A Different Kind of Love Story: Exploring the Depths of

When most people hear the word ishq, their minds instantly turn toward romance. They think of the thrill of attraction, the sweetness of companionship, or the pain of heartbreak. Love, in popular imagination, has been written and rewritten through these lenses for centuries. But for me, ishq has never been confined to just romance. It is not only about another person. It is not only about longing or absence. Ishq is a force, a journey, and for me, an identity.

When I began writing my poetry collection Ishqabaad, I knew I wanted to give voice to this deeper dimension of love. My poems are not just about who we love; they are about who we become through love. For me, poetry is not decoration. It is confession, healing, rebellion, and sometimes surrender.

Love as Identity, Not Just Emotion

In both English and Hindi literature, love has often been painted as a grand drama. But I believe ishq is both vast and subtle. It is not always fireworks. Sometimes, it is silence. Sometimes, it is rage. Often, it is a mirror that shows us our own face more clearly.

Through the verses of Ishqabaad, I wanted to show how love can dissolve us into something larger, and at the same time, how it can give us the strength to say, This is who I am.

• In some poems, love appears as surrender, a melting into another presence.

• In others, it is a protest, a refusal to disappear, a way of saying I exist.

• At its core, love in my work is not linear or predictable; it is contradictory, and that contradiction is where its truth lies.

  
  

Holding Contradictions Without Fear

Sometimes, as writers, we try to simplify love. We give it clear definitions or neat endings. With time, I have realized my writing resists that. I believe the most authentic way to write about ishq is to let it remain messy, layered, and alive.

In Ishqabaad, you’ll see poems that hold opposing energies at once:

• longing and independence

• faith and doubt

• devotion and rebellion

• desire and detachment

  
  

I do not try to solve these tensions. Instead, I let them breathe. Because in real life, we carry these contradictions every day. Love makes us fragile, but it also makes us fierce. It can break us apart, and it can heal us in the same breath.

Poetry is Healing

For me, poetry is not only art; it is healing. The act of writing itself is therapeutic. When I put words to emotions that are otherwise heavy or unspoken, they transform. Pain softens. Anger releases. Silence finds sound.

Readers often tell me that my poems feel like conversations, like someone sitting across from them, speaking directly to their heart. That intimacy is intentional. I never wanted my work to sound distant or overly abstract. I wanted it to feel personal, relatable, and real because love and healing are deeply human experiences that connect us all.

When you read Ishqabaad, you are not just reading my story. You are also reading your own reflection, your own echoes. That, for me, is the greatest power of poetry.

The Feminine Voice of Ishq

As a woman, my writing carries a perspective that is still rare in mainstream Hindi poetry. For centuries, ishq has been voiced by male poets, often shaping love as something a woman is subjected to, rather than something she defines.

In my work, I wanted to reclaim this lens. I write love from the feminine experience, with vulnerability, with strength, with softness, with rage, and with contradictions. I do not shrink my voice to fit tradition or expectation. My poems are unapologetic in their emotions because women, too, deserve to tell the full truth of what it means to love and to exist.

A Contemporary Hindi Voice

We live in a time where Hindi poetry is undergoing a shift. On one end, there is the classical tradition of ghazals and nazms. On the other hand, there is a growing wave of short, Instagram-style verses designed for quick consumption.

I see myself standing in between these two worlds. My writing carries the depth and rhythm of traditional Hindi/Urdu poetry, but it also speaks in a language that today’s reader can connect with instantly.

My poems are neither only literary nor only popular; they are a bridge. A space where philosophy meets everyday feelings. This makes Ishqabaad a book for both serious poetry lovers and new readers discovering poetry for the first time.

The Journey of Writing Ishqabaad

When I first began writing the pieces that would later become Ishqabaad, I didn’t imagine them as a book. They were fragments, diary entries, moments of truth captured in lines. But as the collection grew, I began to see a pattern, a city of love forming, built out of my own experiences, questions, and contradictions. That’s why the title Ishqabaad felt natural.

It is not a single poem. It is a whole place, a landscape of feelings.

Every poem became a corner of this city, some bright with tenderness, others dark with absence, many alive with the chaos of love’s contradictions. Writing the book was both painful and liberating. Painful, because I had to confront parts of myself. Liberating, because in giving them words, I also gave them wings.

What I Hope Readers Take Away

If there is one thing I want readers to feel after reading Ishqabaad, it is this: love is bigger than you think. It is not just about a partner or a relationship. It is also about how you see yourself, how you hold your contradictions, how you surrender, and how you resist.

I want my readers to know that it is okay to be messy in love, to be both strong and fragile, to believe and to doubt. Because all of that is real. And in that realness, there is beauty.

Looking Ahead

Ishqabaad is my beginning, but it is not the end. I will continue to write about love, about spirituality, about healing, about what it means to be human in today’s world. My words will remain intimate, direct, and unfiltered, because that is my truth as a writer.

Through poetry, I hope to create a space where readers don’t just consume literature but also feel seen, heard, and understood. Because in the end, poetry is not only about the poet. It is about the bond it creates between writer and reader.

Writing Ishqabaad taught me that love is never just one story. It is a city with many streets, many turns, and many contradictions. And in every corner of that city, there is something to discover about the world, about another, and most of all, about oneself.

That is why I wrote this book.

And that is why I will keep writing because every journey through love leads us deeper into who we truly are.