If you have been following this column, you would have realised that for weeks on end, we are on a trek, climbing this difficult mountain called “love”. This trek has taken us through an interesting scenery of relationships,

undulating landscapes of emotions, shown us the dark valleys inside our own minds and now we are trudging upwards, looking beyond our frail selves, on a fairly high altitude, where the threat of losing our trail is very real.
If my editor hadn’t given me such freedom, and so many of you readers weren’t glued to this page, she might have stepped in to say, “Enough, now don’t get philosophical. This isn’t Vedanta Rocks, your readers won’t appreciate.” But she hasn’t said that so far, so I’ll just continue climbing.
Over the weeks, we saw how the real enemy to love is inside our very selves, manifesting as anger and jealousy from deep-rooted fear of losing the chance to find and keep a mate. We saw how we follow our inbuilt programme. We figured out that free will is an illusion, that we are programmed to follow invisible commands designed to prolong the species and that programme treats us as expendables and love as a passing fad.
Love is an emotion we see, read and hear, but rarely feel. Indeed, the whole world has a huge deficit of it and everyone uses metaphors of love. But in truth, there isn’t much love inside most people’s hearts.
And yet, we haven’t come so far and let the programme control us. We do have a free will — it’s no illusion. We have the capacity to bypass the programme and reinvent ourselves. With some effort, yes, we can add a new twist to the DNA, a love twist that instructs the programme, ‘Hey, whenever I wink, wave and nod, just fill me up with love baby.” Once you have recoded yourself, it should be as easy as that. One wave and nod and the heart should begin to dance to a music unheard, sway to a song without words that keeps leaning out of meaning, yet delights you beyond expression.
“Okay dude, how do we do that?” Many ways, I say. Confidently create your own way that comes naturally to you. But here’s what works for me. I spent ages focusing and un-focusing on the issue, till one fine day I suddenly figured out a simple and beautiful truth that if you could feel it once you could feel it a zillion times. And that your capacity to love is independent of your capability to feel love.
Once I understood this totally, I realised that emotions respond to commands. On a silent command from an invisible programme, your heart blossoms and pours out the emotion called love. Now, you can command it to drench you in its rain shower to wet every cell in your body. Initially, it will raise a few doubts. It will ask, “Who shall I direct this love at? There isn’t any gorgeous chick in sight.”
Punch in a new reprogramme code and say to yourself, “I love the whole of this life and every blessed moment of it. I don’t need a reason, an excuse or a person anymore.”
The first flush of feeling, the blossom at dawn that faded at nightfall was just a reminder of the huge potential that lies dormant, waiting for our command to open it up. The programme of life used what it needed to use, but it never disabled our capacity to feel the emotion. We disabled it with our petty thoughts, fears, anxieties; needless desires that we knew would make us penniless and miserable. But it’s never too late. With a bit of intelligence and right effort, we can simply sweep out all useless emotions and dumb desires out of our minds.
This is the summit friends, and the end of our trek. We have reached the peak and there is no need to ever climb down to the plains again. Stay here forever and feel the bliss. This also concludes this long essay on love. But there is never a last word.
Experiment with yourself, push the envelope on your positive emotions and let me know what you feel. The most compelling five or 15 letters I will publish here on this column and promise to personally acknowledge the rest. Have a great Sunday.

The writer is a film director