The word love has been the most preferred topic of Poets, Authors and almost every writer since the day one of the literature world; everyone has defined love in their own way through poetry, Prose, Drama, and Stage. In every age Love has been a topic of interest especially for youngsters but what is actual definition of Love? In Oxford dictionary Love is a noun meaning: a very strong feeling of liking and caring for somebody/something, especially a member of your family or a friend. If we can further add in order to understand, Love is the act of caring and giving to someone else…having someone’s best interest and well-being as a priority in your life. When we hear word love the first thing that comes to mind is a Couple being in deep love with each other. According to me Love is an incredibly powerful Emotion. When you’re in love, you always want to be together, and when you’re not, you’re thinking about being together because you need that person and without them your life is incomplete.This love is unconditional affection with no limits or conditions: completely loving someone. It’s when you trust the other with your life and when you would do anything for each other. When you love someone, you want nothing more than for them to be truly happy no matter what it takes, because that’s how much you care about them and because their needs come before your own. You hide nothing of yourself and can tell the other anything because you know they accept you just the way you are and vice versa. Love can make you do anything and sacrifice for what will be better in the end. Love is intense and passionate. Everything seems brighter, happier and more wonderful when you’re in love. If you find it, don’t let it go. Love is when you can’t do anything without thinking about that person, and you always want to be with them. It’s not that you want to have sex with them, you just want to spend time with them and you just want to hold them and never let go. Love can be foolish; you can think you’re in love and it can lead to the most horrible feeling in the world. Also you can wait so long for someone, loving them, and waiting for them to love you back, but they don’t return it. Most people use the word “love” to get into someone else’s pants. Love is overused in today’s world; people say they love someone because of the way they look or their body. That isn’t love.When Sufis tell us something about Love, Love is not desire. It is a great thing to find out this for oneself. And if love is not desire then what is love? Love is not mere attachment to your beloved, love is not attachment in any form; love is not jealousy, ambition, fulfilment or becoming; love is not desire or pleasure. The fulfilment of desire, which is pleasure, is not love. So I have found out what love is. It is none of these things. Have I understood these elements and am I free of them? Or I just say, ‘I understand intellectually, I understand verbally, but help me to go deeper’? I can’t; you have to do it yourself. Love is more than just roses and candy. Nowadays, when many people think of love, they think of two people with sexual attraction towards each other. Getting into relation and doing everything, living like married couples and then suddenly break up is a common thing in society in which we live today, but what makes it look so normal? This is because we are been fed this definition of love all day in and day out through social media, dramas, cinema, novels, magazines and we have consumed this definition so much that we have started accepting it as normal. No doubt romantic movies have taught us some things about love. As young people or kids we have used them as reference to express love or a medium which provided expressions and flowery lines. No matter how much we deny but at some point there would have been a movie or any particular scene that might have made you thought about how perfect things were in it and wish you had a similar experience. It is normal, we all think and try to imagine different scenarios and try to play them in our minds with us being the actor and actresses. It shows that how much impact pictorial representation has on human mind. Cinema is known to be the looking glass of the society. Yes, but this is not so now, if we look at today’s movies and dramas they are more commercialized. In fact, the tinsel world has turned itself into a moneymaking machine for filmmakers and production houses. The more attention is given on showing heroines in the barest of clothes with the maximum of body and skin exposure.Cinema has a very significant role in planting the ideas in society and especially in younger generation but when cinema is more concerned about the commercialization than the impact on society we get a ruined younger generation with confusions and frustration.Kashmir is no different from rest of Indo-Pak Subcontinent, Kashmir’s young generations are getting quick exposure to the culture & life style of so called liberals of the world, Bollywood plays a very vital role in shaping the way how these young people are thinking. Tiktok has completely reflected how Kashmir’s young generation is adapting what so ever is in trending and with parents being busy trying to give every possible luxury to their children it becomes more difficult to find guidance for these young folks. In this society where influence of Cinema was negligible social media has filled the vacuum, internet shut downs have not effected modernization of Kashmiri youth; Kashmiri youth are giving tuff competition to their friends in India or Pakistan. Bollywood movies have made Living Relation, Getting Physical so common on screen that it is now new normal in the society.
Love in itself is a blessing but commercialization of this beautiful emotion has made it a curse for many. We as a society have to come together to save our future generations from this trap and guide them with love and teach them the true meaning of love.
