Here’s an evocative poem of love and longing, by Prof Nandini, exclusively for Different Truths.

Isn’t love enough love? Isn’t love enough
that your quest for everything else should matter so little?
You know, the world anyway makes and breaks one and all.
 
Afterwards, only the survivor becomes solid in broken places.
Because love is the most agreeable way of discounting a broken piece.
And because only birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.
 
Love, see a world in a modicum of sand and heaven in a desolate flower.
Let time decide who you meet in life.
Hold eternity in the palm of your hand and perpetuity in an hour.
 
Your own emotion decides who you want in your era
and your pronouncement decides who stays.
Rest assured, your secrets are safe with me. I can’t remember my passwords.
 
If you don’t correct the world when they dismay you and ill-treat,
they will never learn how to treat you right.
In any case, you have to fight fit; you have to defeat.
 
The truth is that you will lament forever if your love isn’t enough.
Sometimes you will not get over the loss of your loved ones,
but yes, you will learn to live with it, on and off.

You will heal and remake yourself around the loss
you have agonised over. You may be complete again, but you will never be the same.
Nor should you be the equivalent to the one who you left amiss.
 
Love, love did never hurt you. Someone who doesn’t diagnose the ways to love
hurt you. Don’t confuse the two.
With true love, you either forget everything or evoke who from the who.
 
I shall re-read you as my favourite book at different stages of my life.
The plot will never change, but my perspective of love may.
For me, love will be enough, nothing more, nothing less, just any given day

Picture design by Anumita Roy, Different Truths

Prof. Nandini Sahu

Prof Nandini Sahu is the Vice Chancellor of Hindi University, West Bengal, and a celebrated Indian English poet and Amazon’s Best-selling Author. Formerly a Professor and Director at IGNOU, New Delhi, she is the author/editor of 23 books. A double Gold-Medalist, her accolades include a Gold Medal from the Vice President of India for English Studies, the Michael Madhusudan Academy Award-2024, and the Tagore Samman-2025. Her expertise spans Folklore, Hindu Studies, Comparative Literature, and Critical Theory.