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

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