Something

Saying "I love you" doesn't make love manifest itself.
Yet not saying it doesn't mean it isn't there!
Here I am, one who doesn't even believe in the existence of the word "love,"
And yet, how many people have I told... I love you!
Or sometimes never said it at all!
But loved them well, all the same!

When these thoughts come to mind, I laugh!
How strange, isn't it?
What is love, really?
A feeling!
A pull!
Staying beside someone!
Doing good for someone!
Wanting someone's good!
Duty and responsibility!
Well-being!
Endless sacrifice!
Selflessness!
A good deal of honesty!
A touch of nobility!
Or is love... an exquisite blend of all these good things and more?

What is love, truly!
Who knows... what!
I believe love is nothing at all!
Yet something must certainly be there!
Without that "something," two complete strangers wouldn't one day become intimately known and surrender themselves to each other.
Fathers and mothers wouldn't stake their lives for their children.
Teachers wouldn't receive devotion from their students!
The word "friendship" would never have been coined.
The theater of love wouldn't witness lovers in their roles!
Stories of reconciliation, forgetting thousands of enmities, wouldn't be written!
The noble act called forgiveness would never occur anywhere!
Millions of strangers would never find companionship through any connection!
No one would be bound in blessed matrimony with Sharat's Datta!

And at the same time, no one would be tormented by grievances and complaints!
We'd never know what betrayal means!
Much irrelevance and irrationality wouldn't hide openly or in shadows!
Wild love wouldn't be born at all!
We wouldn't see anyone drowning in selfishness, wanting to possess someone!
No one would drift away through misunderstanding!
Ravi's Kalyani or Haimanti wouldn't become sulking beauties!

Perhaps there wouldn't be created at all—
So many unspoken, incomprehensible languages!
Speaking silently!
Knowing how to read the world in the language of eyes!
Creating poet with poetry or poetry with poet!
Breathing life into painted pictures on canvas!
Free mingling of brush and color!
Seeking life in the language of song!
Understanding rhythm in the beat of dance!
Finding Shuchismita with Subhashini or discovering Priyangbada!
So many auspicious beginnings of creation wouldn't happen!

Is this the "something" of your love?
Does everything really exist in the existence of that word?
Or does everything exist in the existence of these combinations?
—Even the word "love" itself!