'Mohabbat' - the Urdu word for love. Such a sweet sound. Just saying the word makes me feel like I'm in a garden of roses. I remember my desire for love growing up, more so for being in love than being loved. Now when I look back at it, I wonder if I had convinced myself that a phantasmagorical life existed - the kind where you fall in love and everything else just floats like being in a beautiful dream. I grew up without ever being told by my parents that they loved me. Love came in the form of a calculated response. Get good grades and we will love you. Excel in every possible way, be better than the neighbor's kids. Just be perfect. That's all. Then you deserve love. That's what I grew up with.

And then, when youth hit me like a stream of water being held by force, when my heart started fluttering at the sight of a boy in high school, I already knew life was going to be difficult. I didn't even know being gay was possible. That's the world I grew up in. I kept lying to myself. I kept telling others I was interested in a girl in class but mostly I just avoided the conversation around who was my crush in school. I was thankfully not shy or scared, so bullying was always addressed and responded to in my own way. It never impacted me too much.

Fast forward to university, where I was studying engineering because I was told to, because that was the only way I could have been loved; I remember becoming so nonchalant during that time of my life that I actually completely stopped caring about anything. But ironically, at the same time, a wave of hope was washing over me. Life was happening to me. I was doing things on my own, I was taking charge of my happiness, I was starting to slowly love myself. The slow but continuous watering of self-love was allowing flowers to grow inside of me.

And one day in the year of 2016, I decided it's time to leave the country and live life on my own terms. Kind of extreme and impulsive, I know, but that was my limited worldview on display. It was leaving the country or living a life of constant oppression. India for me was just what I had grown up with - an overprotective orthodox environment. At the end of 2017, I found myself in Canada. I had done it. I had finally convinced my parents to send me abroad - who during the 4 years of university, had never asked me if I was okay and if I was happy with where I was headed. Conversations revolved around whose son or daughter had been admitted in which university and who out of them had landed a six-figure job. It was extremely disheartening.

Life in Canada was quite strange initially. I had never travelled much because I was over protected as a child and my parents were never the kind to explore. So for the first time in my life, I had full control over everything. It was the kind of freedom that can be extremely dangerous. And it was. There are nights I don't clearly remember. There are days I regret. But the most dangerous thing, the one thing that left me just totally shattered and confused as to what is real and what is fantasy, was falling in love, or as I think of it now - my desire to be in love.

I had fallen for a man in the most consuming possible way. Head over heels, 'Behosh'' in love. 'Behosh' - the Urdu word for senseless. My childhood experiences made me think it's totally normal for someone to control me, to tell me off, to tell me I need to do better when there was an argument. Inside of me, there was almost this dark twisted need to be humiliated. I enjoyed the degradation. I was so sad but I was convincing myself that I just needed to follow his orders and make him happy because his happiness equals my happiness. I learnt this equation as a child. You make mommy and daddy happy and you always listen to them even when they tell you that they regret the day you were born. You just quietly deal with it all. That's how it works.

Things eventually ended between us after a year and a half. I won't get into the dirty details. But it was nasty. By the end of it all, I was at my lowest. I had lost weight, had started smoking, had no motivation to do anything with my life and was convinced my life was over. I will never be able to move on from this - I would tell myself when I would look at myself in the mirror, on my way to work in the bus, at work, at school, in the streets, at a restaurant, at the movies, everywhere. It was this voice, beyond my control - "You're so worthless. You don't deserve any love. Nor are you capable of truly loving someone. Look what you did. You let go of that one person who loved you." It was all my fault. That was the first year, all of it - spent with these voices. I would wake up in a blur, spend my days in a blur, go to sleep blankly staring at the ceiling or crying.

As years went by, I learnt to live a certain way. I started expressing myself through art - paintings, writing, music & film. I suddenly remembered how much I'd put on pause for this mess of a relationship. It was really even a relationship only in my head. I don't know what we were to him. But I won't deny - there were days I desperately wished even after it was over, that it meant something to him. I'm not sure why, but I did. Maybe it was a selfish wish.

Present day. We now talk every now and then. And even this year, I found myself listening to ghazals, looking at the raindrops trickling down the window panes in my apartment & telling myself to move on. It happened. Just fucking move on. But I swear I'm not lying when I say that the life I had imagined with him was something so close to my idea of home. And in very rare moments with him - I tasted that life. It was so sweet, so beautiful.

I forgave him a long time ago. I forgave him before I had forgiven myself. He needed more love than I ever did. He is still using people for selfish reasons. I told him one day - the ladder we climb is also the ladder we have to descend. He laughed it off.

I also forgave my parents. I had to. It was too heavy of a grudge to carry forever. Life is so short and they're growing old. They understand me now - in some way. I hope they've forgiven me too - for not being the perfect son.

I’ll admit it. My life right now is confusing. But I’ve never felt this confident before, ever. I’ve never been so in love with myself. Looking back at it, I just can’t believe that it took close to five years to finally accept that it had all happened to me. I don’t regret anything but it still shocks me sometimes. I really thought we were eternal lovers. Ugh. I was so naïve. It’s just annoying I guess. I’d only read about such heartbreaks in books or watched films about it. Living our lives in a race, we so easily forget that amidst a continuously moving world, there are hearts that are being shattered to pieces in each passing moment. So many stories go untold. So many people just never move on. So many lives change forever in an instant.

‘Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.’ — JOAN DIDION

We all walk around with a heart that has been broken in one way or the other. I realized that the more I held on to the magnanimity of my heartbreak, the more difficult it became to just live. It took an uncomfortably long time to learn how to love the broken parts of myself, the parts that will never truly fit perfectly into the structure of my soul. But I’m more than okay with that.

I finally know what joy feels like.

It feels like ‘Mohabbat’. It feels like a garden of roses on a late blue summer evening.