The Loveless Love

George Kampton Henry was raised in a rainforest by penguins. Before the reader rages at the idea that penguins cannot actually exist in rainforests redolent of beetles, baboons, and bears, the reader is encouraged to consider that it is equally unlikely for George Kampton Henry to exist in a rainforest. The penguins, with their fragile, waddling structures, already remain a blotch on the concept of evolution because it is obvious that they are utterly incapable of surviving in places like Antarctica. At this point, the reader is urged to contact their local penguin representatives or unions to enquire about a penguin’s preferred living conditions. The answer is definitely not Antarctica. Anyhow, by no means should the unusual legend of the rainforest penguins bequeath the extraordinary unbelievability of a wild human (with an equally wild name of George Kampton Henry) being raised by penguins.

Why the penguins agreed to raise George Kampton Henry is something of a mystery – even to the penguins. It so happens that George Kampton Henry’s mother (the penguin and not his biological human mother) was duped. When she was incubating her egg early into her pregnancy, George Kampton Henry’s mother (the biological human mother and not the penguin) decided to trade her baby for the penguin’s egg. With remarkable scrumptiousness, the egg was swapped for the human baby. The penguin mother never realized that her baby had been switched. She was physically incapable of perceiving the world beneath her chin. And if the reader is now wondering about the existence of a penguin being raised by humans, they would, perhaps, be glad to know that the penguin’s egg did not hatch into a penguin at all. It hatched into an omelette.

The penguins weren’t so bright as to realize that one of their kind was now an omelette. To them, George Kampton Henry was the next step in penguin evolution. They worshipped him. At the age of 6, he was already a king. At the age of 10, he had united seven tribes of penguins. At 16, however, he was depressed and dangling by the wisps of emptiness. He felt nothing, as if he was watching his life from the outside. The grass was green, the sky was blue, and the stars flickered dazzlingly. The world was beautiful. But who cared? Certainly not George Kampton Henry. The problem was rooted in George Kampton Henry’s epiphany that he was not a penguin. Even when George Kampton Henry tried his best, he knew he never fit in.

For starters, waddling back and forth from treehouses to lakes in search of raw fish wasn’t his strongest suit. Instead, he preferred walking regularly to the nearest banana plantation or munching on the psychedelic mushrooms he found in the wild. Not only this, but all his penguin pals could hold their breath underwater for days, but George Kampton Henry couldn’t even hold his breath above water. He even gathered a pilferage of leaves, charred them with soot and whitened them with sap to create a tuxedo-esque penguin suit. George Kampton Henry could fool the other penguins, but not himself. Eventually, George Kampton Henry was so used to feeling like an outsider that he had no time to feel anything else. Who am I, if not a penguin? George Kampton Henry constantly questioned his life until the age of 18, when the answer presented itself in the form of three apparitions.

At 18, George Kampton Henry looked at himself for the first time on the shores of a swamp. As George Kampton Henry gawked into the murky waters, he was greeted by a slender-looking, mole-infested borderline-orangutan. It was difficult to predict whether the seaweed scattered in George Kampton Henry’s crown was a matter of reflection or poor hygiene. When he jumped, the reflection jumped. When he moved his arms, the reflection moved its arm. But when he smiled, the reflection smiled back three times, and suddenly, it dawned upon George Kampton Henry that he was no longer staring at his own reflection but the reflection of three headless, unknown apparitions in velvet business suits.

“Who are you?” George Kampton Henry hooted in English (George Kampton Henry was bilingual in English and Penguinish).

“Beetle.”

“Bottle.”

“Bomb.”

“What do you want?” George Kampton Henry asked.

“Go an adventure.”

“Return to humans.”

“Find the meaning of love.”

“Love? Humans? What does it mean?” George Kampton Henry asked with vivid curiosity.

“Love is what makes you human.”

“To be human is to understand love.”

“You are a human.”

George Kampton Henry was baffled. Find the meaning of love? What was love? What did it mean to be human? What were humans? Was he a human? With a barrage of questions, George Kampton Henry left the rainforest and the penguins to venture into the world of humans.

