Can We Have Stories Without Love?

If it were asked, "Can the world be without war?" what would be our answer? We might readily reply: "Why, there would certainly be an end of war when those responsible for it are no longer for continuing it." Nevertheless, in spite of all that is said and done for the establishment of peace in the world, war and all its horrors are in full swing today. And in our despair we can only pray that God in his infinite mercy may intervene and put an end to it. Happily the question, "Can we have stories without love?" does not belong to that kind. No need for us indeed to feel reduced to the point of abandoning ourselves to a higher Will.

Can we have stories without love?…What does the question signify? Does it not simply mean this? Is it possible to write stories without treating of love? And if so written, can readers find pleasure in them?

What is a story? Let us first of all analyse it. "God has created man, and man out of his own mind has created the story," says a writer in Hindi. "So we may take it that since the world began the story has existed, and it will continue to exist so long as the world exists. In our childhood we listen to tales from the lips of our elders. As we grow up, the role falls on ourselves, and we begin telling them to our children. In our death we become no more than stories ourselves."

We derive a peculiar pleasure indeed in creating men and women like ourselves and subjecting them to the sorrows and pleasures of our own lives. If this were not a fact, we could be sure that the love of telling, and listening to, stories would not be found so universal!

In ancient days, mostly only tales with a moral were best valued. It is not to be inferred however from this that there were then no stories of love. What is the Ramayana, the greatest of all epics, if it is not thoroughly a love episode? Rama gave up the kingdom and all the pleasures of life, no doubt in order that his father may be true to his word. But does that fact enter our hearts with greater poignancy than the love which bound Rama and Sita together, or than the misery and anguish they had to undergo in being separated from each other? None can deny that it is a love so pure and divine as to lift high, and ennoble, life and all its aims. Poets have glorified only such a love, and have breathed into the songs they have created the fragrance of immortality.

"Love, love, love. No love, no life. Kings worshipping at the altar of love, can they ever think of war? Ministers locked up in sweet dreams of love, what thoughts can they have of war?" So sang the poet, Bharati, in Tamil.

In the West, during the Middle Ages, poets and writers were never tired of singing the praise of love. We read how in those days a brave youth succeeded in doing noble and daring deeds in order to win the heart of the maid he loved. He would risk his very life indeed if only the lady of his love would smile sweetly on him. Love in short was made so much of, the belief grew that "it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

Let us take the days of the Rajputs in India. How many stirring tales there are of deeds of valour and heroism which a Rajput youth would not shrink from, if but those deeds won to him the lady of his heart! One sees, however, that there is a world of difference between the love of that age and the love depicted in the stories of the present day. According to the theory of the eternal triangle in Western literature, two men and a woman, or two women and a man, are considered to be essential for the construction of a novel. The young man and the young woman, the central figures of the story, meet and fall in love. In strict adherence to the saying, "the course of true love never did run smooth," a second man or woman is brought in, to throw obstacles in the path of the lovers. The end is invariably determined by the mood of the author. Either it may be the wedding bells pealing forth joyously or the gloom of death and sorrow darkening the concluding pages. We may depend upon ninety per cent of the stories ending one way or the other.

The ancient days were rich in stories dealing not only with love but also with other great qualities such as truth, sacrifice, service, duty and mercy.

The Ramayana, it has already been said, is essentially a love story. The attraction of man and woman for each other is as eternal as the attraction between the moon and the sea, the iron and the magnet; and the theme can hardly appear stale to writers. True, but how can we classify the other great epic in Sanskrit, the Mahabharata? What is there indeed of love or of the pangs of separation from the beloved, in a tale of two families that quarreled and fought for the possession of a kingdom? It is a fact that man is born with a love of power and of riches just as much as he is born with his love of woman.

If we take Shakespeare’s play, "Romeo and Juliet," what do we find except love from first to last? The readers are themselves carried away by that great tide of love which was the undoing of Romeo and Juliet. Nothing seems to exist apart from love. But Shakespeare could not rest with "Romeo and Juliet." He wrote Macbeth in which man, swayed by great ambition, loses all that is human in him and descends to the foulest of crimes. The element of love is totally absent in this play. There is instead vile ambition which enslaved Macbeth. Shakespeare’s knowledge of the world taught him that jealousy and ambition were also overmastering passions like love, and this knowledge enabled him to create plays totally dissimilar to one another.

