The Indian Vocabulary of Love and its Meaning

14.01.2024

I’ve been watching Hindi films since I was a child. It is how I learnt to speak Hindi (my language at home – my mother tongue – is Punjabi, not Hindi). Hindi speakers have many words for love. Not like English speakers. Here are some – Ishq, Aashiqi, Mohabbat, Pyaar, Prem, Lagan, Chaahat… There’s probably more. Hindi is a rich language.

Here are some more metaphorical ones, which touch on some of the ways that love is experienced and conceptualised in Indian culture:

Ibaadat – Worship. When you love someone, you love them like a god or a goddess. They are important, powerful, masterful over you. They rule over your heart. They take the place of a god or a goddess, commanding all your loyalty and faith. You trust them without question. You hope everything from them.

Aetbaar – Belief. When you trust them with your heart. You can rely on them without question. They are the one person in the whole world that you can count on the most to stay with you through thick and thin. You expect everything from them, total commitment.

Wafaa – They hold your loyalty. You will never stray from them. The trust and the bond between you is unshakeable.

Behosh/Mere hosh udhgayee – Unconscious/My senses have flown – How love is experienced. Your mind goes on a holiday when you see them, think about them, are around them. They command all your attention. You can’t focus on anything else.

Amaanat – They say that your lover (usually a woman) is your ‘amaanat’ (‘thing or property committed to the trust and care of a person or group of persons’ – https://rekhtadictionary.com/meaning-of-amaanat?lang=hi ) A red flag for Western feminists, but indicates the possessiveness that a lover will have over their sweetheart – and even in English, you still say to someone ‘You are mine’ or ‘You are my girlfriend’.

Here are some terms of endearment which further indicate what love means in Indian culture:

Jaanu/Janaam/Jaaneman – ‘My Life’. Love is for life. Your lover is your life. They are everything for you and they are for you forever, like your own life. They are precious like your life.

Mitwa/Yaar – ‘Friend’. Indian culture does not make a distinction between friendship and love between a man and a woman in this term. Which perhaps indicates the truth – that your lover is your best friend.

Humraaz – Someone who has the same secrets as you – you share your secrets with them. You trust them. They are the only ones you can share your most personal thoughts with.

Humnava/Humsafar – Someone who is a fellow traveller through life’s journey with you (the ‘ride or die’ chick). You are committed to the same journey. You have the same mission in life.

Humdum – Someone who has the same life force/breath (‘dum’) as you, your soulmate, someone who is the other part of yourself. The sense of connection, of seeing yourself in them.

Humdard – Someone who shares the same pain as you, because you are so connected. What you feel, they feel. They are the mirrors of you and you are the mirror of them (love’s mirror).

Huzoor – Master – they rule over you because you love them. And you accept their sovereignty over you.

Deewana – Crazy one – because you go crazy in love for someone.

See more terms of endearment from the Hindi movies here:

150 Urdu-Hindi Terms of Endearment To Call Your Lover This Valentine’s Day

Being Forced to Pay Extortion for Love: An Analysis of the Threshold Raise to £38,700 to bring a foreign family partner to the UK

Dr. Suneel Mehmi – LLB Honours in Laws, LLM in Law and Society, PhD in the Law and English Literature

JAI MAA KAALI!

13.01.2023

The Legal Change (FACTS)

From April 2024, the minimum salary requirement for people who want to bring a foreign family member or partner to the UK will rise to £38,700. This is a jump from the current threshold of £18,600.

Comparative Law (FACTS)

Where countries do express the requirement as a minimum income, such as in Belgium or Norway, Library research has so far not found any examples of the threshold being set above or close to £38,700 (the level the UK Government ultimately intends to reach).

Changes to legal migration rules for family and work visas in 2024

SUNEEL’S ANALYSIS: Comparative law shows that this government has to be seen as extorting a price on love compared to every other supposedly civilised Western country in the world. They have deliberately set an unrealistic threshold to counter what they see as the threat of immigration. So, the UK is a pioneer in racism and paranoia over immigration compared to every other country.