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George stood in the middle of an Indian playground that had been converted into a shopping festival with a platoon of shops menacingly flanking him on all sides. Thundersome hullaballoos overtook the market. The air smelled of cheap cigarette packets and fireworks. It echoed with the whispers of advertisement. The shops were daubed in colours that George never knew could even exist. The experience was enriched by a festoon of candescent bulbs flickering in multicoloured lights arranged in horizontal flanks over the playground. Algae peeked through the corners of the wet and cracked clobber-stones beneath them, where a squad of dummkopf pigeons pecked and cooed sporadically. George had to take small steps to avoid kicking the pigeons as he scuttled into a dark alley.

From the shadows, George saw the humans with the air of a clueless detective. Their societal structure intrigued George the most. George quickly concluded that the humans came in two different sizes: small and tall. Sometimes, the small humans would enslave the tall humans to do their bidding and ride the tall humans on their shoulders. Then, there were other instances where the large humans would drag the small humans by protrusions on their limbs (they looked like unwebbed fingers) and carry them around like cargo.

Touch, George thought to himself. The humans were touching each other, and George hated everything about it. The simple idea of having someone else touch him sent jitters down his spine. The coldness of their hands, the wetness of their greasy palms, the micro-bacterial type IV civilization their skins harboured, the cheeks where the parasites found their paradise. No, thank you. George scoffed. What George needed now was not touch but his psychedelic mushrooms.

“What would you like to buy, sir?” asked a voice. George turned and bobbled his head like a gyroscope until he gazed down and found the most repulsive, hairy creature he had ever seen floating around his waist. The merchant who’d cornered George was a strange specimen of the human species. A failed product, really. In fact, the wrinkles that were pockmarked throughout his body with careless accuracy gave him the appearance of a ripened peach. He was shirtless, and a dhoti was lazily wrapped around his waist, bubbling down to his ankles. At first, his hostile chest that sulked with all kinds of vegetation might imply that the merchant was a vegetable vendor. In reality, however, the merchant sold dhotis.

“I would like to buy the meaning of love,” George replied with a smile. The merchant eyed him inquisitively, lamenting the tall fellow for being coy.

“Love? Eh…love is something that happens to you. You cannot buy it…unless…never mind!” the merchant said, pointing a finger at George.

“Oh, no, I mean well,” George said. “You see, I am here to find the meaning of love. I was told that I would learn to be a human if I understood the meaning of love.”

The merchant guffawed. Perhaps, there was a business opportunity with this lanky. “Buy a dhoti from me and I’ll explain the meaning of love to you.”

And so, George naively followed the merchant back to his shop and bought an overpriced dhoti. The merchant repaid the favour with a lengthy lesson about love, marriage, and sex. All the while, George was more interested in curiously admiring the artistic imagery on the merchant’s dhoti. They were exquisite, well-patterned dots that seemed to tell stories about elephants waging war, horses galloping through battlefields, deers being hunted. So much violence. George thought to himself. The merchant occasionally managed to rivet George’s attention back to the nauseous affair of love. The merchant said things like love is blind; you marry people you love; love is special. George found the very idea of love revolting. Maybe…maybe George did not understand what love meant, and perhaps he would never feel it. Did that mean he was not a human?

“If love means spending your life with someone for eternity, then it is a social contract, isn’t it?” George questioned when the merchant finished.

“No, it is when two souls meet.”

“So, if my soul meets the soul of that man-” George pointed at a handsome man inspecting the merchant’s shop. “-then we are in love?”

“Well yes,” the merchant said, rubbing his chin. “But it wouldn’t meet the soul of a man! Men cannot fall in love with other men.”

“But how do souls know whether the other soul is a man or not?”

“Uh well, God tells them.”

“God? Who the hell is that?”

“The creator. God made us all...even our souls.”

“So, this creator…God…is he like a contractor arranging social contracts?”

“Well, not exactly,” the merchant sighed. This was more difficult than he thought. “Love makes your heart feel funny.”

“Like when I eat too much?” George said, holding his tummy that rumbled in agreement.

“Yes, when you eat too much, you feel too much in your stomach. When you are in love, you feel too much in your heart.”

“I feel too much all the time.” George clasped his forehead in agony.

