If you had asked me a few years ago what love looked like, I would’ve answered without hesitation.
I would’ve told you it was finding the right person.
Someone who would choose you over everyone else.
Someone who would hold your hand when life became difficult.
Someone who would stay.
For the longest time, I believed love had a face.
One face.
One person.
One story.
I thought somewhere in this world, someone was walking towards me, and the day we met, my search would finally end.
Until then, I believed I was incomplete.
So I searched.
I searched in conversations that lasted only a few weeks.
I searched in promises that sounded beautiful but disappeared with time.
I searched in people who made me feel important for a while and then slowly forgot I existed.
Every goodbye convinced me that I simply hadn’t found the right person yet.
And because I believed love was waiting somewhere ahead of me…
I completely missed the love that had been walking beside me all along.
It wasn’t a dramatic realization.
There were no fireworks.
No life-changing speech.
It happened on an ordinary evening that looked exactly like every other evening.
I came home tired after a long day.
I dropped my bag near the door and sat quietly on the sofa.
A few minutes later, my mother walked into the room carrying a cup of tea.
She placed it in front of me.
Looked at me for a second.
Then asked the same question she had probably asked thousands of times before.
“Jevlas ka?”
“Have you eaten?”
I nodded.
She smiled.
Adjusted the curtain because sunlight was falling directly on my face.
Picked up the empty plate lying on the table.
And quietly walked away.
That was it.
No dramatic conversation.
No emotional moment.
Just another ordinary evening.
But something about that moment refused to leave me.
I kept thinking…
Why did that simple question stay with me more than all the beautiful words people had once spoken to me?
Maybe because it wasn’t just a question.
It was care.
It was someone making sure I was okay before thinking about themselves.
It was love.
The kind that never asks to be noticed.
Prem mothya shabdanmadhe nasto…
To “Jevlas ka?” ya eka prashnat suddha sapadto.
(Love isn’t hidden inside grand words… sometimes it lives inside one simple question: “Have you eaten?”)
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
Instead of thinking about the people who had left my life…
I started remembering the people who never did.
My father came to mind first.
Growing up, I don’t remember him saying, “I love you.”
Not once.
As a child, I used to wonder why.
I compared him to fathers in movies.
They hugged their children.
They expressed their emotions.
Mine didn’t.
Or at least…
That’s what I believed.
Years later, I realized he had been saying “I love you” every single day.
Just in a language I was too young to understand.
He woke up before sunrise.
Worked until his back hurt.
Came home exhausted.
Still asked me how college was.
Still smiled whenever I told him about something I wanted to achieve.
He wasn’t building a career.
He was quietly building my future.
And somehow…
I never called that love.
I called it responsibility.
Looking back now…
I think responsibility is one of love’s most beautiful disguises.
Then I remembered my best friend.
The one who somehow always knew when something was wrong.
He never asked difficult questions.
He never forced me to explain.
Instead, he’d send a message saying,
“Chal… chai piyuya.”
Let’s go have tea.
We’d sit there for an hour.
Sometimes talking.
Sometimes saying nothing at all.
At the end of it, I’d somehow feel lighter.
Back then, I thought he had distracted me.
Today I know…
He had quietly shared a little of my pain.
That’s another thing love does.
It doesn’t always solve your problems.
Sometimes…
It simply refuses to let you carry them alone.
Kadhi kadhi prem mhanje upay dene nasto…
Fakta “Mi aahe na” he na bolta janavun dene asta.
(Sometimes love isn’t about finding a solution… it’s about making someone feel they’re not alone.)
The more I thought about it…
The longer the list became.
My grandmother pretending she wasn’t hungry until everyone else had finished eating.
A teacher who believed in me when I had stopped believing in myself.
A classmate who shared notes without expecting anything in return.
The security guard outside my apartment who smiled every morning as if seeing me was enough reason to smile.
The chaiwala near my college who remembered my order before I even spoke.
None of these people were trying to teach me what love looked like.
They were simply living it.
Quietly.
Without applause.
Without expecting gratitude.
Without ever calling it love.
And perhaps…
That’s exactly why I failed to recognize it.
I had spent years searching for love where it was loud.
Where people made promises.
Where emotions were spoken.
Where forever was discussed.
Meanwhile…
The deepest love in my life had never asked for attention.
It simply kept showing up.
Every single day.
Without fail.
That’s when another question entered my mind.
One that changed me forever.
What if love was never something I was supposed to find?
What if it was something I had been surrounded by since the day I was born… but never truly noticed?
I looked around my room.
Nothing had changed.
The same walls.
The same photographs.
The same home.
Yet somehow…
Everything looked different.
Because for the first time…
I wasn’t looking for the love I didn’t have.
I was beginning to see the love I had overlooked all along.
And once you begin to notice that kind of love…
You can never look at life the same way again.
The next morning, I left home a little earlier than usual.
Not because I had somewhere important to be.
I simply wanted to walk.
For the first time in years, I wasn’t walking while looking at my phone.
I was looking at people.
A father was teaching his little daughter how to ride a bicycle.
She was scared.
He kept one hand on the seat while pretending to let go.
Every time she looked back, he smiled and said,
“I’m here.”
She didn’t know he was running behind her the entire time.
She only believed she was brave enough to ride.
Maybe that’s what love does.
It quietly gives us courage without taking credit for it.
A few steps ahead, I saw an elderly couple sitting on a park bench.