The Rationale (SUNEEL’S ANALYSIS)

Obviously, the aim is to cut immigration. However, the unspoken secondary rationale is to construct immigrants as ‘burdens’ on the system who might claim benefits from British people by emphasising that families have to support themselves without any help from the government:

‘Ministers hope the move will cut immigration levels, which have reached record highs in recent years, and ensure families can support themselves’.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-67637504

The ministers are constructing immigration as illegal, attaching the label of illegal to the immigrants that have come into the country, as though this is a violation of fairness, ‘the rules’, the law and order. Again, there is the perception that the immigrants are taking over the country, that their entry is ‘unsustainable’, as though this country with all its wealth and resources couldn’t accommodate them:

In a statement to MPs, the home secretary said migration to the UK “needs to come down” and there had been “abuse” of health and care visas for years.

“Enough is enough,” Mr Cleverly said. “Immigration policy must be fair, legal, and sustainable.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67612106

The government is using its own failure in providing infrastructure and services to the communities to justify the action it is taking, pitting us against them to cover up its own failure of duty:

‘People are understandably worried about housing, GP appointments, school places and access to other public services when they can see their communities growing quickly in numbers.’

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-12-04/debates/921A08A2-F615-48F2-8C56-423A29556F9F/LegalMigration

Conclusion and Suneel’s Personal Comment

While seeming to apply to everyone in a false pretension of ‘universality’, the policy is deliberately targeted at ethnic minority men who are the most likely to marry abroad and to bring a partner from abroad. As such, this legislation has to be seen as an attack on the ethnic minority men and their ability to marry and to reproduce in this country. This is a deliberately racist and sexist policy.

Yes, white British men and white British women can meet people from abroad or that are not UK citizens and marry them. No one is saying that is not the case. However, what is the bigger likelihood about who this will happen to – someone who has deep connections with the people of another country, or people that most likely don’t?

The policy asks the ethnic minority man to become wealthier than the average worker. What is the average wage in this country? The threshold is above it –

According to the ONS, the average salary in the UK in 2023 for all employees was £29,669, a 6.8% increase from 2022. For full-time workers, the average UK salary in 2023 was £34,963, a 5.8% increase YoY. https://standout-cv.com/pages/average-uk-salary

Why should ethnic minority men (or men that want to marry someone from abroad) have to be wealthier than all of the other men in this country to bring someone over? Why do they have to work harder than everyone else? There is no reason for it, except to discourage people from marrying someone from abroad. And to make anyone that can’t earn enough feel like a man that cannot even provide for his family and afford to love someone from a community in a different country, to render them financially powerless and devalue them and their ties and roots.

The ethics of the legislation are horrible. How disgusting is it to put a price on love? How disgusting is it to put up walls around love so that people cannot move within the channels of love? Are other people from other countries – who haven’t been brought up in the privilege and wealth that we have – whose financial problems have probably been caused by us in this country and the Western world – aren’t they loveable? Can they not be the wives and mothers, or husbands and fathers in this country?

The government’s financial control of the family unit – the original economy – is unethical, unfair, unjust and, I would argue, illegal. They are acting ultra vires – everyone has the right to a family irrespective of money. Someone here can marry someone and then claim benefits because they have married a UK citizen. Someone from here can have kids if they can’t afford them and then rely on the government for help. And they do. This ‘problem’ that legislates love is a false problem because the government only sees immigrants as a burden on the system out of racism.

Can I ask you, do you have to buy the right to be a citizen in a country, or to become a wife, husband, father or mother? Do you have to buy these things? Since when? Why do you have to be a wallet to love someone? Is money everything in this world, the only condition for love and the family? How disgusting do you have to be to think this? Isn’t the government supposed to support love and the family? Why is nobody challenging these laws? This law is the mark of a government that only cares about money and keeping its money to itself, that literally sees citizenship and love as expenditure that is not worth having – unless you keep to your own in this country. Endogamy is the practice of only marrying within your own community, clan or tribe. This is the legislation of endogamy which bears striking similarity to those people that make their children marry their cousins so that they can keep the money in the family – a practice only concerned with resources, ownership and a financial distrust of any outsider who will come in and take a portion of the share for themselves.

