Ishq
I’m tired 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.
I agree. But I would call Ishq ‘extinct’ instead of ‘rare.’
Love has become expendable in our time. Pity.
I shall quote something here:
“Affection is desirable. Money is absolutely indispensable.”
This is our mentality now. Like I said, pity.
The line you quoted, I believe, is by Jane Austen, Noor. She was a Victorian victim. We are lagging 200 yrs behind them.
Good show man. Ab is ko kya rate karoon. Tis opinions, not creation, boy!
and 200 years worse off, too.
I beg to take issue with your definitions. Hope I am not taken as too presumptuous for barging in with my own opinions. In any case, here is my revision:
Ishq is Junoon/ passion. It is slow in development and fruitation but necessarily always slow to start. It is something involuntary that has the power to take over, to erase one’s self, one’s identity. It can be a calling, a revelation, a spark. The self-annihalation is what makes it the next stage of junoon – this element brings it close to insanity (a seeming quality of ascetics).
I think you imply something too calm, quiet and still in saying that it is constant like an immovable land. Rather it is fraught with anxiety because of the immensity of the drive. Perhaps, you mean that it is endless as land (or earth that is round and has no beginning or end). The word “massive” reminds me of something volcanic which is yet a rolling, unstoppable force.
Love (pyar, mohabbat) is a calm; cool but not cold; warm but not fiery feeling and definitely not a way of being. It is companionate, more social. It can be as unwavering as ishq i.e., the one that is called unconditional love of which the quintessence is a mother’s love. A mother’s love is also dependent on a woman’s psyche (social upbring and biological makeup), narcississm (the child is born of her), dependency/ masochism (self-sacrifice), and a compulsive need to nourish or serve. All of these are interlinked but this make-up brings her love no where close to ishq. It is quite an “ordinary miracle” while ishq is more extraordinary.
Infatuation is a miniature form of Ishq. More associated with teenage callowness.
Falling in love is slightly a more respectable term for infatuation (connotes more of the chemical reaction between two mature people of opposite sexes). It is less intense than infatuation but supposedly more long-lasting (at least it promises the transpiration into companionate love). The transformation into companionate love is what people often mistakenly call falling out of love (they would rather keep the ephemeral feeling of intensity).
Being in love can also (esp. nowadays) be used more figuratively for having a special liking for something such as art. Of course, all the above words can be used figuratively for this purpose depending on the intensity implied.
oh and other words for ishq could be “dihan” or “zikr” Although they do imply a kind of deliberateness. I suppose it isn’t altogether fraught with anxiety but the self-denial aspect makes it necessarily so. You could argue that self-denial is not part of dihan or zikr.