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

ROCKS IN HER HEAD!
Frauke Quader, a German married to a Hyderabadi, moved to the Deccan Plateau in1975. "We lived in Jubilee Hills, which in those days looked like a rocky desert.

While walking the dogs every day, we noticed the wonderful rock formations we were surrounded by. The granite rocks are a treasure we've inherited. They are older than the Grand Canyon and we certainly can't grow them back.

Over the years, my affection for the rocks grew. But, as people began to build their houses there, many beautiful formations started disappearing. People visiting us from outside often asked us how we were allowing such a thing to happen. I must confess, the knock for saving the rocks really came from outside. Hyderabadis, though wonderful people, are quite laid-back," says Frauke, who is the founder secretary of Society To Save Rocks, an environmental protection group, in Hyderabad, formed in 1996.

"The real initiative started because everybody was talking about it but nobody was coming forward to do anything. Fortunately, there was an artistes' society that was keen to save the environment. And so, four of us got together and started the society, though the work had started in 1992.

"It's a full-time career. My family thinks I have only rocks in my head but how can I not? The time line chart shows that the rocks were formed 2.5 billion years ago and the mammals developed only 50 million years ago. I have great reverence for these rocks." As a voluntary worker, Fruake devotes a lot of her private time doing society work. Though it entails walking a difficult path and often running into tough people, she remains unfazed. She also espouses the cause for environmental reasons.

"Microbiologists have found microorganisms dating back to millions of years. The flora and fauna around these rocks is significant and rare. Sadly, quarrying is destroying much of it. We are trying our best to put some of these rare rock formations under protection through HUDA (Hyderabad Urban Development Association).

Amongst her favourites is one that resembles a mushroom and another that looks like a tortoise. "I'd hate to see the picturesque ridge behind the Malkam Cheruvu Lake go. Look at its age, how can one blast them? They are such a distinct feature of our landscape. Not every city has it."

Frauke and her society organise rock walks and other awareness programmes like competitions for children, photo exhibitions and concerts to generate interest and awareness amongst people. With Frauke around, the rock revolution in Hyderabad is bound to be a success.
By Namita Shrivastav

PUPPY LOVE
There's something about them that touches just the right chord in my heart. I can instinctively understand every look, every gesture, every move. It's almost as if every turn of the head or angle of the body is immediately translated into humanspeak. Or maybe, it is my mind which is tuned to dogspeak.

Dogs have been talking to me ever since I can remember. And I do believe that not having one somewhere in the vicinity leaves a space around me that no human can really fill.

Okay, let me get more specific and drop a few dog names. Sweety, for one. All white and cuddly, a dog who was my first love, and who loved and left me. Her very first Diwali, the sound of a cracker made her break her chain, and all I was left with the next morning, was a picture of me standing next to my sister. She clutching a large balloon, I with Sweety looking quite uncomfortable held in my arms.

Years later, Pinky came into my life. Given by a friend as an Alsation mix, Pinky proved she was the original Indian street dog, with the native's uncanny brains and survival instinct. She lived to breed endless litters of illegitimate pups, and I won a certain notoriety for being seen on the streets every six months with a basket of pups that I hoped to find owners for.

Frisky, when she came into our life, was something else. A black Labrador mix, she was true to her name. Luckily for us, she decided to adopt Pinky as her mom, and remained a pup in mind and spirit, showing no inclination to run away to meet clandestine lovers. And to make the trio, we got Vikram. Vikram looked like the Alsatian who had fathered him, colourwise at least. But two things were soon found to be very wrong about him. He remained shin high, and he turned out to be female. The three bow wowers had a whale of a time together, till Vikram developed an affliction that would make her cough and retch miserably. It was my first rub with doggie sickness, and the sight of her misery would haunt my dreams. I wish we had known how to cure her, but the doctors had no idea, and we did not know enough to put her to sleep.

Pratap was the macho-est dog we ever had. A Bhutanese pug, he was all of one-and-a-half feet high, with Chippendale legs, a snub nose, a curled tail and enough libido to make Don Juan blush. He was vegetarian, loved 'upma' and coffee, and lived to be 14 despite his tendency to bronchitis every summer due to a penchant for sleeping on the wet bathroom floor.