Subhi (Name Changed) had been in relation for 3 years with her boy friend, both studied engineering in an engineering college at Chandigarh, just after 6 months of relationship both had moved together and lived so till they parted their ways. Subhi says that his partner had cheated her behind her back with her bestie, the person I loved had changed and wanted me to accept this as normal giving poor justifications. He said today when swapping is taking place in society you are weeping about me getting intimated once in a month with your friend, after listening to this I was shocked, I at once understood enough is enough and finally I broke up. Subhi Said that it is normal among students studying here to be in living relation and almost all of my friends have at least got intimated with their boyfriends here and some with other’s like my friend, in Kashmir also there are couples in living but they are not so open as here and Intimate dates in Kashmir do take place and are getting popular among youngsters in certain circle. Recently I had an interaction with Kushi (Name changed) a girl from Pakistan, we went into discussion on a post about Extra marital affair, at first I thought she is defending it so I messaged her to know her viewpoint and came to know she isn’t justifying instead is a victim of so called ‘Love. She shared her story with me, Kushi got married just one month ago and She is in shock to know that her husband is having an extra marital affair with his Ex girlfriend ( I don’t know should Kushi call that girl Ex or not). Kushi said that her husband was in love with a girl before marriage and now as he married me, he still talks to her and do have pictures of that girl in phone, I have continuously asked him to delete but he refuses, instead defends it by calling it his own matter. We had many heated arguments on this issue, I even asked him to divorce me then if he can’t move on and forget that girl but he refused to that too, He says you are my wife and I can’t do that to you but I will not delete pictures or contact of that girl also, the worst is that he talks about her in front of me sometimes compares, I told him that she is a ‘NaMehram’ for you how can he hurt me who is your ‘Mehram’, your partner? He shamelessly replied that it is matter between Allah (s.w.t) and him. Kushi asked that if he loved her so much then why he married me. He should have married her and not ruined my life and what is she doing betraying someone else with whom she will be married. Kushi further added that I had so many dreams about my married life but my world of dreams has been shattered so rudely, I can’t leave my husband as I really love him and you know how our society judges a girl who will be divorced soon after marriage. This is an irony of our so called Islamic society where a break up after a living relation is acceptable as it can be hidden from society but a divorce for girl is a taboo. While listening to Kushi, The case of Mudasir Aziz from Kashmir suddenly crossed my mind, Mudasir Aziz, a junior engineer by profession allegedly had committed suicide by jumping into River Jhelum from Zaina Kadal Bridge on the evening of May 5, 2017. She was married to Javid Ahmad Bangree of Hamza Colony Elahi Bagh. The SIT investigation had revealed that the husband of the deceased lady had an extra-marital relationship with his cousin sister and was caught by his wife red-handed in her bedroom hours before allegedly committing suicide. During interrogation cousin sister ABC (name changed) of Javid, confessed that she was in a relationship with Javid for past one year and the two were caught in a compromised position by Mudasir (Javid’s wife) on that day. (Source: KO-Sep 21, 2017). There are so many more such cases that we can quote here from Kashmir but why do they happen? Kashmiris as a society have to do introspection of themselves instead of claiming my house is in order, No my dear friends almost every house is effected what is going around in society. Now a day, Love has more become Lust of physical intimacy, young girls and boys are seen kissing in public place and people have come in term with such scenes. I know my liberal friends would be judging me as a Conservative, Backward and may be even compare me with Bajrang Dal in action on eve of Valentine day, they may not agree with what religion says but they will have to agree that cheating your partner can’t be accepted as normal phenomenon, where as cinema is trying to make cheating justified as fun. Through various movies bollywood has already depicted that changing partners, swapping is something exciting and fun, these things take place in various bubbles of society, we can find so many couples who open on social media approach for swapping, as shown in movies it is already a normal practice in so called high class societies. There are so many people suffering like Subhi and Kushi, still so many unheard stories and in some cases worst incident happens and those stories then become headlines in press for some days or weeks and society vows to change things for a better tomorrow but then after few weeks everything is forgotten. It is an open truth that Kashmiri students studying outside Kashmir get suddenly exposed to an open culture and absolute freedom and this absolute freedom corrupts certainly and absolutely. The only way to save our youth from getting astray and stop them from ruining their careers and each other’s lives is proper counseling from very young age but does the parent in Kashmir even think about discussing about the term ‘Love’ with their young children? When we don’t discuss it in our drawing room conversations we leave our children to take definition from a bollywood movie or a Hum Tv drama or a Netflix series and then we have a problem with their ‘love’ affair(s) and their understanding of ‘love’, if don’t fulfill our responsibility today than we have no right to criticize them tomorrow. My dear friends who are in relationships or Love in itself is a blessing but commercialization of this beautiful emotion has made it a curse for many. We as a society have to come together to save our future generations from this trap and guide them with love and teach them the true meaning of love.
(Author is a social activist and a freelancer. Views are his own)
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