Each of us expresses love in our own unique way, which can often go wrong. But Krishna is teaching us the right way, leading through example.

By Aarushi Agrawal

Love is one of the  strongest emotions we experience. For some it means respecting the person you have feelings for and for others it can mean being possessive about that person. Love can bring out the best in one person, and absolute toxicity in another. It’s a beguiling emotion, easy and intense, positive and negative, inspiring and fear inducing. It’s full of contradictions and individual opinion. But when an idea is allowed to run free like this and everyone interprets it in their own personal way, it can often be deeply chaotic. But there is a yardstick to measure just how well we understand and express our love— our relationship with the Supreme Lord, Krishna.

Krishna has given us free will.

When the souls wanted to separate from Him and experience something else, He created the material world for us. He knew we’d be suffering, and He sits patiently in all our hearts, guiding us and looking over us, but He gave us the distance we desired.

When someone decides they’re an atheist, Krishna grants that person a forgetfulness about their true nature and about their connection with Him, so they can forget Him. Conversely, if someone is trying to connect with Him, He’ll send a devotee their way to plant the seed of bhakti and start that person off on their journey.

When we treat Krishna with awe and reverence, he responds as the mighty, Supreme Lord, like with Prahlada Maharaja. And when someone sees Him as a friend, He responds as a person, becoming their friend, like with the residents of Vrindavan.

Our relationship with Krishna, our special, individual equation with Him, our way and style of connecting with Him, it’s all our choice. He gives us free will to love Him however we please, and He responds in kind. It’s all on us.

This is an important lesson in love.

Because sometimes, people can get love really wrong, and the fact that these things are popular means it’s not just the artists or creators who are misguided, it’s all of us. And popular culture is a great way of understanding how we as a society think.

Take for instance the Twilight series. The first book came out in 2005 and the first movie in 2008. During those years, the book series, and later the movies, were a global cultural phenomenon. For those of you who weren’t teenage girls at the time, here are some statistics in lieu of context. The book series has sold over 160 million copies worldwide and has been translated into at least 39 languages. The first book, Twilight, spent 235 weeks on the NY Times bestseller list. The global box office collections of the movies crossed USD 3.3 billion.

The series is basically a love story between a vampire, Edward Cullen, and a teenage girl, Bella Swan. But once the whirlwind of the fanfare passed and the dust settled, what emerged was conversation and commentary about just how problematic the couple’s love actually is. Edward is a stalker who creeps into Bella’s bedroom at night and watches her sleep. He breaks down her car so she can’t go meet her male friend Jacob. He coaxes her into getting married before she’s ready. He’s obsessed with the smell of her blood and is always toying the line between killing her so he can suck on her sweet blood and loving her.

But the thing is, all of this is painted as deeply romantic. Young girls yearned for a man like Edward and grew up deeply confused about ideas like consent and what is and isn’t allowed in the name of love.

Another example, that has impacted the psyche of young men, is the 2019 movie Kabir Singh, starring Shahid Kapoor. The protagonist is deeply dysfunctional, emotionally and physically abusive toward the woman he claims to love and a raging mess in every way. But this brokenness is depicted as peak masculinity. His ruggedness is glorified, his irresponsibility makes him “cool” and his inability to process and express emotions makes him a true “man.”

When the movie came out, many reviewers and social media users pointed out just how problematic and misogynistic the movie really is. But in terms of box office collections, it made INR 379 crore worldwide. The critics tried their best, but the movie was a hit with the public. The Indian youth had passed their verdict—controlling the woman you love, telling her who she can and can’t talk to, morally policing her and even hitting her were all forms of a true, passionate love, that the critics just couldn’t understand, because they’d never experience that type of intense love.

In different ways, subtly and directly, men are taught to be controlling, and women are taught to decipher that as love. Men are taught to cross boundaries and women are taught to be flattered that he did that for her. Men are taught to be disrespectful and women are taught to see his anger as a manly trait.

So when Krishna gives us free will, it’s worth ruminating upon.

Why is giving us what we want more important than keeping us safe and happy in the spiritual world? Why is allowing us to forget Him if we want to more important than giving us memory so we can quickly return to Him? Why doesn’t He stop us and save us from our own misguidedness?

Based on Krishna’s choices, we can try to draw lessons for ourselves about love.

Trying to make us stay or forcing us to remember would not be love, even though we might sometimes wish it. It would be control. So it makes sense that He doesn’t do that. For Him, seeing us go our own unique journeys is more important than chiding us or forcing us onto the right path. Of course, He’s always there, looking over us, but He lets us be.

He’s protective, not overprotective. He’s loving, not suffocating. He’s caring, not scary. Always, He lets us decide how we want to be with Him, and He’s always respectful of our choices.

It brings to mind that oft repeated quote which is popular to the point of being cliche—”Let love go. If it comes back, it’s meant to be. If it doesn’t, it was never yours.” It’s almost cringe, I know, but it’s also how free will is. Krishna lets us go, and once we learn how to love Him, we’ll return to Him. A respectful man will let a woman go, not stalk her like Edward Cullen or control her like Kabir Singh. And a respected woman will understand that she has the right to leave if she desires, and recognize that in letting her leave if she so wishes, the man is actually respecting her.

We as a society often deeply misunderstand love, confusing it with control. All we really need to do is turn to Krishna, the Supreme Lord, the reservoir of love. The way He loves us is how we should aim to love each other too.

In that sense, the more we understand Krishna, the more we’ll understand love. And the way to understand Krishna is simple—chant His names, hear His glories, eat His leftovers. Essentially, be a devotee and live life in accordance with Krishna’s instructions.

Aarushi is an independent culture journalist with an interest in reading, writing and spending time with her cat. She has been connected with ISKCON Chowpatty since 2023 and finds deep satisfaction in the association of devotees around her. She’s slowly making sense of Srila Prabhupada’s teachings and learning how to notice Krishna’s presence at the heart of everything and everyone around her.