It’s a cliché to say love is not just about one day, but about every day. So I won’t say it. Instead, I will say—a day for love can remind us that love and bonding is the most important pursuit of life. To love is to be seen. And not just for us, but for the non-human too.
In Corbett Tiger Reserve, I watched a mother elephant dragging the corpse of her calf for days—carrying her memories, her grief and the expectation that her love could perhaps revive her youngling.
I watched a parakeet jump for joy on its branch as it landed next to its mate and tweeted something only she understood (parakeets are known to have different names for each of their chicks, a fact that we often miss). I have seen little munias huddle together in the winter cold, their bonding a comfort in an extended winter.
So often our favourite things are portraits, framed or painted, of us with our loved ones. Those are corporeal, physical reminders of love, and the bonds that scaffold our lives with familiarity, ironing away our stress with their comfort. Yet we may agree that the most meaningful pointers of love are those that are beyond cameras. The look of understanding across a party, going to the hospital with someone who feels (and looks) poorly, listening to someone’s complaints with deep and rapt attention.
For animals, their love stories and episodes of attachment and loss are all outside the self-performative nature of the camera. We often speak of animals that pair for life and mourn the death of their partners. Towering Sarus cranes—the tallest flying birds on earth—are known to form monogamous pairings; they become listless and despondent if their partners die.
Yet, most of love and bonding is not in deaths but in the act of living. And paying attention to the living.
This February, I watched a pair of Black kites wrangle sticks from terraces, trees and the ground to create a nest. It was an act of perfect attention and care. Many other birds make even more accomplished nests—the tailorbird will sew leaves together, the baya weaver bird will nick grasses to create stringy strands that it weaves in an urn-shaped nest. Parents feed their chicks devotedly and with unending patience.
From Nature I learn how the act of loving is every day. And this act needs constant hard work. We don’t have to go out in the wild to hunt for food like a House sparrow has to, for herself or her chicks. But the act of planning meals, preparing meals, and eating meals, day after day, is also an act of love. Love stories are found and made on dining tables, as they are in the mating gifts and nesting rituals of the wild ones.
So here is my final learning—bonds are all around us, even if some don’t have Instagram reels to showcase them. And bonds are strengthened not just through sweet nothings, but through the hard work of granting attention every day.
Neha Sinha
Conservation biologist and author
Views expressed are personal
Posts on X (formerly known as Twitter): @nehaa_sinha