Tum Hi Ho (You Are The One)

We all love love stories, don't we? The idyllic romances shown on the big screen swell our hearts with the hope that one day, we too would have a fairy-tale romance.. Despite nursing multiple heartbreaks and tolerating the wounds inflicted by our 'lovers', we remain drunk on the wine of love hoping that one day it would extricate us from our miserable existence. (Read: Wounded in Love?)

Few realize the love they are searching for is not be found in this world. Some of us know this intuitively. This explains why we love being in 'love' more than we love our partners. Love is God. God is Love. When you are in love, the nectar that you feel is actually a tiny taste of what 'true love' really is.

As Srila Prabhupada explains lucidly...

"The basic principle of the living condition is that we have a general tendency to love someone. No one can live without loving some one else. This propensity is present in every living being. The missing piece, however, is where to direct our love so that everyone is included and can be happy. At the present moment, human society teaches one to love his country or family or his personal self, but there is no information on where to direct the loving propensity so that everyone will be happy. We have failed to create peace and harmony in human society, even by such great attempts as the United Nations or our economic and scientific progress, because we have missed this point. That missing point can be found in awakening the our original love for Krishna(God). If we learn how to love Krishna then it is easy to immediately and simultaneously love every living being. It is like pouring water on the root of the tree-all parts of the tree are nourished. Or supplying foodstuffs to the stomach-all parts of the body are nourished. When we are situated in that position we can enjoy a blissful life"

Ultimately all religion boils down to this: love of God....  And this love is more intimate and special than the love of this world, which is just a perverted reflection of this very divine love. This is not a love to be indulged in every Sunday in a church or temple, but a love to be relished every moment of our lives. Faith is required here. You trust your spouses, don't you? Even though they are imperfect beings and many times hurt you with their insensitivity and callousness. Compared to this God is the perfect being and knows the heart of every person in this world. With our welfare always on his mind, even when we think he 'hurts' us, its something very good hidden in it. God wants nothing from us but to share with us the love he has for us...

This lyrics of this soulful track actually extrapolates the deep and all consuming love we need to have for our Lord....

Tum Hi Ho (You Are The One)

Movie: Aashiqui 2

Music: Mithoon

Singer: Arijit Singh

Lyrics

Hum tere bin ab reh nahin sakte
Tere bina kyaa vajood meraa

I can't live without you now,

What's my existence without you..

Tujh se judaa gar ho jaayenge
To khud se hi ho jaayenge judaa

If I get separated from you,

I'll be separated from my own self..

Kyonki tum hi ho
Ab tum hi ho
Zindagi, ab tum hi ho
Chain bhi, meraa dard bhi
Meri aashiqui ab tum hi ho

Because you alone are,

Now you only are,

life. You're my life.

My peace, and my pain,

you alone are my love..

Teraa meraa rishtaa hai kaisaa
Ik pal door gawaaraa nahi
Tere liye har roz hain jeete
Tujh ko diyaa meraa waqt sabhi
Koi lamhaa meraa naa ho tere binaa
Har saans pe naam teraa

How's this relationship of ours,

I don't like distance of even a moment

Every day, I live for you

All my time is for you..

There shouldn't be a moment of mine without you,

There is your name on every breath..

Tere liye hi jiyaa main

Khud ko jo yoon de diya hai

Teri wafaa ne mujh ko sambhaalaa

Saare ghamon ko dil se nikaala

Tere saath mera hai naseeb juDaa

Tujhe paa ke adhoora naa raha

For you, I lived

I have given myself (to you)

Your faith [actually means 'my love for you' here] took care of me

Took all the sorrows from (my) heart

With you my fate is attached,

Getting you, Nothing is incomplete (within me, I got completed)..

Madness in love

Chaos of life blurring away

O my dear lord Krishna,

The more I contemplate on you, my lord.. the more attached I'm becoming to you everyday.. It is like my lord.. the background of my life is getting more and more blurred each day and my focus turning to you.. O lord.. in everything and in every person and in every situation I search for you..Those things O Lord which don't carry your fragrance, I'm inclined to reject right away..

