You live and you yearn
hasty reflections on longing
Nothing compares to first love. I’m not talking about the kind where you’re old enough to understand, rationalise, and have it reciprocated, or the first relationship you’re in. I mean the first brush with love— of experiencing the unadulterated, intense feelings of adoration and liking towards someone else— an Other. It was a time when the lines between liking and loving could afford to be blurred, and the conflation harmed nobody. First loves or crushes were such an important part of my childhood. It hardly mattered that it was unrequited; it mattered only that it was felt. In and of itself, the very act of having a crush was an initiation into a new bodily feeling: a newness that took someone other than somebody otherwise safe and familiar as capable of staking claim over your heart and attention.
I spent most of my childhood falling in love with my first crush many times over. It began when we were barely four or five years old. We were in the same school but had vastly different circles (i.e., our mothers weren’t friends). I don’t recall when or how I met him. All that I can remember vividly was that it first began around the time we ran out the back entrance of the auditorium towards our main quadrangle with my hand in his, and wishing that the moment would last forever. I watched myself growing deeply fond of him, memorising his landline number, and finding the silliest reasons to call him. I watched myself feel shy as I would inevitably end up speaking to his parents (who would answer my call), or when people uttered his name—as if it belonged to me and my lips alone. I watched as he began liking someone else from our class in a circle time activity when we all sat down to share stories and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. I watched us move into different classes, and noticed him changing. Soon after, I watched him grow into someone I could no longer like, let alone love.
I write about longing because I love love. I write about longing because, at some level, it is precisely what loving is all about (although, my journal entry from a few months ago reminds me that there might be a distinction not only between loving and liking, but also between love and attachment). Longing is such a bodily experience that I think language can hardly cover it. Longing is not merely the lyrics, but the composition of rhythm—the chords or the raag/raaga— that elevates a sentiment from being two dimensional to forming a pit in our stomachs. It is not merely dialogue, but expression, tension, and silence in between them that makes the impossibility of a thing that is so deeply desired palpable. I write about longing because, as a student of dance, it is possibly one of my favourite kinds of pieces to witness unfolding.
So far, one of my favourite Varnams (a central piece in Bharatanatyam combining pure dance, i.e., nritta, and expression, i.e., abhinaya, and is often a declaration of love or devotion) is the Charukesi varnam. It’s a lamentation by a nayika seeking out her beloved (Lord Krishna). She expresses her frustration at how he torments her and pretends as if he doesn’t know what unfolds in her mind. She implores him to rid her of her suffering and to end her long-held longing by showing himself once again. While the lyrics, of course, resonate, it is, instead, the entire composition that instantly invokes that same feelings of longing—now, or back in circle time, two decades ago.
I watched a performance by a stunning Artist, Meenakshi Srinivasan, earlier this evening, whose repertoire comprised pieces on Lord Krishna. Naturally, I waited in the dark for a piece on a nayika expressing her intense love for him and yearning to be held. In a surprising turn of events, she did something different. This time, the Padam (an expressive piece) was one where Lord Krishna found himself feeling distraught in a nayika’s absence. He turns to a painting he had made of himself and his lover entwined, but points out how none of the features in the painting— her eyes, her lips, or the lines on her neck— can adequately capture her glance, the sweetness of honey on her tongue, or the warmth of her embrace, that he thoroughly misses.
Love this one! 🩷
❤️