Bharti Gadhia once said to me: “To me, love means I need you as much as I want you… Love can be felt, you can be touched from inside with the warmth of the person you love and know that he loves you back. It is important that you feel the love; people know when they are in love because they have those feelings deep inside of them. Saying it is one thing but you feel it before anything else, you will get those tingles in your tummy, that person makes you feel oh so shy when they look or wink at you and they make you feel like you are the most beautiful girl in the world, like you and he are the only ones left in the universe”

Love. It can mean different things to different people. Some people fall in love with their best friend, for some it is love at first sight or the first time you meet, after that guy smiled at you in the street or sent you a poke on Facebook. He could’ve bought you a Mojito at Tantra bar. She could’ve asked for your help when her car broke down. Some people can be unaware of their feelings for a person for years and then BAM! That cupid’s arrow can hit them out of the blue. It could be someone you had a one night stand with, someone who is married or someone you work with. Love can be a difficult emotion to deal with and we all know that it takes time and hard work to keep in control!

For me the person who I fall in love with, who loves me back wholly will be the person I marry. It will be the person who I will take my last breath with, because I deeply love and care for them. I respect them and he will respect me and never want to change me. Death can do us part before I divorce my future husband! (Well, unless he cheats on me or I became a victim of domestic violence in which case his testicles may be in serious danger!)

My close friend MJ said to me once “Loves is when that person is the last person you think of when you fall asleep at night and the first person you think of when you wake up in the morning” what a lovely thought!

I do think we need to be selfish in life in matters of the heart so I will wait until I find the perfect person. So no one is perfect, and I’m far from perfect, but that person will be perfect for you… he or she will complete you, fight for you, support you in whatever you choose to do (within reason) that person will not be happy until they are with you forever. Never intentionally or maliciously hurt you. They will understand you, let you be you, love you for all your flaws (and god knows I have a lot of them), he/she will learn to love the things you love and you will do exactly the same for them.

I was thinking about what love means to me. I could say I have loved someone before but right now I am single so did I really love them? No, I don’t think I did. Maybe I was infatuated. They were not the perfect people for me. But I am ready and waiting for those feelings of love to wash over me.

Love is a two-way emotion. You love them and they love you. If there is no love inside the other person’s hearts it is kind of a pointless relationship you are in. I could be wrong but when you are involved in a unrequited love situation and something doesn’t feel right it could be a case of Infatuation and you are scared to escape because you are afraid to be alone? Like I said I could be wrong and I might contradict myself here and say you love people in different ways even if they don’t love you back and if this is  the case then let yourself be swept away…. but differentiate whether you are actually in love with this person, you are infatuated with them or simply just enjoying the attention they are giving you because no one else is.

So going back to what love is to me I began to drift away into Priya’s dreamland and imagined myself laying on a super-sunny beach in the Caribbean, quite possibly in the Dominican Republic where I went last year with my gorgeous cousin TG (love you TG x) and had some fabulous adventures!

Anyway, I started to imagine myself laying on a beautiful beach in the Dominican Republic, wearing in a hot red bikini, after having lost about a stone, ha-ha, with a Strawberry Daiquiri, a cloudless sky above me, colourful leafy palm trees nearby, the sounds of the calm ocean blew a faint breeze towards me. Softly, bubbles appear and they lightly surround me. Bubbles reflecting the light that shines on them in the bubbles I see words, sounds, colours, rainbows with pots of gold in them and I hear music.

The words, they speak out to me; trust, honesty, passion, unique, love, sex, fear, anger, jealousy, kisses, hugs, caring, eyes, touch, books, taste, feelings, dates, smiles, poetry, music, reading, marriage, god, religion….

Sounds such as the sound of the phone ringing and you hear the special ringtone you have set for your loved one, the sound of his/her voice, hearing your song played when you are out somewhere, the sound he/she makes when you kiss, the sounds she makes when she is crying when upset or how he sounds when angry or sad, the sound of their car pulling into your driveway, him taking a shower or sneezing

The bubbles change colour. They turn shades of pink…light pink, dark pink, dusky rose pink, cerise pink, fuscia pink. Shades of red appear – dark red, faint red, Indian red, the colour of red roses… yellows, oranges, blues, gold’s, silver…

Songs by Adele… Make you feel my love, chasing pavements and melt my heart to stone. Indian music plays… Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Jab We Met. The soft Indian songs playlist I have on my iPod touch flashes – mar jawan, bin tere – the reprise, jao na and Teri deewani.

I realise this is everything that surrounds me when I am falling, becoming engrossed, intertwining, becoming one.

Never be scared to let yourself fall and become immersed in these bubbles. Like me, you could be single and be on the receiving end of those never ending ‘so, you’re pretty and you have a great personality, why are you single? What is wrong with you?’ questions. These people are losers who don’t have a life and have nothing to do apart from meddle in other people’s lives. They do not deserve an answer but if you do have to say something then just say ‘it is god’s will’ and most people who believe in God a little will not argue with that!

I know many men and women who are lovely people and are single but I believe they are single for a reason. It is because they haven’t met that person who will complete them in exactly the right way. The person I am destined to end up with could be in my life right now or they could be a complete stranger and I have not met them yet but it doesn’t mean I won’t so keep believing, keep smiling and keep the faith x

Priya Mulji x