Ishq — Seven Stages Of Love And One Hell Of An Affliction
A Sufi Celebration of Life, Inspired by Urdu
Author’s Note : This is the sixteenth installment in my 100 days, 100 blogs challenge. You can read the previous installment here.
Recap
A couple of years ago, a Bollywood movie called Dil Se epitomized the idea of seven stages of love. These seven stages have been variously attributed to Arabic literature and/or Sufi philosophy. My research could not find anything to validate the roots of this stages in Arabic literature, and I can confirm that these stages have not been taken from Sufi philosophy, because the Sufi stages of love are far more complex, both philosophically and spiritually. Someday, I’d do a series on the real Sufi stages of love.
This piece however is about the seven stages of love that pop culture presented to us. In all probability they are a derivative from some existing source, or maybe they’re just a spiritual lightning that struck the writer’s room for this movie. Either way, they’re fascinating.
So the seven stages of love, according to some unnamed sources and at least two Bollywood movies are:
Dilkashi (attraction), Uns (infatuation), Ishq (love), Akidat (trust/reverence),Ibadat (worship), Junoon (passion/madness) followed by Maut (death)
