Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. Love is an overflowing joy, an immeasurable quality. It is the fragrance of a silent, peaceful, meditative heart. It is the highest religion, love is God.

It’s the month of Valentine and love is in the air. February 14 has become the date for exchanging love notes, flowers, candles and gifts between loved ones, and donating the charity, all in the name of Saint Valentine.

Come February and the air is peppered with romantic getaways, candle-lit dinners, gift offers and more.

Take your pick from the following pages to make the most romantic day of the year enchanting with that special someone.

But wait a while, and take some time to read a brief account of the love stories of some romantics whose names are eternally etched I history. Get inspired…..

Vatsyayana, author of the ‘Kama Sutra’

Vatsyayana, the ascetic scholar who lived in India (around the 5^th century A.D.) wrote history’s most famous book on erotic love. ‘Kamasutra” was Vatsyayana’s tribute to the Indian God of love, Kama, and was meant to be the ultimate love manual on sex and fulfilling relationships. The author used as basis, notes of hundreds of years of spiritual wisdom passed down by the ancient sages.

Shah Jahan

Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor of India from 1628 to 1658, is known for building one of history’s most spectacular buildings, the Taj Mahal, in Agra (northern India), in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, the most favourite of his three queens. She died after giving birth to the couple’s 14^th child and on her deathbed, asked her husband to promise to build the world’s most beautiful mausoleum for her. The deeply grieving emperor built the magnificent Taj Mahal, a symbol of his love, in white marble. At its centre lies the grave of the queen.

Giacomo Casanova

The term ‘Casanova’ conjures up the romantic image of the prototypical libertine and seducer. This is owing to Giacomo Casanova’s autobiography. ‘Histoire de ma vie’, which chronicled with vivid detail – as well as some exaggeration – his many sexual and romantic exploits in 18^th century Europe.  Casanova, born in Venice, was expelled from a seminary for scandalous conduct. His varied career included working for a cardinal in Rome, performing as a violinist, and as a magician. To avoid his creditors, he changed his name to Chevalier de Seingalt, under which he published a number of literary works. His celebration of pleasure-seeking and much-professed love of women (he maintained that a woman’s conversation was at least as captivating as her body) made him the leading champion of a movement towards sexual freedom and the model for the famous don Juan of literature.

King Edward VIII

When King Edward, then Prince of Wales, was first introduced to Wallis Simpson in 1931, she was married to her second husband. Love struck and thus began a romance that would rock Britain’s Parliament, the monarch and the Church of England. A few month after being crowned king in 1936, Edward proposed to Simpson, thereby sparking of a huge scandal and prompting Britain’s prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, to threaten to resign if the marriage went ahead. Not wanting a political crisis, but unwilling to sacrifice his love, Edward decided to give up the throne. In a public radio address, he declared his love to the world saying: “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.” The couple got married, were given the titles of Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and lived in exile in France.

Salim (Son of Emperor Akbar)

The love story of Salim and Anarkali is a story that every lover knows. The son of the great Mughal emperor Akbar fell in love with an ordinary but beautiful courtesan Anarkali. He was mesmerized by her beauty and fell in love as soon as he saw her. But the emperor could not digest the fact that his son was in love with an ordinary courtesan. He started pressurizing Anarkali and devised all sorts of tactics to make her fall in the eyes of the young, love smitten prince. When Salim came to know of this, he declared a war against his own father. But the mighty emperor's gigantic army was too much for the young prince to handle. He gets defeated and is sentenced to death. This is when Anarkali intervenes and renounces her love to save her beloved from the jaws of death. She is entombed alive in a brick wall right in front of her lover's eyes.

Elizabeth Taylor

Liz Taylor, winner of two best Actress Oscars, is perhaps best known for her beauty and her love life. She married a total of eight times, twice to the same man – actor Richard Burton, whom she has called “one of the two great loves of my life.” Taylor and Burton met on the sets of ‘Cleopatra’. Both were married to other people then and their affair soon made headlines around the world. It also led to a public rebuke from the Vatican. Their own married life together was a case of extremes, characterized by intense passion and intense fights. They divorced in 1973, but found it impossible to stay apart and remarried in 1975, only to break up four months later. Though Liz was barred from Burton’s funeral in 1984 by his last wife, she received huge numbers of condolence messages. Liz and Burton’s is one of history’s most celebrated love stories.