It was a sweltering April day in Delhi, with the kind of heat that penetrates the soul. Eid was approaching, telling me that it was time to make the obligatory visit to my family home in Kashmir. I boarded a flight from Delhi feeling like a lone train departing an empty station, immersed in the memory of Zulaikha, to whom I had once given my soul. Our paths had crossed by accident, only to part again soon. But it felt as if I had known her for eternity.
When I landed in Kashmir, it was decked up in spring colours, with buds bursting forth into flowers, suggesting a fresh lease of life. The landscape revived memories: we had met here on the banks of the Jhelum, under an ageing chinar, right beside a military bunker. On that day, I had watched the blue skies part to reveal a thick cushion of white clouds—the blue spoke of hope while the white whispered fears of dispossession. As I followed the drama closely, silently praying for the triumph of blue, Zulaikha turned to me with curious eyes and asked, “What is love?”
I paused for a moment, trying to recall all I know on the subject in order to quote, but who can stay composed when the person who feels like home stands right in front of you. I said hypothetically, “It is what it is,” at which she tilted her head slightly, her warmth prompting me to go on. “Loving others, ourselves, even the idea of love, gives life its purpose,” I said in a rush. She smiled softly at this, and the resultant turmoil in my heart mirrored the battle in the sky above.
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“Love,” I continued, “whether platonic or romantic, is the strongest force, motivating everything we do and/or don’t do. We search endlessly to find it and fight with monsters to keep it. As Pablo Neruda said, there is nothing that can save us from death but there is one thing that can save us from life, and that is love. But love is full of contradictions—it is everywhere and nowhere; it melts and freezes the heart; we think about it all the time and yet it is beyond the realm of reason.” I stared hopefully at Zulaikha, who listened with her eyes closed.
Hannah Arendt in 1944. How could Arendt, who warned us repeatedly of the dangers of totalitarianism, be in love with a Nazi ideologue? | Photo Credit: Levan Ramishvili/ Flickr.
Two of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, were unlikely lovers, unlikely because Arendt came from a community of German Jews while Heidegger was later accused of being a Nazi sympathiser. How could Arendt, who warned us repeatedly of the dangers of totalitarianism, be in love with a Nazi ideologue? Their affair, a legend in academic circles, tells us something about the contradictions that inform love.
Dangerous place
The human heart is a dangerous place: it is a bodily organ that transcends physicality in the emotions it churns up in the mind. If the task of the human mind is to think, rethink, and unthink, that of the heart is to understand. And it is understanding which brings us closer to reality—which consists in realising, among other things, that evil is not something out there but is right inside us, bred in our bones. This awareness of the un-originality of evil, or, in Arendt’s phrase, “the banality of evil”, makes the heart suffer. But, strangely, the antidote for evil is also found in the heart, and it is love. The version of love Arendt advocates—amor mundi, or love of the world—is the opposite of the banal and it inspires us to fight tyranny in all forms.
An army personnel stands alert among trees on a cold spring day in Srinagar in 2011. | Photo Credit: FAYAZ KABLI/ Reuters
As I was cogitating on these lines, Zulaikha had slipped into a slumber. I stared at her sleeping face while around us the Jhelum flowed undisturbed, with children swimming joyfully in the waters. Watching them gave me goosebumps: they were so in the moment, in the here-and-now, while I was traversing the past, present, and future in my mind. Do these children, seemingly so innocent, also have evil in them? I wondered. Saying a silent prayer to protect them from all ills, my eyes drifted to the bunker—the armed personnel there gave me a sarcastic smile, as if I and my thoughts about love were all a joke, worthy of a laugh and nothing more.
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Before I could nudge Zulaikha awake, she was gone. I woke up with a jerk as the plane entered a patch of turbulence, realising to my utter dismay that all this time, it was I who had been sleeping and dreaming. I was still on the flight to Srinagar while my heart had floated away to Kashmir and then to the Germany of Arendt and Heidegger.
Feeling sorry for my sad heart, I addressed it thus: “You, dear reticent heart, are not of the calibre of Martin Heidegger or Hannah Arendt, but you try. You suffer because you are thirsty for enlightenment. You must let love guide you to your most authentic self, as it did for Arendt.” I remembered Zulaikha’s face again and felt “authenticated”.
Mohammad Asif is doing his PhD in the Department of History and Culture, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He is accidentally in the academics.
