"Why don't you ask me why I love you?" you complain. I smile and say, I don't want to know.  

"But how can you be like that? Every girl wants to know why she is loved."  

"I guess I'm not every girl," I smile back.  

"Okay, what's your concept of love?"  

"A bit idealistic, a bit practical," I said, wondering if I should tell you how I viewed love. I wasn't sure you would understand it the way I saw it.   

So to answer your question I write it here in my journal. Who knows one day you may hear the whispers of love from a leaf out of this book.  

If love isn’t unconditional, it is not love. You might like someone conditional to their looks, personality, or mannerisms, circumstances and so on and so forth. But love accepts no boundaries. So I can not tell you exactly why I love you and I do not need any ‘whys’ from you. I believe that when someone says, 'I love you because', the person is limiting himself by his own boundaries. For love has no reason, no boundaries, no conditions, love comes from God.  

Love that explains itself with a 'because' will alter when it finds changes in the loved one. By changes I don't imply change in the feelings of the loved one but the growth; moving forward in thoughts, in maturity; gaining clarity in vision and broadening of perception. Often relationships come apart despite the ardent professions of undying love. Justifications and excuses overflow, with both or either claiming that the other "wasn't like this" and that "he/she has changed."  

Pause for a moment and reflect on divine love. God loves us. We all believe that...at least those of us who do believe in God or a Superior Being in control of life and the universe do so. Now ask yourself if you truly are deserving of His love. Have we in all honesty come up to the expectations God has of us? I speak for myself when I say "NO'. I have fallen short in many areas and committed numerous blunders, whether through weakness or ignorance or deliberately, nevertheless they were faults. Yet God loves me and I am absolutely certain about that. That is God's love. He loved me even before I loved him. He continues to love me as I walk, trip, ignore him, hate my neighbor, remain unforgiving, become fat, thin or dowdy; get prematurely grey, don't dye my hair, lose interest in life, sex, relatives, friends, church, career......oh anything and everything. I might give up on myself but he doesn't. This is love....unconditional, strong, forgiving and nurturing; always available, the way it started out. In all the highs and lows of life, despite the often obnoxious creature I might appear to God; and despite life’s trials thrown at me.....there's just love between us. I don't love God condition to him giving me only good things and happiness and success all the way. Neither does he love me because I am a saint.  

Conditional love is limited by its own conditions. Any kind of alteration in those conditions results in strife.  

One might well argue that we are not divine beings to be able to love so perfectly. And yet there are numerous examples of such kind of love around us. In hamlets and in mansions, it does exist albeit in small measure. So it isn't necessary to grow wings to experience unconditional love!   

I'm sure we all have heard  laments like..."I love my husband but I don't like his drinking"........."I love my parents but I don't like the way they control my life"........"I love my wife but I don't like her lack of sophistication".....one can go on and on.   

There is a difference in 'love' and 'like'. Sometimes there are many things we don't like about the people we love. Yet we continue to love them. The love is unconditional, the liking isn't. We usually distance ourselves from people, things or situations we don't like. I love to travel but I don't like bus travel. So does that make me give up travelling? No. I simply avoid bus journeys as far as possible. I love train journeys but I don't like unreserved travel or even reserved sleeper class. So what do I do? I enjoy my journey in a two tier AC coach or preferably first class. I don't abandon my train journey.  

When dealing with our likes and dislikes, we place conditions. So if the 'liking' outweighs the 'loving', chasms form in the so-called love. I'm sure God doesn't like many things I do or say or think. Thank God it doesn't overshadow the love. I think Gandhi was referring to the same thing when he spoke about hating the sin and not the sinner.  

You say, "Why don't you ask me why I love you?" and further wonder "You don't even tell me why you love me."   

I wish I knew why I love you. I just do. There are no reasons I can find. I just love you. It is hard for me to put it into conditional sentences that start with 'because'. As to the first question....well I don't really want to know your 'because' reasons for loving me. If your love alters along the way I will know all the reasons. Let it be.   

