Think beyond sex. Think beyond love... at least human love. Love, much misunderstood and over exposed though it is, exists.

Love is a connection, a bond that transcends the sexual, the materialistic and the calculations of practical logic to translate into relationships that defy conventional norms. This Valentine's Day, Femina celebrates these unusual passions of the mind

"MEETING HER WAS LIKE FALLING IN LOVE FOREVER."
I have never met The Mother. She died long before I was born. However, the first time I 'really' got a glimpse, both of her character and of an abstract vision we call 'love', was during a windy evening on the promenade at Pondicherry.

At dusk, we were sitting against the backdrop of the Bay of Bengal as the sun entertained us with a spectacular display of defiant colours before it reluctantly beat a retreat.

As the burnt caramels and purples merged with the horizon, I asked Veenapani Chawla what The Mother was like; what made her decide to stay on in Pondicherry?

And she said, "Meeting her was like falling in love forever."

The simplicity of this answer contrasted with the cascade of emotions that ran through her face in that single moment - from passion, to devotion, to delight, to affection, to caring, to infatuation, and finally, to a sense of the sublime. That evening, she spoke into the night about this 'love' affair that has rooted her in Pondicherry ever since. It is still so pure and real in her mind... none of the passions that arise today from commerce, political issues, rights being fought or religion. This love she spoke about had no agenda.

The Mother has both humbled and intrigued me since that evening. It is rare to find people who are still so loved long after they have died, and who continue to be so deeply unique that they cannot be replaced or duplicated. I can only suppose it's because their 'love' lives on timelessly as their real legacy and in the spirit and human examples of people who are all in some way similarly unique and special because of this love they have 'seen' with or through The Mother.

And the greatest tribute to her memory is that people like Veenapani, and Jhumurdi, (a teacher at the Pondicherry Ashram School who was brought up as a young girl by The Mother), are able to reflect the soul of The Mother and pass this extraordinary sense of love to complete strangers who may never have known or cared otherwise... like me.
By Meenakshi Doctor

THE HARYANVI AND THE ENGLISH WOMAN
They met while travelling and the journey still continues. Jill Lowe and Lal Singh Yadav, whose last name, Yadav, has stuck with his wife ever since they met, are proof that when two people truly connect, the differences don't matter.

Jill met Yadav, a driver from Haryana, on a trip to India 13 years ago. She was a long-divorced mother of five grown-ups, with an upper middle class British upbringing. He was a simple, somewhat educated man more comfortable with his rustic farm and traditional life. They have been together for more than seven years.

Jill is matter-of-fact about their relationship and wouldn't like to give it a rose-tinted touch. "I wouldn't really romanticise our relationship; we went through a lot of adjustments. We are two very different people and had to consider whether we could manage." Even so, theirs is an unlikely relationship, chronicled in Jill's book 'Yadav - A Roadside Love Story.' It's an account of what has kept the couple together despite drastic differences in their backgrounds, education, and trials and the tribulations brought on by sceptics, an initial long-distance relationship, cash crunches and relatives.

A Blue Badge guide with the London Tourist Board, Jill and Yadav run a tour service in Delhi. Life is "happy and normal," says Jill but if there's something that continues to amaze her, it is the unabashed curiosity in India surrounding her relationship with Yadav. "It doesn't happen elsewhere," she smiles. Yadav, on his part, appreciates Western ideas of equality but it's Indian social values that remain close to his heart.

He shares a great relationship with Jill's eldest daughter, Caroline, and is protective about her like any Indian father would be. If Jill ever had doubts about "differences in education and the fact that Yadav is not interested in a lot of things I like, say, theatre," they have all been cast away. There's a lot of respect for the self-made person Yadav is. "What I like most about Yadav is that he is very much his own man," she says.

The differences, whether in Jill's love for theatre or Yadav's disgust for English food, do not matter any more. What matters is that they have managed to build a life together.
By Reshmi Chakraborty