Some 85 miles away from the Taj Mahal lies the small Indian town of Kaser Kalan. It is here that 79 year old Faizul Hasan Qadri is building a monument in memory of his wife. The building has a rounded ceiling and archways has four tower’s on its perimeter and one day this will be his wife’s tomb.

Qadri married his wife when they were teenagers, and they were together for 58 years before her death three years ago. The couple never had children, and one day Qadri’s wife asked him who would remember them once they were gone. “I will build a tomb that everybody will remember,” he told her. It was for her, he says, though one day he will also be laid inside it.

After she died, he sold her small pieces of jewellery and some family farmland. He added everything he’d saved over the years and started building. His wife lies inside the main building in a small tomb, but almost three years later the project still unfinished. Qadri doesn’t have much money, and only hires workers when he can afford it.
People have offered to help, but he says no.

“It is a proof of love. I have to do it on my own,” he says.

How can you prove your love?

Author Dr Gary Chapman suggests there are five ways or ‘languages’ in which we show and receive love. Words of affirmation; quality time; gifts; acts of service; physical touch. Each of us has a preference for one more than the others – and it’s only when we learn to speak someone else’s love language that they will know that they are loved.

In a month where Valentine’s Day marks a central point, expressions of love will be flying back and forth, in the post, by text, by email – maybe even by carrier pigeon. It’s a chance to tell someone how much they are loved. But it shouldn’t be restricted to a significant other.

It’s also another opportunity to once again give the message of God’s unfathomable love for each and every one of us.

(February 2015)