India, Feb. 8 -- The oft-quoted saying is that 'All the world loves a lover' but perhaps this is not so true considering the horrors that lovers have had to encounter, the world over, great tragedies and obstructions. Yet there is no way one cannot avoid the four-letter word called Love. And more so in spring, so top of the charts is a novel by Tarana Husain Khan titled 'The Courtesan, Her lover and I', published by Hatchet. Khan, a cultural historian and author, who made a name for herself by writing on the famous cuisine of the erstwhile state of Rampur in UP, now brings out a delightful novel that leaves the reader enchanted with passionate love stories across centuries from the same state. The book brings love across centuries centre stage with Rukmani, a girl born in a Hindu family and married to a Muslim man from Rampur, who decides to write about the famous 19th century poet Dagh Dehlvi who falls in love with courtesan Munni Bai Hajab. As Rukmani moves through the archives of the Rampur Raza Library tracing the story of the courtesan and poet, she soon finds herself drifting into passion as she spends time with Daniyal, who emerges as the custodian of Rampur's past. And then we are face to face with the suffering of love and also its intensity: 'Hamari taraf ab woh kam dekhate hain/ Woh nazarein nahi jinko ham dekhate hain' In liberal translation: (The glances falling my way are less, neither the gaze so looked for). Thus begins a mellifluous and magical narrative of love then and now with the protagonist telling her lover and herself: "We are together in embrace in some dimension of time. That part of my brain is mapped out for you". Such is the wonder of love! And now onto another tale of intense love by a city writer, Ajay Singh Rana, who won the Haryana Sahitya Akademi Premchand Award, and has now come out in a second edition, giving a fresh energy to his writings. He says of his writing flow, "If a subject arouses the writer's emotions then the ink of the pen happily flows to create a world of its own". It was certainly so with the novel in hand as Rana affirms that the novel was for him a work of passion as he became attached to the characters he created himself. He says, "Writing on the subject of love, I forgot that I am an earnest teacher in school taming the feisty boys and I returned to times of my own college days!" He adds that the head and heart just do not partner in the journey of writing on love. The head just makes you save relationships but it is with the heart that one finds love. True enough as the well- known Urdu poet Jigar Moradabadi says: 'Yeh Ishq nahi aasan', bas itna samajh leeje, ik aag ka dariya hai, aur doob ke jaana hai' (Love is no easy matter, just keep that in mind, it is a river of fire, one has to drown to reach). So it was with the author as he created his characters less from life and more from imagination. Love has its own compulsions and paradoxes, so the mind is required to sort them once again turning to the heart and even the soul. What after all is love? Indeed love has many definitions but these don't help for it has to be felt as it becomes the very soul of existence. It takes a Sufi mystic poet like Rumi to give words to the emotion that yearns to conquer all: 'I love myself... I love you', 'I love you...I love myself'. So the author set out to explore his own thoughts and emotions in a journey from one to the other. The novel was finally set in the backdrop of the terrorism of Kashmir and a cross-religious silent love between Sneha, a Hindu girl, and Sahil, a Kashmiri Muslim youth in the army fighting the terrorists as a commando. The two are parted but they meet again in Kashmir where they at last are in an embrace only to die together as the bullets of terror hit them. This cinematic novel is likely to feature in a film titled, 'Tera Naam Ishq', and the author is working on the script. It is a poignant story and told well by Rana of love in the times of hate. Warming a cold winter evening last week was poetry reading by one of the young Urdu poets from Delhi, Abbas Qamar, who has made his mark in giving a fresh metaphor to ghazal of resistance well described as 'Romance of Resistance'. Urdu ghazal is usually associated with high romance in its rhythmic edifice. The inspiring evening was hosted by the 'Thinkers Collective', of the city Institute of Development and Communication Studies, headed by veteran Pramod Kumar. Abbas, who is associated with Rekhta in Delhi and also following his PhD in study of violence in India at the Jamia Millia, defining the anatomy of the Ghazal: said "Traditionally the ghazal is all romantic and often described as lines a lover creates to talk to the beloved. However, even in the 18th century of Meer Taqi Meer, we have the poet addressing unjust order in society of have and have not". Mirza Ghalib took this tradition forward. Since then we have had many revolutionary Urdu poets, ranging from Akabar Alahabadi, Faiz Ahmad Faiz to Sahir Ludhianvi, who have spoken out, come what may, against the existing social order. Abbas was born in 1994 in Jaigahan village in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, and this young poet has the gall in him to be the representative voice of the tumultuous century we are passing through as he says: 'Jo dekhta hoon wohi bolne ka aadi hoon/ Main apne shehar ka sab se bara fasadi hoon (I am in the habit of speaking what I see and that makes me the leading rioter of my city). He started writing in 2017 and, interestingly, that very year he was invited to recite at a mushaira in Chandigarh. This was his second visit here and Pramod of IDC says: "I had heard him many times on Rekhta and other mushairas online and requested him to be here." We wait to hear more of his poetry in our city....