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i have seen gangaur since childhood.
every year, the same rituals returned like a season that never forgets its way… the same songs, the same idols of gauri and shiv, the same bright sarees, the same hands soaked in mehendi… and those same eyes.
those eyes.
as a child, i never understood them.
they were smiling, laughing, singing… and yet there was something deeper sitting inside them. something i could see, but not touch. like a word on the tip of the tongue that never fully comes out.
back then, gangaur was simple for me. it was colors. sweets. noise. movement. a reason to step outside and feel part of something beautiful.
but growing up has a strange way of peeling things.
it doesn’t remove them… it removes you from your old way of seeing them.
and slowly, the same festival that once felt light… starts to feel heavy with meaning.
i remember the phase when i began to question everything.
why do women fast?
why do they pray for a husband?
why is love always shown like something you have to wait for… suffer for… prove again and again?
why does devotion look so close to longing… and longing so close to pain?
was love always meant to be like this?
or did we make it like this?
and honestly… for a long time, it all felt outdated to me. like a story that belonged to another time… another world… another kind of people who believed in things we no longer do.
this year, when gangaur came again, i didn’t rush through it. and for the first time… it didn’t feel like a festival.
it felt like a question.
when i look at gauri and shiv now, i don’t see idols.
i see a kind of love that is not desperate… not constantly asking to be seen.
it just… is.
but what does that even mean?
gauri chose shiv.
but what does it mean to choose someone?
is it a one-time decision… or is it something you wake up and do again every day, even on the days when it feels difficult, unclear, almost silent?
and shiv…
he is everything the world runs after… power, detachment, completeness.
yet he turns towards her.
why?
what makes someone who needs nothing… still choose someone?
is love then a need… or is it a decision beyond need?
and if it is a decision… how many of us are actually capable of making it?
we talk so much about love today.
but do we understand it… or do we just react to it?
we want quick replies, quick confessions, quick certainty.
but what happens when love doesn’t move quickly?
what happens when it asks you to wait… not in suffering, but in stillness?
is waiting always painful… or have we just never learned how to wait without losing ourselves?
and then comes the question that feels uncomfortable to sit with,
are we even ready for the kind of love we keep asking for?
because a love like gauri’s is not just soft.
it is patient. it is rooted. it does not beg… but it does not run away at the first sign of difficulty either.
and a love like shiv’s is not just deep.
it is steady. it is aware. it does not cling… but when it chooses, it does not waver.
so where do we stand?
somewhere between impatience and fear?
somewhere between wanting to be chosen… and being too restless to truly choose?
and then there is devotion.
this word that feels so ancient… almost uncomfortable in today’s world.
devotion.
what does it even mean now?
to lose yourself in someone?
or to find a deeper version of yourself through someone?
when gauri prays, fasts, waits… is she shrinking herself?
or is she building something inside her that we have forgotten how to build?
and when shiv meditates, withdraws, stays silent… is he distant?
or is he simply not afraid of being alone?
what if love is not about filling emptiness… but about meeting someone when you are already whole?
but then again… what does “whole” even mean?
are we ever whole?
or are we just learning to carry our incompleteness better?
and if two incomplete people come together… does love complete them…
or does it expose everything they have been trying to hide?
sometimes i wonder…
maybe the old stories were never trying to give us answers.
8March 22, 2026 307