Amber, a four-coloured mongrel, was his friend, and had the ability to squeeze through any opening, however small. Street smart Amber was mortally afraid of crackers and would run all the three kms to my mother's house to hide under the Godrej cupboard if a bomb went off in our area. She also hated the vet, and would look strangely at Pratap as if to ask him how he could take injections without a fuss. Amber, when her turn came, had to be bound hand and foot... Despite her fears and her accident-prone ways, Amber lived to be 15. Sherry, a golden spaniel, and Krypto made an odd couple. Neither really took to the other, for some strange reason, Sherry played the dowager aunt to the young Krypto, who found her strangely boring. But each was a special dog, and has a plaque in bronze engraved on my mind in their memory.

Timur, who now lives in my house, came in and adopted us, when we were going through a barren stage, unable to come to terms with Krypto's death. He limped, and held his paw up piteously, and we let him sit in the garden, then on the ground floor, and soon, he was our dog... or rather, we were his humans.

When I got Milo from a friend, Timur took a whole day to get used to sharing his home with her, then fell madly in love with the lab-spaniel girl-woman. But Milo was too good for this world, and despite the inoculations, fell prey to that killer of pups, bacterial dysentery. Today, Timur shares his space with Snuffy, whose mom lives outside our house, and who, like her mom, has been spayed.
Well, there has been a parrot, and a cat and even a squirrel, but the dog story dominates my life.
Maybe - I muse sometimes to myself - in my past birth, I was a dog!
By Sathya Saran

THE SNAKE CHARMER
Many people ask me what started my fascination for snakes. My mother tells me that I have been chasing them ever since I could crawl on my knees. The start may have been even further back, when a snake dancing on my cradle cast a spell on me while I slept peacefully in it.

"My actual work with snakes though started only when I took a year off from school to travel around India, learning snake handling at the Pune snake park, spider rearing at Madras, and croc handling under Romulus Whitaker at the croc bank in Mammallapuran.

"When I returned to Goa in 1996, I wrote my first book, 'Free From School'. I also started snake catching in my village. Within a couple of years, I started getting calls from many villages in Bardez. I would attend a snake call armed with my boots, a stick with a big hook at the end and a gym bag. The caught snake would then be released back into the wild. This would usually mean my own backyard! "Though I have caught over 400 snakes in the last eight years, my excitement over every snake call still remains as fresh as it was in the beginning.

Every call for me is like a surprise present unopened! And if it turns out to be a poisonous snake, then it's even better!

"My interest in snakes also took me to Thailand where I went specially to handle the king cobra - the largest venomous snake in the world. The experience was quite scary though, as the king cobra I was handling was well over 14 feet!

"I continue to write in Goa on snakes since my subject makes it easy as most people know next to nothing about snakes and any information I have to share with readers is interesting for them.
As told to Ethel Da Costa

EVERY MAN SHOULD HAVE A FATHER-IN-LAW LIKE THAT
When Mark Twain wanted to marry the well-bred Olivia Langdon, her father asked for references. Twain asked a few friends, all of whom obliged. All of them also attacked his reputation, saying he was likely to end in a drunkard's grave and suchlike. Mr Langdon asked Twain, "Don't you have any friends?"
"Apparently not," Twain replied.
"I shall be your friend then," said Langdon and gave his consent. He did not regret it. Samuel Clemens proved a good and faithful husband to Olivia.

SHE SAID WHAT?
This is actor Dennis Hopper's version and we haven't heard his wife Michelle Phillips' side of things. But apparently, she left him and marched off to cohabit with Leonard Cohen. She called him only eight days later. He told her: "I love you. I need you. "She said: "Have you ever considered suicide?"

SHORT STUFF
The actress Katharine Hepburn married a socialite called Ludlow Ogden Smith on December12, 1928. By January 2, 1929, it was all over and she had returned to the theatre.

WILL YOU, HOW?
Actress and singer Lillian Russell ran around with multimillionaire salesman Diamond Jim Brady for years. Then one day, he poured a million dollars in cash into her lap and asked her to marry him. She turned him down because it would ruin their beautiful friendship.

A PROPOSAL
Queen Victoria was nothing if not direct. Faced with the need to produce an heir and unmarried, she summoned her cousin Prince Albert and announced that she wanted to marry him and would be "too happy" if he consented. Later, she wrote in a letter to her aunt, the Duchess of Gloucester, that she had to take the initiative because Albert would "never have presumed to take such a liberty as to propose to the Queen of England."