Perhaps Love Bows Before It Holds You

I had the strangest vision once.

It came to me unexpectedly, while I was on my way to meet someone. I wasn’t thinking about weddings. I wasn’t imagining marriage. I wasn’t searching for another love story.

I am already a married woman. I have two children. I know love in its real form—not merely the butterflies and longing, but the responsibilities, disagreements, sacrifices, school mornings, finances, families, exhaustion, laughter, companionship, and the quiet work of building a life with another person.

I already know what it is to love my husband.

And yet, suddenly, there it was.

A vision so vivid that for a moment it felt less like imagination and more like stepping into a memory that hadn’t happened.

I saw myself as a bride.

Red lehenga. Gold against my skin. Mehendi dark upon my hands. Bangles resting at my wrists. Flowers everywhere.

There was music and laughter, the fragrance of jasmine and roses, the warmth of lights beneath a beautiful evening sky. Pastel flowers surrounded the mandap, diamonds caught the light, families embraced, children ran between tables, cameras flashed, and somewhere nearby the holy fire waited for its seven circles.

And then I saw you. YOU.

Walking towards me in cream-white Indian attire.

And suddenly, in a place filled with hundreds of people, there were only two.

You.

And me.

Your eyes found mine.

There is something deeply feminine about being looked at by a man you desire and realizing that, for those few seconds, he cannot see anything else either.

That feeling came over me.

That warmth.

That softness.

That almost shy awareness of being a woman standing before a man.

I imagined you coming closer, and somewhere beneath all that bridal red and gold, beneath the jewellery and the flowers and the eyes of everyone around us, there was simply a woman thinking:

Come to me.

Choose me.

Let it be me.

And then you bowed.

That was the part that stayed with me.

You bowed before me with such immense respect that the gesture somehow felt more intimate than if you had immediately touched me.

Not submission.

Not worship.

Respect.

As though you understood that before you stood a whole woman—not merely a bride waiting to become somebody’s wife.

A woman with a mind, a history, a family, a body, dreams, fears, independence, memories, and an entire world of her own.

And perhaps what felt so intoxicating about that moment was the combination of the two things.

Desire and reverence.

You wanted her.

But you honored her first.

There is something incredibly sensual about that.

Because perhaps feminine desire is not always loud.

Every so often it is simply the longing to soften in the presence of someone you trust.

To be looked at and feel beautiful without feeling examined.

To be desired without feeling possessed.

To have a man reach for your hand and know that he understands it is yours to give.

To feel his strength without needing to make yourself smaller beside it.

To know that when he looks at you, he doesn’t merely think, I want this woman.

He thinks,

I will take care with her heart.

And maybe that is why the vision stayed with me.

We romanticize weddings so easily.

The red lehenga.

The sherwani.

The flowers.

The diamonds.

The gold.

The haldi is staining the skin yellow.

The mehendi darkens overnight.

The music stretches late into starry nights.

The dancing, the food, the photographs, the teasing, the cousins, the mothers crying while trying not to ruin their makeup.

Everything sparkles.

But beneath all that beauty, something enormous is happening.

Two people are standing at the edge of their old lives.

A woman carries the world she came from with her.

She is someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister. She has rooms filled with memories, family traditions, private dreams, habits nobody else understands. There is a whole version of herself that existed long before this man ever knew her name.

And the man is leaving something behind too.

His bachelorhood. His complete independence. The version of life in which he could think primarily in terms of I.

Because marriage slowly turns I into we.

My plans become our plans.

My home becomes our home.

My family begins touching yours.

My happiness matters to you.

Your sadness enters my heart.

Your financial decisions affect my future.

My health becomes something you worry about.

Our bodies become intimate.

Our minds become known.

Our weaknesses are eventually revealed.

And perhaps children arrive one day and make the bond even more complicated, exhausting, frightening and beautiful.

There is commitment physically.

Emotionally.

Mentally.

Financially.

There is so much more to marriage than love.

And still—

somehow—

there is love.

Perhaps that is what makes the wedding ceremony feel so magical to me.

Knowing everything that awaits them, and watching two people walk towards each other anyway.

Imagine standing there with the Jaimala in your hands.

And somewhere across the flowers, the music, the laughter and all those watching eyes, you find the one pair of eyes you were searching for.

You move towards each other.

Closer.

Close enough for the celebration around you to soften into a blur.

One of you lifts the Jaimala.
The other instinctively lowers their head, just a little.

There is a rustle of fabric, the delicate sound of jewellery, the fragrance of fresh flowers between you.

And for one fleeting second, as the flowers slips into place, your faces are closer than they have been all evening.

Then your eyes meet.

That tiny moment.

That beautiful, almost private moment in the middle of hundreds of people.

A smile you try to hide.

A nervousness you can feel but cannot explain.

That quiet pull towards the person standing before you.

And perhaps a thought neither of you says aloud:

So, it is you.

