Love is found in the most mundane places or couples. On Valentine’s Day when we get caught up in the commercialisation of romance or the vilification of it, I can’t help thinking that love is for everyone everywhere.
In the midst of the wedding season, I found it not only in the couples who were getting married but off stage. In two separate incidents, with two couples.
At first glance, there was nothing extra-ordinary about them. In the marriage hall, I was passing by the first couple who were in their late 50s; the woman was fishing for something in her handbag and I jokingly asked if she was securing her diamonds. Her husband quickly remarked that she, his wife, was the real diamond. She smiled contentedly. She wasn’t shy or surprised. It looked like something he never tired of saying and that she never tired of hearing.
The other couple was perhaps a little older, more worldly. The man’s face lit up each time the wife looked at him. A lifetime together and the romance still bloomed.
I have often remembered a conversation I heard in the changing room of a gym some years ago. They say eavesdroppers never hear anything good but this one was a gem. The housekeeping staff was narrating her birthday celebration to her colleague. “My husband bought me a white salwar kameez, and our daughter said she wanted one too but he said, ‘first, for your mother and later for you’.” My heart squeezes gently each time I remember her words.
Most Indians still opt for arranged marriages, as did all the couples I mention, including one of the newlyweds. In such marriages especially, love arrives not as a lightning bolt. It’s more nuanced and gradual. Those couples whose relationships I glimpsed weren’t ‘performing’ romance; they were genuinely aware of their partner’s worth and acknowledging.
We’ve bought into stories of passionate love – the all-consuming passion of Heathcliff and Catherine (cleverly timed for a Valentine Day release), Romeo and Juliet, Heer and Ranjha. But love is not just grand celluloid or storybook romance, with lovesick heroes and heroines dying, hoping to be reunited across lifetimes. The real success of love is what I saw: the couples who are surviving life together.
But what of those without a partner to build that language with? This is where Valentine’s Day turns cruel, commodifying connection and suggesting that to be alone is to be incomplete. For some people, it’s hard to find first love, and for some, a second chance at love. Do they set too high standards? The expectations they set for partners may sometimes be a shield, protecting them from the vulnerability of being truly known. But they may also be a compass, pointing toward what is worth valuing. It is a choice that demands honesty: sometimes, it might be better to be alone and whole than coupled and diminished.
And yet—and this is what those older couples taught me—love is also built, not just found. The husband who saw diamonds in his wife’s very being didn’t stumble upon a perfect woman; he chose, thousands of times over, to mine for the precious in the everyday. And she in turn offered him the feeling of being special.
This Valentine’s Day, perhaps what we need isn’t a partner but a practice. The practice of seeing beauty in the unremarkable. Of offering small dignities. Of believing that love—romantic or otherwise—is something we create through attention and intention, not something that simply happens to us if we’re lucky enough.
The quiet joy of the housekeeping woman in being prioritised is what we all hunger for. And here’s the clincher – that kind of recognition needn’t come only from romantic love. It comes from the friend who remembers you on their travels. In the parent who calls to check if you’ve eaten. In the neighbour who sends over a home cooked dish. Or the colleague who pitches in to help unasked.
Valentine’s Day isn’t whether you’ve found your Romeo or Juliet, your Heer or Ranjha. It’s whether you’re brave enough to dismantle the myth of perfect romance to find something deeper, with a partner, or within yourself.
–Sandhya Mendonca, author, biographer, podcaster, and publisher at Raintree Media, offers a distinct female gaze of the world in this column.
