Goodbye Love

What is this thing, they call love?

Should love be taught?
Should love be read from sacred text?
Should love be served in a tea cup?
Should love be Buddhist?
Or Bahaist?

Should love be a medicine?
And imbibed thrice a day?
Or should love be injected?
Should there be a love surgery?

Should love be a poem?
Should love be a trifle?
Or polite amusement?
Should love be aesthetic?
Should love be anesthetic?


Should love be about caring?
Should it be pure?
Should love be about the dregs of our society?
Should love be imperfect?
Isn't it so, always?


Is love, impossible?
Is love a mere trifle
Is love pastime?
As it has been since the fifteenth century?


Should love be in isolation?
Should love have a home, a habit, a costume, a cuisine, a language?
Should love be bourgeois?
Should love be noble?
Or it can be profane?


Should flowers love?
What about butterflies?
Likewise are rocks susceptible to love?
Who is a better person?
One who knows no love?
Or one with too much of love?


Will a space ship discover an iota of love on Mars?
Should love be Laila-Majnu, so that we revel in their love?
Should a civilization be measured by its love index?
Can we replace the rose with a daffodil  as a symbol of love?
Can we not offer mice and cockroaches, instead?

Is love impotent?
Is love voluptuous?
Is love spiritual?
Or is love, stupid?
Is love wise?
Is it fatal?

Should love preach what love has never practiced?
Is love commerce?
Is love communist with a dab of red?
Is there more love on display at airports than ports?
Much more love on sms than in the streets and roads?

Should young people flock to universities to study a course on love?
That would mean a million dissertations on love.
Will that make love pedagogical?
Does love speak many tongues?
If yes, can love be translated?

Can one find love in the dark?
Can one search for love with a torchlight?
What if one stumbles?
Will love prop you up?
Or spurn you?

Is love chivalrous?
Does love shrug its shoulder?
Does love blow its nose?
Does love brood?

Why are anecdotes about love unreliable?
Who understands love?
Priests or psychiatrists?
Can one understand love?
Should one?


Perhaps love should be enshrined in our constitution?
May be one should go down on one knee and propose to love?
Is that the love etiquette?
Or am I being delusional?
Have I always been so?

Does love laugh?
Does love apologise?
Is love shy?
Is love outspoken?
Does love write love poems to other love poems?

Is love dire?
Is love absurd?
Is love all about exchanging sweet nothings?
Or hurling abuses across continents?
Do continents love?
When is the last time you heard about something such falling in love?


When should one love?
Should one fall in love in the afternoon?
Should jowar and bajra be served along side?
Or should love be sipped with coffee decoction?

Is love feminine?
Or is love macho?
Is love philosophical?
Is love inscribed on an indoor hoarding at Delhi airport?
Or can love be borrowed from a poem by Muktibodh?


What is the first love story, ever?
Is there a record of it?
Is love a privilege of the rich?
Is love a necessity of life?
Is love entertainment?
Should we tax love?


Can we pluck love from the leaves of shrub?
Who loves most? The French, the Manchus, the Tangs, the Huns, the Peruvians?
Do the souls of dead people love?
Is love deathly?

Is love shameless?
Should we set aside one hour every morning, and love?
Should we love, once a day?
Or should we love in the evening, in the midnight, and above all, in the
morning?
Or 20 tiny doses in one day?


Is love demure?
Does love sleep?
Does love day dream?
Is love slothful?
Is love decadent?
Was it always decadent?

Should we make jokes about love?
Does love have a sense of humour?
Or like hate it protests, much?
Has there been a rally against love?
Should we ban love?

Should we boil love in a kettle?
Should love be cooked?
Or classified?
For example: Classical Love, the Romantic Love, and Platonic Love?

Does love get rheumatic pains and drowsiness?
Does love have a blue toe?
Does love get headaches?
Does love believe in ayurveda?
Does love stay awake till 2.37 am every day?

Does love look at itself in the mirror?
Does love adorn boots and gloves
Does love powder its nose?
Does love rejoice?

Do gods love?
And satan?
Does love have many followers?
Or more gurus than disciples?
Should we organise love tournaments?
And award trophies for the rarest and finest quality of love


Does love have an aroma?
Or has it decayed?
Is love treason?
Is love devastation?
Is love porn?
Or is love full of woes?
Or is love elixir?
Or exhaustion?

Should one knock on the door and then enter the world of love?
Or stand outside the gate?
Can we take a sip of love from an earthen pitcher?
Or is love vacuum?
Is love emptiness?
Or is love the vegetable dyes in a miniature painting?
Or the ashes after a fire?
Or gilded baldachinos in love's eyes?

Is love sacrilege?
Is love loneliness?
Is love all about yearning for freedom?
Do the 16,000 gopis of Krishna know true love?
And Krishna; what about him?

Is love unsymmetrical?
Is love vain?
Is love monotonous?
Is love fraudulent?
Is love vexatious?

Is love in the leaves?
Or in the roots?
Is love an instrument?
Or is love a melody?
Who tunes the strings?
Who composes the songs?
Who cuts the album?
Who sells it as merchandise?

Is love a porcelain vase which has broken into fragments?
Is love over?
Should all of us leave?
With our tears?
And say our adieus to love and exit from the room

Wherever you are
Goodbye, my love