Deliberating what love is on the red couch in my kitchen as my friend cooks dinner

He is twenty-six and waiting for his one true love
A clean slate for his wife to paint in any and every shade she likes
He will get married
He has imagined an entire life and carefully curated this timeline
27: marriage 29: a shit ton of money 31: a beautiful baby Forever: Bliss
He talks about love in such a pragmatic way, as if it is tangible
You fall in love once and with everything you have
Love is commitment and togetherness
It is my saving grace and an outcome of all my penance

My mum goes to this Ambe Maa temple on special days,
and the priests always hand out the special kumkum there
She puts it on her head and the bottom of her neck like a good Hindu
She then fills up her hairline with some of it like a good wife
And when she runs into my dad that day, she takes some kumkum from her maang and puts it on his head to pass on the blessings
My sister and I get the blessings too, sure, but that kumkum is from her head
Only my dad, her suhaag gets the bhari-maang ka kumkum
That’s how I know love

My parents were born and raised in the same city,
They are only months apart in age
Their life plans somehow aligned
For ways that it didn’t, both of them were willing to make sacrifices
And let go of tiny bits of themselves
To accommodate their love for each other.
At this time and in this era,
The ways I was raised and the ways I am wired
My expectations from life would never allow me to have a marriage like theirs
Marriage is a far-fetched idea
I don’t want a piece of paper to hold us back from leaving or loving
And I refuse to bring a child into this messed-up world

My timeline is
21: love 23: love more 25: find love like mum-dad and hold on for dear life

Love in my head is poetic
Love is intangible
Sacrificial
Conditional
Heavy
Destructive even
And then it is fulfilling
Easy
Selfless
And the only thing worth living for

It is a little bit of this and a lot of that
It is beautiful and painful

Love is liberation to me
But he says love is his salvation

So I draw from the one example of love I know
I look at my parents
My mum evolved and is so much more open to things because of my dad
She is a different woman when my father is around
He is her liberation from the expectations of society.
I think my mum saved my dad in ways nobody in my house acknowledges
His grandma used to say dad only lived in her house before, he finally started to come home once he was married
Its almost as if my mother was his salvation

Maybe men need to be saved from the pressure of the patriarchy
And women need to be set free of it
But mind you, love does that
Love is your salvation or your liberation
Not your partner
A woman cannot save you and neither can a man set you free
Only love can
Love for another individual
Love for life
Love for living
Love for your own sweet self

Maybe love is all our saving grace.

Maybe.