The Valentine's day

This year, as usual, the Valentine’s Day made a huge hue and cry, with a mega increase in the pomposity of celebrations, and subsequent increase in the number and strength of hollow protests by political parties and organizations which claim themselves as the moral police ‘meant’ for the prevention of social evils.
Hearing the term Valentine’s day, arouses in me no more than a contemptible laughter, pitying the necessity of a unique day to express one of the basic emotions of human beings called LOVE. Emotions are simply instantaneous and unpredictable phenomena. It is hard to compel oneself to evoke emotions. Emotional joy or ecstasy comes out of inner contentment, which may have various triggering factors in various individuals. I wonder how people can derive inner joy when they receive some ready made roses or greeting cards with the boring romantic clichés encrypted in a jargoned fashion. This time, as I understand, there have been a number of ‘innovative’ but fundamentally absurd and ridiculous ways celebrating V day. Thanks to the media and the corporate, who have with them the power to make anything sane or insane.

Why do we need a separate day to express our love to our loved ones? Do we need a Mother’s day, Father’s day or sister’s day? Does that mean that we don’t love them on other days? These are some of the obvious logical questions against the credibility of the V day. Love is in the work you do to earn a living, love is there when you give your seat in a crowded bus to an old man, love is there when you switch off the fans and lights of your workroom after your use, love is there when you put a blasting metal music in a low volume, so as not to disturb your neighbors! Love is something ubiquitous in everything you see, in everything you do, in everything you think. Love is about the sensitivity of our hearts, it is about how we respect and care to bother for our fellow beings, how we identify the emotions and ethos of others with ours. Just that love has different forms and manifestations depending on the individuals, situations they encounter and the relations they maintain.
Anyway I don’t enforce anyone to regard my concepts of love as universally true. The least I can or shall do is just keep myself away from celebrating the Vday, so as to happily uphold and feel satisfied about the principles I believe in.
Though I find the whole idea of V day obscurely ludicrous, I defend the right of an individual to celebrate it. I have to acknowledge the existence of such individuals who derive pleasure and satisfaction from celebrating the Vday. Hence I pity the politicians and the conservative jingoists who bark like dogs trying to invite the whole attention to their stubborn ideology which they foolishly advocate to be solely universal. It is a well known fact, but a rarely respected fact, that the constitution provides each and every citizen the right to celebrate any festival in whatever way he/she likes, provided it does not debilitate the right of his/her fellow citizen. Such a fundamental right existing, I wonder why those political scoundrels are not arrested by law, for harassing and hampering the constitutional rights of others. What eligibility do they have to proclaim themselves as the custodians of our culture and heritage? Why don’t they target the bollywood heroes and babes who have been playing the significant role, in redefining the whole concept of ‘Indian’ness and Indian culture and legitimizing extreme boundaries of love and sex?


Be it fortunate or unfortunate, I believe that, all these changes are simply the habitual results of a large scale influence of westernization and globalization phenomena. Whether we need such a superficial amalgamation of cultures and social customs is a question too profound to answer. Today when westernization is the only criterion that wholly defines development and prosperity in all fields of Indian life, the popularity of the V day sentiments among the middle class Indian youth doesn’t give any special surprise. But what I plead to ask is, don’t we have enough number of indigenous festivals that uphold the concepts of love and prosperity? Don’t we have myriads of prestigious classical and traditional art forms, dance and music, that calls for love and peace, perhaps in a more subtle and respectable manner?

Westerners don’t have any similar fests and when they celebrate the V day they may be probably, quite sincere and contented about it. They are in a different cultural domain of emotional expression and formality where such a unique day can’t be regarded as something preposterous. But when it is celebrated in India, it largely becomes a vainglorious symbol of artificiality and meaninglessness, lacking emotional sensitivity and faith. It becomes just another opportunity for the market forces to play upon and extract the maximum profit from their prey; the middle class youth who in their bloated euphoria don’t care to ponder over such issues with profound social and cultural implications.
So this cycle of celebrations and protests will continue in the years to come. It is an everlasting battle between the contrasting interpretations of Indian culture and modernism.