Prabhupada praying in temple

I'm especially desirous of associating with your pure devotees my lord.. Nothing is better than their association..In my present circumstances, the only way to physically associate with your devotees, my lord, is to go to your temple..opened by the ISKCON.. lord..great are your devotees..giving this chance to come to you to every person..but going to the temple is many times not convenient.. that leaves me with the company of His Divine Grace A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada's books and the kirtan (Congregational chanting of the lord's holy name) recordings on my cellphone.

Mirabai singing the lord's glories

Maybe that explains my dear lord.. why I'm increasingly becoming enamored by your devotee of the highest order..Mirabai.. Again and again Lord.. I read her many compositions.. trying to understand her love for you my lord.. but it seems almost impossible.. for she herself proclaims...it is not possible for anyone to understand her except for the person who is in her shoes..i.e. with a love for you my lord that matches the intensity of hers..her love is pure madness.. although colloquial wisdom proclaims that people do become a little mad in love.. being sport for things they never favored earlier..enjoying life as it unfurls.. If the love affairs of the mundane world can produce such marvelous changes in a person.. what to speak of divine love, where the object of love is not a flesh and bone human being, but you my lord yourself..and its never a one-sided love affair.. o dear lord.. its just pure bliss when you reciprocate.. you blow my breath away.. your ways are as miraculous as you are..

*If this sounds like fiction to you.. I urge you to put aside your misgivings and give it a try.. faith can be the greatest asset of a person.. if you have faith in thy lord.. you have everything.. Let us pray to the lord to keep our faith steady.. and never let it waver..*

Now hear it from Mirabai.. ..in this transcendental composition..

I am mad with Love
I am mad with love
And no one understands my plight.
Only the wounded
Understand the agonies of the wounded,
When the fire rages in the heart.
Only the jeweler knows the value of the jewel,
Not the one who lets it go.
In pain I wander from door to door,
But could not find a doctor.
Says Mira: Harken, my Master,
Mira's pain will subside
When Shyam comes as the doctor.

- Mirabai

*Here Harken and Shyam refers to Lord Krishna, and are among a few of the many names used to address him*

Jai Mirabai!
Jai Shri Krishna!

Aag ka Darya

"Yeh ishq nahi aasaan, bas itna samajh lee jiye
Ek aag ka darya hai, Aur doob ke jaana hai"

This Love, it ain't easy; one needs to understand, it is an ocean of fire (Aag ka darya) and you can only drown in it to cross it
- Daagh Dehlvi

Every time I read this famous quotation it gives me chills.. O lord Krishna people are afraid of coming to you...surrendering to you my lord..afraid to be dependent on your mercy alone... They would rather rely on themselves.. they would rather work themselves to the bone for the things of the material happiness... they are afraid to commit to you lord... afraid to be consumed in your love.. for one who tastes the nectar of your love.. never comes back to this material world..he is gone forever my lord..he becomes mad with your love.. the mundane things of this material world no longer hold any fascination for him.. outwardly he may look a loser by the worldly standard of today... but he has what no one else has.. that priceless gift that cannot be bought..the nectar of your love.. the vision of your lotus feet..

Nobody could have expressed this better than Mira in this poem..

Strange is the Path of love

Do not mention the name of love,
O my simple-minded companion.
Strange is the path
When you offer your love.
Your body is crushed at the first step.
If you want to offer love
Be prepared to cut off your head
And sit on it.
Be like the moth,
Which circles the lamp and offers its
body.
Be like the deer, which, on hearing the
horn,
Offers its head to the hunter.
Be like the partridge,
Which swallows burning coals
In love of the moon.
Be like the fish
Which yields up its life
When separated from the sea.
Be like the bee,
Entrapped in the closing petals of the
lotus.
Mira’s lord is the courtly Giridhara.
She says: Offer your mind
To those lotus feet.
- Mirabai

O lord .. my dear lord.. Please shower your mercy on me dear lord .. Mirabai was a devotee of you my lord of the highest highest order.. if I am able to love you with 1/1000 of her intensity my lord, I would consider my life to be a success.. My heart is hard hard stone my lord, only your mercy can help melt it.. I pray to thy lotus feet my lord, i pray...

Jai Mirabai!
Jai shri Krishna!