Again, the question: Can we have stories without love? We may with confidence reply in the affirmative. The question could have occurred to many out of the knowledge that most of the love stories appearing in the journals or in book-form are without life or substance. But are we to be persuaded from this that writers lack the capacity of handling themes other than love, or that, if they write dispensing with love, the stories are apt to leave the readers cold? It may be pointed out that the most trivial matter may be turned into good literature if only handled by the writer with sufficient skill. The Tamil novel entitled "Mami Goluvirukkai," written by the late Pandit Natesa Sastri may serve as an apt illustration of the above statement. The book must be quite familiar to the Tamil reading public. It may be remembered that it treats of no romantic love, but purely of domestic matters. We find in it no handsome young man meeting a handsome young woman and falling in love with her, but there is only a mother-in-law exercising her authority and treating harshly the poor daughter- in-law. In spite of the fact, however, that the whole story deals only with common domestic affairs, the novel is truly to be reckoned as one of the best books in Tamil literature. The author’s literary gift has achieved it. All the characters in the story move and talk like the real men and women we see around us. Is it not clear then that this novel, not dealing at all with love, is a definite challenge to the notion that the public is asking for only love stories?

We have yet another and perhaps more telling example in that admirable book, "Cranford." It shows only too well how the element of love can be completely absent in a novel and yet the novel be quite enjoyable. The book is written by a lady. As I went through it I could not but be lost in wonder how a book in which there was hardly any story, and which had nothing of the usual attractions of the novel, could be so interesting. The author chose a peaceful little village, far from the city with its allurements, for a ground; and a few old women with their silly habits, their small fears, joys and anxieties provided ample material for a complete novel. The women are all past fifty, and are old maids. Love and marriage are far from being familiar words to them. Yet how strange it is that our delight in the book is not a whit lessened by these facts!

We have, again, another instance of the ‘story without love’ in "Anandamath," the well-known novel by Bankim Chandra Chatterji, in Bengali. Love for one’s country is the main theme of the story. The pages are full of such national fervour that the reader finds his own heart welling up with that great emotion. Writers, therefore, may well take for their themes such qualities as love of country, self-sacrifice, duty, etc.

It must be admitted that ample scope is provided for the imagination whenever there occurs a great change over the social, religious and political outlook of the people. It is then indeed that writers leave off the beaten track and venture along new paths. Writers in the West do not seem to be obsessed with the idea that love alone is a fruitful theme for a story. They write thrilling detective novels, stories of mysterious murders and the trials of murders, all of which we read with keen delight.

It is needless to point out that the psychology of the child is a most interesting theme for the novelist. We have the works of the poet at Santiniketan, which speak eloquently for the statement. Can any except masters among writers presume to enter into the child’s mind with such sympathy and understanding? What a vivid imagination is revealed in the "Kabuliwala" and such other stories?

In the West, the freedom with which men and women mix with each other is responsible for the demonstration of love between the sexes, and also for the rivalry and jealousy which invariably follow. Hence it is quite natural that the public is provided with a goodly number of such stories. The argument, however, hardly holds good with regard to conditions here. Love stories should rather be regarded as an aberration from a true depiction of social conditions, in a country where custom does not allow much familiarity between the sexes.

We must now alter the question slightly, and ask, rather, "Can we have pictures without love on the screen?" Evidently film-producers have concluded that pictures without love can hardly appeal to the ‘taste’ of the people. Else, they cannot think of inserting a love-scene between the Brahmin landlord and his wife, in "Nandanar," a purely devotional play!

Love is not the only emotion which gains mastery over the heart. There are other and stronger emotions to which the heart becomes a total slave. If Tamil writers realise this, they can succeed in breaking fresh ground, which may indeed prove a great gain to Tamil literature.