channel, to be precise. He quotes chapters and verses of the Old Testament to prove that the levelling of Gaza is a divine plan, one which was devised by God Himself centuries ago. “Didn’t Yahweh say through Amos that He would send a fire on the wall of Gaza, Amos 1:7?” The devout Christian says with ardent faith in his holy book. “What does Zephania 2:4 say? For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation. They shall drive out Ashdod at the noon and Ekron shall be rooted up.” God is the Commander of the present war in that region in the preacher's view.

You switch the channel disgusted with the violence in the holy book and in the hearts of its men. On the next channel is a Moulavi exhorting his followers to kill all infidels because that is what his God has urged. “O believers! Fight the disbelievers around you and let them find firmness of faith in you. And know that Allah is with those who trust Him. Quran 9:123.” He goes on: “Even if it is your neighbour whom you have known for decades, kill him if he turns out to be an infidel where Allah the Merciful is concerned.” 

“Do your duty without looking for rewards,” the Saffron Guru is preaching on another channel. That is Nishkama Karma, the duty of every devout Hindu. Killing is a duty for every follower of Lord Krishna when it comes to the battlefield of the Kurukshetra. The Kurukshetra has returned, bhaiyon aur bahanon. We are at the historical juncture of the Battle for Dharma. 

The young citizens are confused. They were looking for love and find only hatred everywhere. Even the Gods hate so much! So they, the young ones, make a game out of love. Love is fun, they think. They mock me when I quote Rainer Maria Rilke to them. Love is a difficult and serious affair. For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, I quote Rilke. You have to learn to love. Love is an arduous lesson in tenderness. A laborious learning. Don’t make it a joke. They, my students, laugh.

Somewhere in the rural backyard, a young wife is waiting in her little house. For her husband’s monthly return from his faraway workplace. The full moon smiles at her from the sky and the cool breeze caresses her gently. She is waiting for the tender touches of her man. He comes late in the night. He passes through her like a raging sword. As if she is a battlefield. Having fought his war with all the ardour of a fanatic, he cools down. She is burning with pain all over her body which has been his Kurukshetra. “I have to go early in the morning,” he says. “I can’t take you this time either.”

When he starts snoring, she gets up and goes to the window. The moon caresses her bruises. The breeze tries to smile. “Did it hurt, the love?” A sigh is her response to the breeze. “I wish I was to him more than an organ,” she says with yearning in her heart that the breeze tries to touch tenderly.