so i was sending a mutual an ask saying i love you in hindi and i realised how interesting it is that i love you is usually used in any and every context like between friends/parents and children/lovers everything but "mujhe tumse bohot pyaar he" or "ham tumhe pasand karte hai" or "mujhe tumse prem he" (the literal translations) always entail a romantic meaning. like, if i say this to a friend they'd defintely misunderstand. i hate it.
riiiiiight like those words hold a certain kind of weight that plasters USE IN FORMAL, SENTIMENT-HEAVY CONTEXT ONLY. onto the tongue of the user and it's just ... i want to tell you i love you in my language without sounding like prem from vivah : a journey from engagement to marriage why should that be so hard????? we as a hindi speaking community should either normalise the fuck out of hai : mujhe tumse prem hai or come up with flexible, handy alternatives. i personally, do this thing where whenever one of friends does a simple friend thing like maybe tying my shoelace or giving me a tapli on the head or instinctively grabbing my hand while crossing the road or just simply smiling at me too long or just anything remotely intended from love, i do my smirky eyes and tell them : "pyaar toh hai. pyaar toh hai boss." and i think we have scope still and can definitely come up with so many more ways to say i love you in our khichdi of a language :)