PAUL COCKSEDGE – The Creator of ‘Coalescence’ in the Painted Hall, Old Royal Naval College (Notes)

08.01.2023

QUOTATIONS FROM WEB SOURCES ARE GIVEN IN ITALICS – ALL QUOTES ARE REFERENCED AND USED AS ‘FAIR USE’ FOR NON-COMMERCIAL RESEARCH PURPOSES FOR THIS BLOG TO SPREAD EDUCATION AND KNOWLEDGE.

Biography

He says that he has Greek and Welsh blood and that he wanted to be a pilot when he was a child, his favourite TV show is Scooby Doo and that his favourite author was Roald Dahl (who was an inventor himself – he invented a medical device and things like his own desk – Charlie and the Chocolate factory is about invention – Suneel). The artist’s favourite film is ‘The Dark Knight’. His favourite sandwich filling is Cheese and pickle.

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/20-questions-with-paul-cocksedge

Born in 1978, raised in North London, Paul Cocksedge lives and works in Hackney, East London.

His works encompass public art, sculpture and architectural installation. The artist has an interest in science, with ‘a forensic investigation into the limitations of processes, materials, and the human body’ and attention given to ‘our relationship to the Earth

The artist believes that he ‘came to art on his own terms’ which brings a ‘freshness in perspective’.

https://www.paulcocksedgestudio.com/bio

What interests me as a designer is to be open to ideas coming from any direction. I’m also always sort of interested in like, the invisible things such as electricity, and gravity and magnetism, these types of energies.

https://www.moooi.com/uk/story/meet-paul-cocksedge

The artist was once evicted from his Hackney studio which he occupied for 12 years (which was once a Victorian stable) to make way for a new property development. He created a work called ‘Eviction’ by excavating material from the floor to make furniture:

Cocksedge hopes the work will cause people to reflect on the uncertainty affecting creative centres around the world, caused by rising property prices and socio-political upheavals.

https://www.dezeen.com/2017/03/22/paul-cocksedge-mines-floor-hackney-studio-furniture-excavation-evicted-milan-design-week-2017/

How Paul Cocksedge’s Art has been Described

For Paul Cocksedge, each body of work is a vehicle for narrative, drawing inspiration from and abstracting the physical process of making. Cocksedge’s practice can be defined by a search for hidden values and properties in order to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

https://www.friedmanbenda.com/artists/paul-cocksedge/

Selected Notable Works Besides ‘Coalescence’ with Suneel’s Analysis (see links for photographs)

If you look at his works, they are each remarkable. The artist has frozen metal furniture together to join it. He has’ completed a spiral staircase featuring a garden, a library and a tea bar’ https://www.dezeen.com/tag/paul-cocksedge . He has created a table solely from a single sheet of folded metal paper. These are a few of the artworks which I found interesting and related to the themes of ‘Coalescence’

‘Please be Seated’

A rippling wave rises up to form arches for people to pass beneath, and curves under to create spaces to sit, lie and relax in Please Be Seated.

“This piece was an instinctive response to the space and the rhythm of people through it. It fills a public square and engages passersby, without obstructing the space.” – Paul Cocksedge

https://www.paulcocksedgestudio.com/please-be-seated

Suneel’s Comment – Innovation in seating and the space that it encloses, so that the area can be used for multiple purposes of leisure interaction. The design is effective because it uses shade as a resource – you can sit or lie underneath the seating. This shows the artist’s attention to changing conditions, the influence of outside influences on space and art, the play with previous structures and forms to build new dimensions in the art. The rippling wave looks like an opening flower from above – it is beautiful to behold.

‘Bourrasque Dior’

Inspired by nature and the morphology of paper, Bourrasque – which means “flurry”, or “gust” – is a free-flowing sculpture that harnesses the magic of light and electricity.

The piece conceived to mimic pages scattered by a gust of wind is illuminated and bathes the surrounding environment with light.

