Two Strong Filter Coffees Please
For some, love is the warm embrace at the end of an exhausting day, for others love is the shoulder to cry on, for some it is the shared laughter. For me, love is the bhaiyya at 'Mumbai chaat' who begins making an extra strong filter coffee the moment he sees me entering. It is familiarity and understanding that grew over frequent orders and wordless smiles. It is a familiarity that began with three to four flippant words and turned into a wordless understanding shared between humans whose lives intertwine without interconnecting for a sum total of 20 minutes every day. Of all the languages love chooses to speak in, the ones that convey its essence effortlessly is my favorite.
He doesn't know my name. He doesn't know who I am. All I am to him is a possibly caffeine addicted woman who shows up every evening at 3:30 with a huge bag, drooping shoulders and the weight of the world.
I am not sure why I used the word "love" to describe my twenty minute interactions with a random bhaiyya. There's a sense of abandon there. An abandon pregnant with relief; the kind you experience when you carelessly handle something that you have been walking on eggshells around. The buoyancy you feel once the weight of its superficial value has lifted and you see it for what it is.
I think, of all the feelings and emotions in the world, love is the feeling that's stringently boxed and labeled. Joy has different genres; it could be anything and in anything. So is sadness and grief. The endless array of permutations and combinations accessible to these emotions is out of bounds for love, especially because it's bound to specifics. Romantic love, platonic love, parental love. But it's folly to limit love to labels. Sometimes, love or whatever that feeling is, in actuality begins the moment you step out of suffocating labels that also come with strict rulebooks that are often counterproductive. I am in no way romanticizing a sort of careless, flippant love but rather the opposite, an intentional, slightly unhinged love that has a free rein over your heart. Or am I being too idealistic? But this is also a sort of love right? Being unhinged enough to actually call for a label-less love. But maybe it's best if I don't go down that rabbit hole right now. If I do, I will put my brain, mind and heart through an unnecessary loveless fight that will be beneficial to none. Perhaps it's best to let my heart flutter a little at the little consideration and attention given to my extra strong filter coffee, and call it love.