Of all the people in this enormous world… it is you.

Everyone else sees a ritual.

But for those few seconds, you see each other.So many people around you, and yet there is an intimacy nobody else can enter.

You are going to be my husband.

I am going to be your wife.

How strange those words must feel before they become ordinary.

Then his hand finds yours.

And suddenly you notice everything about that touch.

The warmth of his palm.

The way his fingers close around yours.

The quiet reassurance of another human hand saying, without words:

I’m here.

And before you burns Agni—the holy fire.

You begin your seven circles.

Seven promises made around something sacred.

Promises about nourishment, strength, prosperity, family, companionship, loyalty, love.

Promises to walk through a lifetime together when neither person has any idea what that lifetime will contain.

That is breathtaking when you really think about it.

Two human beings walking around fire promising to stay beside each other through a future they cannot see.

Maybe one day there will be beautiful houses and blue skies.

Maybe there will be hospital rooms.

Maybe there will be babies held against tired chests at three in the morning.

Maybe there will be financial struggles.

Career changes.

Loss.

Ageing parents.

Arguments.

Periods when one person is strong and the other has almost nothing left to give.

There will be ordinary Tuesdays when nobody feels particularly romantic.

There will be moments when love doesn’t feel like flowers at all.

And still, tonight, they walk.

One circle.

Then another.

Her red lehenga moves beside his cream-white clothes.

The fire illuminates their faces.

Their hands remain joined.

And perhaps somewhere during those seven circles, romance stops being merely a feeling and begins becoming a decision.

That may be what fascinates me most about marriage.

Love changes its form.

The love that brings two people together cannot remain exactly as it was in the beginning.

It shouldn’t.

Butterflies become familiarity.

Longing becomes belonging.

Seduction becomes intimacy.

Mystery becomes knowing.

The man you once dressed carefully to meet eventually sees you exhausted, hair tied carelessly, annoyed at everyone, searching for something you misplaced five minutes ago.

The woman who once appeared before him in red and gold becomes the woman beside him in ordinary clothes, discussing bills and children and what needs fixing in the house.

But perhaps that isn’t where romance disappears.

Perhaps that is where romance becomes more interesting.

Because years later, after children and responsibilities and everything life piles between two people, there can still be a moment when your eyes meet across a room.

And suddenly—

there he is again.

Not just your husband.

Not just the father of your children.

Not the man discussing schedules and responsibilities with you.

The man.

And you are not merely the mother, the wife, the responsible woman holding twenty things together.

You are the woman.

His woman.

The one he once looked at and desired.

And perhaps your eyes stay on each other a second longer than necessary.

And something ancient and feminine inside you remembers.

Oh.

There you are.

That, to me, is profoundly romantic.

To keep rediscovering desire inside familiarity.

To still want the person whose flaws you already know.

To still reach for the same hand after knowing exactly how imperfect the person attached to it can be.

To find tenderness after arguments.

To find flirtation beneath responsibility.

To find lovers underneath husband and wife.

And perhaps this is why I don’t want to explain my strange vision too much.

I don’t know what it meant.

I don’t know why it came.

Maybe visions do not always ask to become reality.

Maybe sometimes the mind gives us an image because an emotion is too complicated for words.

And mine gave me this:

A woman in red.

A man in cream-white.

A beautifully decorated wedding beneath an endless sky.

Flowers.

Music.

Gold.

Jasmine.

Fire.

And a man walking towards a woman he desires.

He reaches her.

Their eyes meet.

But before he takes her hand—

he bows.

And she looks at him with that quiet feminine longing that says:

Yes.

I want you too.

But what makes her want to step towards him is not simply that he desires her.

It is that she feels safe inside his desire.

Seen inside it.

Respected inside it.

Perhaps that is the kind of love a woman can truly soften into.

Not a love that consumes her.

A love that makes room for her.

Not, You are mine.

But:

Will you walk beside me?

And she places her hand in his.

Then there is the fire.

The seven circles.

The seven promises.

The flowers falling around them.

The music waiting somewhere beyond the ceremony.

Their families watching.

Their old lives standing behind them.

Their unknown life waiting ahead.

And for just a moment before everything changes, four eyes meet.

No children yet.

No bills.

No responsibilities.

No difficult years.

No ageing.

No grief.

No ordinary mornings.

Just a man.

Just a woman.

And the delicious, frightening tenderness of knowing:

After tonight, your life will touch mine everywhere.

Perhaps that is marriage.

Desire learning devotion.

Passion learning patience.

Two independent lives learning partnership.

Love changing its form again and again until one day you realise that the most romantic words were never only:

I love you.

Sometimes they were:

I respect you.

I see you.

I still desire you.

I will stand beside you.

I choose you.

And perhaps, after everything life will eventually ask of them, the most beautiful promise remains the simplest one:

Give me your hand.

There are still circles left for us to walk.