“Bourrasque is the representation of the power of new technology, creating a magical fleeting moment. This is an effortless yet detailed gesture, capturing electricity floating in the air. The iconic Dior boutique was the perfect environment to install Bourrasque as a permanent piece.” – Paul Cocksedge.

https://www.paulcocksedgestudio.com/bourrasque-dior

Suneel’s Comment: As with seating in ‘Please be Seated’ and the coal in ‘Coalescence’, Cocksedge takes an old form – paper – and makes it into something new with new technology. The technology casts the material in a new light, gives it a new purchase on the imagination. As with ‘Coalescence’, the piece is about the ‘power of new technology’: the new forms that it can create, the new experiences and vision (the new sculpting of the wind). Similarly, ‘Coalescence’ has to be seen as a meditation on the superseding of fossil fuel by newer, cleaner, renewable fuels and the power and the experiences that they will generate to shape the world.

‘Living Watercolour Pavilion’

Thousands of translucent glass discs are overlaid to create a three-dimensional chromatic experience that changes according to shifting sun and shade.

Each of the colours chosen for the Expo 2020 Dubai UK Pavilion comes from the flag of an exhibiting nation, expressing unity, partnership and possibility.

A sculptural centrepiece envelops visitors in colour and light, giving the sense of an ‘impossible’ structure.

“We were drawn to the idea of looking outwards for inspiration. This informed the entire architecture of the pavilion, which we designed as a sculptural watercolour that plays with the natural environment to connect with people.” – Paul Cocksedge.

https://www.paulcocksedgestudio.com/living-watercolour-pavilion

Suneel’s Comment: This beautiful and multi-coloured design which represents the unity of the nations of the world in the aegis of art explores the themes of togetherness and union that are evident in ‘Coalescence’ from its very title (which means a joining together to make a greater whole). As with ‘Coalescence’, the artist has taken single units and combined them to form something greater and impactful as art.

‘Poised’

Poised embodies the elegance and amenability of paper. Half a ton in weight, the steel table appears improbable upon investigation.

Intensive calculations into gravity, mass, and equilibrium mean the work is perfectly weighted and stable in spite of appearing ready to topple.

https://www.paulcocksedgestudio.com/poised

Suneel’s Comment: An investigation of fragility and resilience, just like the message of ‘Coalescence’ which is that the world is fragile at the moment but we can come together to make a new world of light which is resilient against any threats – even though it seems ‘impossible’ at the moment. A message of hope and the defeat of adversity – the enduring message of ‘Coalescence’. A tribute to the power of design and the artist’s imagination – the basic building block of design is the blank piece of paper, the strongest force in the human universe to create the world anew.

Suneel’s Favourites in Astronomy Photographer of the Year – National Maritime Museum

05.01.2024

https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/astronomy-photographer-year/exhibition

Since I work in the area, it is quite convenient for me to see the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition during my lunch breaks. So I often go down to see it. I love looking into the sky of stars and look at the universe which envelops us, the larger world that gives us perspective and power. Because we are all part of something larger. We are the consciousness of the universe, if it has one. We are its only known intelligent life forms. And she is our mother.

This is a universe that has been taken away from us through the narrow mindedness of the world, through light pollution, urbanisation and industrialisation. That view of the skies which was us for thousands of years and millions of years when we were not yet quite human has been taken away from us by Them. This exhibition gives us back our continuous inheritance. That is why it is important to me and why I love it.

Here are some of my favourite images from the exhibit and why:

Filip Hrebenda ‘Green Snakes’

A photograph of green aurorae, the coloured lights in the sky. Amongst reflections of water and and stark black lava-esque mountains and ridges. Green is one of my favourite colours and you can see the hazy greens here melting into the skies. The leading lines of the reflecting water lead the eye towards the peak of the mountain, giving an effect of the sublime – overwhelming power that engulfs us. It is a truly awesome and epic shot which leaves us in awe at the beauty and the mystery of nature.

Peter Hoszang ‘The Green Glow’

The same subject as before – the coloured lights in the sky and the mountains. This one has less of a warm feel because there are more blues. And there is also ice in the waters. It is a different vibe, but with the same sublime feeling, since the lights in the sky dwarf the snow-capped mountains.