“Then you must be falling in love all the time. There’s a lot of pretty ladies here.”

“But then it’s not special if I am falling in love all the time, is it? Even with men. And those who are neither. I don’t understand why I have to fall in love with pretty ladies. Why can’t I fall in love with whoever I want? And then why must I decide to spend the rest of my life with them? It’s like there are no rules in love, but there are so many rules to love someone.”

“You are a confused man,” the merchant said, shaking his head until a brilliant idea spurred into his mind. “Vidyasagar is giving his daughter’s hand away for marriage. Why don’t you ask for his daughter’s hand? She is a no-good anyways. No one else wants to marry her. Can you believe it?”

George ran with alarming eccentricity to greet Vidyasagar – an old crone more concerned with getting his daughter married away than he was with his own life. When George claimed he was a nobleman (he didn’t mention the penguins) from a distant land, Vidyasagar happily had his daughter forcefully wed to George. And since George was married to someone now, it must be true that he was in love, right? He must be human. Right? That’s what the merchant told him – you marry someone you love. But he felt nothing. Both George and Gini (Vidyasagar’s daughter) were unhappy in their marriage.

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Gini was 27 and had a plethora of dreams. She wanted to be everything from an entrepreneur to a bookseller to a doctor to an ox cart driver. But most of all, she wanted to be human. Because no one around her seemed to see her as human, especially her father. When she was 16, she ran up to her father and declared her ambitions (at that time) to be a psychologist. Vidyasagar rebuked her by questioning whether she had any aspirations to be a good housewife. When Gini said no, Vidyasagar reminded her that in their society, women like Gini had to be extraordinary to make it. There was no room for mediocrity, and Gini wondered why. Gini wondered why not aiming for the stars meant that one couldn’t have their feet on the ground and just be themselves. Why must someone like her, who did not want to reach for the stars, be forced to walk into the underworld and confront the venomous idea of marriage? The more Gini did not understand those around her, the more she did not understand herself. The more she did not understand why she couldn’t be human.

Then came George, whom Gini saw more as a silly fool than a husband. He would spend hours talking about penguins, headless apparitions, and love’s meaning. Gini had long given up on the idea of love when she realized she did not love men at all and that those around her could not accept that. She despised every second she spent with George till she realized that George despised himself more than she despised him. By the third month of their marriage, when she had given up on that man altogether, she decided to help the poor man navigate his own understanding of love.

She accompanied him when he desired to talk to anyone he saw on the streets. Unknowingly, by helping George, she was helping herself, too. The more she heard George converse with people around him, the more she realized that the men around her were happy living their ‘mediocre’ lives, earning their own penny and being proud of it. Unlike her, they did not have to feel guilty if they could not make it big. If these men did not reach for the stars, they were happy to have their feet on the ground. Why couldn’t Gini?

Meanwhile, for George, weeks passed, and he struggled to find a place in this new life. The humans seemed so obsessed with love, yet they had no idea what it was. Everyone had their own version of love. Some preferred intimacy. Some didn’t. Some wanted a romantic partner. Some just wanted to be best friends. Even when there were echoes of love being on the spectrum, people had to be spots or instances on the spectrum. They couldn’t experience love entirely on the spectrum. They had to choose and then argue about the validity of what they had chosen. How could there be a place for love amongst so much bickering?

George felt none of the romantic kind of love with Gini. Even though two years after their wedding, they did begin to see each other as trustworthy companions, there was never anything more to it. There were sporadic demands for kids by buffoons like Vidyasagar, but neither George nor Gini could bring themselves to accept the idea of sexual intimacy. They had no desire to be sexually intimate with each other. The most they managed to have was emotional intimacy. They had each other’s back. When Gini revealed that she loved women to the closest around her, she found comfort in confiding with George about how everyone began to treat her differently. When George found a job at the iron mill factory, he confided in Gini about how he was beginning to see through the facade of what people perceived as love.

George did not love Gini romantically, and the more time he spent around other people, he knew he didn’t love anyone romantically. And when George learnt that love had to sometimes be reciprocated sexually, he knew that he didn’t love anyone sexually. He loved people, yes, but only as people. He didn’t understand the needs of desire – sexual or romantic. George loved Gini in his own way, but he did not love her in the way everyone around him wanted him to love Gini. Was his love not real, then? Was he not human, then?

