ABOUT THE POEM: “Days of Love” is a philosophical and mythological examination of self-knowledge as the true measure of a successful life. Using figures like Ram, Ravana, and Salim, the poem argues that tragedy often stems not from fate, but from forgetting one's own identity and value. It suggests that Ram’s pursuit of the golden deer—and the author’s own past mistakes—were acts of self-forgetting spurred by external pressures. The poem concludes that the only path back to the original self is to follow honest, heartfelt desire.Better than a life spanning a hundred years
are the days of love-so long as you know it is love.
What if I became a philosopher and knew everything?
What if I gained the life I never had-still nothing.
What if I fucked a thousand women-still nothing.
But if I had the life I wanted, while knowing what I already had?
Satisfaction.
Perhaps Ram and Ravana were both content in their own lives;
both understood what they possessed.
The people didn’t.
They only recognized what they lacked.
The mob envied them.
Maybe it was the mob that spun the conspiracy leading to the clash-
a revolt born of jealousy.
Ram didn’t desire gold, yet he chased a golden deer,
forgetting who he was.
And perhaps that is how things played out-
Kaikeyī won,
Śūrpaṇakhā won,
Vibhīṣaṇa won.
Who didn’t win?
Ram and Ravana.
Both lost.
Even after defeating Ravana, Ram didn’t have a fuller life:
no wife, no children.
Everything dissolved into politics.
Everyone else proved wiser.
It matters to know who you are while you still are.
The Sultan’s son Salim forgot that
and wanted a kaneez as a wife.
There is nothing wrong with desire,
nothing shameful in love.
But if he had remembered who he was,
perhaps he would have sought the hand of a princess
from Russia or China.
I didn’t know who I was either.
When that girl in high school rejected me,
I began obsessing over what I lacked.
I decided the missing piece was worldly wisdom.
So I wandered off my own path,
trying to become someone I wasn’t,
losing my direction
and the chance for an education.
When a person forgets who they are,
that forgetting becomes the cause of their fall.
And the one who never knew themselves at all-
that state is just as dangerous.
“Ignorance is bliss” is a belief only children can afford.
What, then, does it mean to know who you are?
And what path leads back to that original self?
Do what your heart honestly wants.
That will-
that desire-
will reveal your true self,
your true character.
