Love: हुनु or पर्नु

An ethnographic linguistic analysis

I had always heard of ‘लभ पर्नु’ as a common phrase in Nepali society, but last week I heard of the term ‘लभ हुनु’ and I was a bit taken aback. I wanted to reflect on what the linguistics difference means - and what that ultimately tells us about our society and how it sees लभ.

First of all, लभ itself is a borrowed word. One could have perhaps used the phrase ‘मायामा पर्नु’ or ‘मायामा हुनु’ but we have slowly shifted away from using माया as a translation of ‘love’ and rather have started using the translated the transliterated (and not translated) form लभ.

The word लभ and its meaning too shifts based on who is doing the utterance. My grandmother, for instance, used to utter the word लभ whenever she talked about a scandal or something inappropriate in her worldview. That usage, too, has shifted overtime and in meeting with relatives, for my grandmother, the phrase ‘लभ पर्नु’ comes more often as something that happens commonly in today’s society.

But what would the difference between पर्नु and हुनु be?

Some of the close translation for ‘पर्नु’ would be to get caught, or to someone experience it without one’s intentional awareness. The connotation generally has to do with a lack of conscious control and rather, the slow absorption of oneself in the state of love. In simple words, it’s a more passive and receptive process, rather than an active one.

On the other hand, हुनु can be translated as ‘to be’, which is also regarded as a verb to define existence, or also as ‘to happen’. Although, it is not as active as ‘लभ गर्नु’ which puts the agency of action of लभing in the doer, it is not as passive as पर्नु. Albeit, an argument can still be made that the level of passivity is quite similar, particularly if the translation is ‘to happen’ and not ‘to be’.

The question then becomes, are we moving towards a more active acceptance of लभ as a conscious, intentional choice, as opposed to a passive state of being consumed by its phenomenological state? What does that say about the changing nature of individual agency in the contemporary Nepali society? Or am I arguing for the sake of an argument?

What do you think?