Neither of them was talking.
The old man opened a packet of biscuits.
Without looking at her, he broke one into two pieces and handed half to his wife.
She accepted it without saying thank you.
It was obvious they had done this thousands of times before.
There was nothing extraordinary about the moment.
Yet I couldn’t stop looking at them.
Because somewhere between silence and habit…
I realized love doesn’t become smaller with time.
It simply becomes quieter.
Khara prem mothya goshtinmadhe disat nahi…
To roj tyach manusasobat shantpane basnyat disato.
(Real love isn’t found in extraordinary moments… it quietly lives in choosing the same person every ordinary day.)
As the days passed, I began noticing things I had ignored for years.
The woman who sold flowers near the temple always kept one fresh flower aside for an old customer because she knew he bought one every morning for his late wife.
The bus conductor waited a few extra seconds for an elderly man who struggled to climb the steps.
The librarian at my college always placed the books I liked on the front shelf because she knew I would eventually ask for them.
None of these people knew they were becoming part of someone else’s story.
They were simply choosing kindness.
And perhaps…
Kindness is love’s quietest language.
The strange thing about love is that it rarely introduces itself.
It doesn’t say,
“Look how much I care about you.”
It simply remembers.
It remembers how you like your tea.
It remembers your birthday even when you forget it yourself.
It remembers that loud places make you uncomfortable.
It remembers that you’ve been carrying something heavy without asking you to explain it.
Love remembers.
Not because it has to.
Because it wants to.
One evening, I visited my grandparents.
My grandmother was making chapatis.
My grandfather sat beside her, peeling vegetables.
I laughed and asked,
“Ajoba, why are you helping today?”
He smiled.
Then he looked at my grandmother and said,
“Mi tila madat nahi kart… aamhI ayushya ekatra jagtoy.”
“I’m not helping her… we’re living life together.”
It was such a simple sentence.
But it stayed with me.
For years, I had believed love was measured by grand declarations.
Maybe…
It’s measured by ordinary partnership.
By washing dishes together.
By waiting before eating until everyone reaches home.
By remembering someone’s medicine.
By asking,
“Call me when you arrive.”
These aren’t habits.
They’re quiet promises.
Promises repeated every single day.
Kadhi kadhi “Mi tujhyavar prem karto” he bolnyachi garajach naste…
Vagnyatun te roj disat asta.
(Sometimes love doesn’t need to say “I love you”… it quietly proves it through everyday actions.)
Then something happened that completed the picture for me.
One afternoon, while cleaning an old drawer, I found a birthday card I had made in school.
The handwriting was terrible.
The drawing looked even worse.
On the back, my mother had written the date.
Twenty years had passed.
She had still kept it.
I stood there holding that little card for several minutes.
It wasn’t valuable.
Nobody else would’ve looked at it twice.
Yet someone had protected it for two decades simply because it came from me.
That was the moment I finally understood something.
Love keeps what the world considers ordinary.
Because to someone who truly loves you…
Nothing about you is ordinary.
I sat quietly for a long time that evening.
Not thinking about the people who had left.
Not thinking about the relationships that didn’t work.
Instead…
I found myself feeling grateful for the people who never once asked me to earn their love.
The people who had been choosing me in quiet ways every single day.
And I wondered how many times I had forgotten to thank them.
How many meals my mother served without hearing how good they were.
How many sacrifices my father made without anyone noticing.
How many friends stayed beside me without expecting anything in return.
Love had never been missing from my life.
Attention had.
I had been paying attention to the loudest expressions of love…
While overlooking the quietest ones.
Maybe that’s why so many of us feel unloved.
Not because love is absent.
Because we’ve unknowingly limited our definition of what love is supposed to look like.
We expect roses.
While someone is making us tea.
We wait for perfect words.
While someone is silently making room for us at the dinner table.
We search for forever.
While someone is faithfully showing up today.
And today…
Is where love has always lived.
Prem shodhaychi gosht nahi…
Te olakhaychi gosht aahe.
(Love isn’t something we find… it’s something we learn to recognize.)
If you’ve read this far, I don’t want to ask you to believe everything I’ve written.
I only want to ask you one question.
When was the last time you noticed the quiet love in your own life?
Maybe it’s your father waiting until he hears the gate close before going to sleep.
Maybe it’s your mother asking if you’ve eaten, even when she’s tired.
Maybe it’s the friend who always says,
“Text me when you get home.”
Maybe it’s your sibling pretending not to care while secretly saving the last piece of your favorite chocolate.
Or maybe…
It’s someone you’ve never thanked because their love became so familiar that it started feeling ordinary.
Tonight, before you go to sleep…
Think about one person.
Not the person who broke your heart.
Not the person you lost.
Think about the person who has quietly stayed.
The one who never asked for applause.
The one who loved you through ordinary days.
If you’re lucky enough to still have them…
Tell them.
Not because tomorrow is uncertain.
But because love should never have to wait for regret before it’s spoken.
I spent years looking for love in the wrong places.
I searched for it in people who promised forever.
I searched for it in perfect moments.
I searched for it in dreams that never came true.
Only to discover that the love capable of changing my life had been waiting for me every single day…
In my mother’s questions.
In my father’s silence.
In my friend’s presence.
In my grandparents’ partnership.
In strangers’ kindness.
Love was never hiding from me.
I was simply looking everywhere…
Except where it had been patiently waiting all along.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Alexander Grey on Unsplash