Monika Deviat ‘Brushstroke’

The aurora – the coloured lights – again green, look more abstract here because they are only seen against the night sky and the stars. The aurora is divorced from the setting. The artist says it looks like a brush stroke. The image is effective because we concentrate on the lights without any distractions in the background. Simple and focused, isolated. The beauty of light, pure and simple.

Vincent Beudez ‘Butterfly’

Purple, white and green aurora in the shape of a butterfly. Amazingly poetic and beautiful. The word butterfly is associated through tradition with the ancient Greek word ‘psyche’, which means soul. Wouldn’t a soul – if such a thing existed – come in the form of a butterfly of light? Radiant, ravishing, roaring.

Katie McGuinness ‘Close Encounters of the Haslingden Kind’

A stunning view of Haslingden’s Halo – a panopticon sculpture – amidst the night sky. The shining structure pictured against the movements of the night sky through a time lapse capture really caught my imagination with the blue and the white hues. It was a moment where you realise that the future that they imagined, the technological future, has actually become a reality for us now. The technology, the art, the structures that we make, seem like something that has come almost from an alien intelligence that is years ahead of us in thought and technology. But it is us that did it. We are the alien intelligence.

Angel An ‘Grand Cosmic Fireworks’
Dancing, fluorescent lights above the Himalaya mountains (atmospheric luminescence made of plasma and electric discharge). What is there not to like? There is something like seaweed about the lights that are almost immersed in the clear water of the skies. It is a scene which I could never have imagined and this is what gives it its power. Things like this are happening beyond our eyes, our comprehension, our ken. They enlarge us when we see them.

Chunlin Liu ‘Autumn Milky Way Arc and an Orion Bolide’

There is something so exceptionally Chinese about this image of the Milky Way arc, something so emblematic of the art. The horizontality of the image for one thing, the delicacy of the skies that have been rendered, the mountain scene which we associate with Chinese ink brush drawings. Amazingly beautiful, delicate and wonderful. A loving homage to the perspective of a culture which has been fostered carefully through thousands of years of an art tradition.

Vikas Chander ‘The Dancing Trees of Sumba’

These mangrove trees are shaped in such a way that people call them the dancing trees. They look as though they are frozen in a dance posture. Against the beautiful sky reflecting in the water which is like a mirror, they are incredibly elegant, a reminder that nature thrives in the universe, it dances in the dance of creation.

Mehmet Ergun ‘The Great Solar Flare’

I think of myself as the Sun (my name is Sun-eel). This amazingly detailed, textured view of the sun and its awesome power is really an iconic image. So bold. The sun fills the frame, giving that air of dominance as the ruler of our galaxy.

Alex Savenok ‘C/2021 A1 (Leonard) in the Sky of Israel’

Above the Negev desert and its picturesque ridges, we see ‘a celestial visitor in the night sky’. The image looks like the covers of science fiction books. It doesn’t seem real. Yet this is our earth at night time, if only we had the opportunity to see it. A taste of what we have had to miss because of the industrialised world and urban living. A taste of what we have had to lose, that connection with the skies and the reality of this planet, this universe, our mother.

Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau ‘Crescent Moon in a Magical Sunset’

A beautiful crescent moon in an orange, yellow and white sky. A sense of the crescent swirling in the clouds, full of movement and dance.

James Baguley ‘The Dark Wolf – Fenrir’

A homage to Norse mythology – Fenrir the wolf caught in red (a molecular cloud surrounded by red hydrogen gas). A reminder of the phrase that ‘Nature is red in tooth and claw’ – a lesson to be learnt from a perusal of this image. If anyone knows the mythology of Fenrir – I used to read mythology books as a child and was obssessed with the myths – this picture would become pregnant with meaning. With the themes of fatherhood, destruction, trickery, imprisonment, the animality of the human…

Steeve Body ‘The Majestic Tarantula Nebula’
Runwei X and Binyu Wang ‘The Running Chicken Nebula’

Both of these are a ‘cosmic ballet’ in glorious and awe-inspiring colour. Showing that human made abstract art can’t rival the play of forces in the universe to create patterns in the universe on a colossal scale as works of art. Full of fire and life.