And so, one day, as George and Gini were having dinner, George asked Gini, “What do you think love is?”

“Depends on what kind of love you are looking at. Or, who you are asking. To me, love is having the freedom to be intimate with another person. What about you?”

“I don’t think I understand how loving someone is different from being friends,” George scoffed.

“Would you want to spend the rest of your life with your friends?” Gini asked.

“Yes, of course. Why would you not? Does that mean you want to spend the rest of your life with someone who is not your friend?” George asked, a little horrified.

“I would want to spend it with a friend, yes. But that’s not the kind of love I am looking for. I am looking for the romantic and sexual kind of love. I know I don’t feel either for you or any men.” Gini pondered. “Maybe you don’t understand love because you don’t love me.”

“I know you love women, but for me – I don’t think I romantically or sexually love anyone. Not men. Not women. Not those who belong to neither. But love should be more than romance! Loving your friends should be enough. When humans talk of love with each other, why do they ignore this kind of love that is neither sexual nor romantic? What about this different kind of love that these humans feel for our friends, family and fellow penguins? Why is it that whenever I go and ask humans for love, they only think of romance and sex? When I tell them how I feel, they ask all these great questions like what if I haven't met the right person, or what if I am confused? Those are all great questions! But just because I cannot explain how I feel does not mean I have to have all the answers!”

“Why is love so complicated? So many meanings! There is loving people as friends; loving people as romantic partners; there is sexual love, and just loving the idea of love. It would have been much easier if it was binary.” George finished grumbling.

“But it’s not.” Gini reminded him.

“Yeah”

“So, you must let it exist on a spectrum, and you must allow yourself to feel it on the spectrum. Why do you even want to understand what love is?”

George wondered why. It began with the headless apparitions, but it had blossomed into something more. It was as if understanding what love meant would make George realize something profound about himself. As if it would open this door of answers to why George never fit in with those around him, or why he hated the idea of touching people. George no longer believed this. He jumped to his feet, on the verge of an epiphany.

“You are right!” George joyfully clapped his hand. “If I don’t understand romantic and sexual love, shouldn’t I be free to define my own labels? My own kind of love? The loveless kind of love! I do not need love to define me. I need to be the one to define love!”

“You should,” Gini said, smiling with relief. “This is the end, isn’t it? The end of our social contract. Both of us are finally free.”

“What will you do now?” George looked at her.

“I know someone I would like to buy a drink. I’m tired with what other people have to say about it,” Gini said. “What about you?”

Gini soon found her kind of love in another woman. She no longer belonged to her father or anyone else. She belonged to herself. She decided to start her own shop. It was nothing too big or grand. She sold simple stationery like quills and notepads but was allowed to be herself. Not overambitious. Not under-ambitious. Just living freely with the pride of earning one’s own penny. She no longer felt guilty.

As for George Kampton Henry, the mighty King of the penguins, he returned to his kingdom and strolled along to face the three apparitions.

“Beetle.”

“Bottle.”

“Bomb.”

The apparitions re-introduced themselves. They lacked eyes, but their nose indicated that George Kampton Henry had grown through weeklong turmoils of showerless stench and yearlong turmoils of self-acceptance.

“I don’t understand love as what others think it is,” George Kampton Henry said. “I never felt like a penguin, so I thought I must be a human. Being with them, I realize that I am not even human because they believe that to be a human is to understand love. Here’s the problem: love is not to be understood because it is not one thing.”

“So, you are not a human?”

“What are you, then?”

“An imposter?”

“No, I am myself. I am just George Kampton Henry. I live my own life, and that’s why I think I understand what love means to me,” shrugged George Kampton Henry.

“What-”

“-Is-”

“-Love?”

“It is whatever I want it to be,” George said, his hand firmly placed on his chest.

“Paradoxical, isn’t it? You say you are not human anymore because love is not to be understood.”

“Nevertheless, in the end you have understood love for what it is; it is a gift for you. It is whatever you want it to be.”

“And in doing so, you have become the most human of them all.”