 Gopal sat bent over the journal. As his heart listened to the whispers of love and his eyes stared at the page, emotions welled up and made them moist. He had returned to Delhi after thirty years. The last three of which he had spent living on the brink. A life filled with regrets, debts, jumping from one job to another; using alcohol to numb him into drunken stupor, girls to soothe his shattered ego, for a price of course. She had stood by him through it all, as strong as a rock. Even when he had left her, after a courtship of five years she did not complain, she asked no questions, did not use emotional blackmail. She went away quietly, neither accepting the life he had chosen, nor ignoring him. He thought she was a fool.   

Through graduation and post graduation they had been together. And then he told her that he couldn't marry her because she wouldn't be accepted into his community. She had been quiet through his twisted and turned justifications. If he had expected high drama, he was disappointed. She accepted his pettiness and went her way. Each married into their respective communities and she moved to Dubai with her husband.    

Gopal was too engrossed in himself to realize that his marriage had developed huge cracks. As soon as the kids grew up and stood on their feet, his wife moved out with the children. Gopal celebrated his independence. He went on a drinking binge. As he twirled the golden liquid around in his glass, he told himself he didn't like his wife anyway...the bitch, he thought. Wouldn't sleep with me.....wouldn't even kiss me.....said I stank to high heaven. I told her before we married that I drank....told her I had been wild and had done drugs too. Told her that the drugs were done with but I still loved my drink a bit too much and smoked heavily. Stupid cow, said it didn't matter, she loved him. Now the kids tell me that their mother would stay if I stopped drinking....bloody idiots. Said I was sleeping around....how did she know, damn it? Blooming slop of a female! Who sent him to other women…eh..? A nightie-clad couch potato who found nothing more interesting than those infernal saas-bahu serials… she made me eat stale, recycled food most of the time. People told me not to marry beneath my status....but muff that I was I believed her. She wouldn't stop telling me how much she loved me. Not like.....he rambled on too drunk to even know what he was talking.   

Soon he was not only losing jobs but reputation as well.   

Gopal began to think about suicide. He’d plan to hang himself one day and throw himself out of a running train the next. Strangely even through his drunken stupor, a sliver of sanity struggled to keep its hold and he didn’t go ahead with either plan. Then one fine day, the debtors humiliated him publicly and threatened him with dire consequences. It was more than Gopal could bear. He took out his diary and began to write a suicide note. As he flipped through the book, he ran an eye down the phone numbers he had saved, and one in particular caught his attention. For some reason it ignited a spark of hope. That's when he made the call to Dubai.  

From then on the calls became his lifeline. He had been apprehensive at first and a bit ashamed too, but she never once confronted him not even when he told her about his broken marriage. She was patient. Counselling him and listening to him as he ranted and raved. Most of the time he would yell at her, taking out all his frustration and at times he would be begging forgiveness for being so shallow. How she did it over the phone was in itself phenomenal, but she brought him back from being a suicidal wreck. It had been difficult for him, so how much more difficult for her. This was not her problem. He was making her his sounding-board, his punching-bag. As Gopal's thoughts made their journey down memory lane his control gave way and the tears blotted the open page.  

Preeti, his college sweetheart, had died in his arms that morning. The last call had come from her a couple of weeks back. It was brief. She wanted to meet him. She had returned to Delhi. He had regained his equilibrium by now, thanks to Preeti, and had also managed to salvage vestiges of dignity and respect, enough to get him a good position in a multi-national company. He was now known as a workaholic, so when he put in for leave there were no questions asked. When he reached her home he was told Preeti was in the cancer hospital. She was in the last stages of the disease and did not have much time to live. That was the first blow. She hadn’t even hinted at not being well.   

The days that followed were a haze in his mind. The only memory that lingered was of an emaciated Preeti, signaling him to hold her in his arms. He looked at her husband who gave his silent consent with a nod. She had been so light and frail, her lustrous hair long since ravaged by the deadly disease, but her beautiful brown eyes lit up for a brief moment, before she shut them. He held her cradled in his arms for a while. Time seemed to stand still. Then her body shuddered and her eyes flew open, fixed on him. Preeti breathed her last.   

Her husband gave Gopal the journal as requested by Preeti. There were no words exchanged. Words were not needed.