Valentine's Day and the Pinky blues

Today morning as I turned on my desktop, I got pleasantly surprised, just like every year and year after year ever since somebody in high school enlightened me about the Valentine’s Day. Growing up in a country like India where almost all festivals are heavily commercialized and misunderstood in those terms, it took me a while understanding the real meaning of the holiday. What we knew then was that the guys were supposed to show their romantic love interest to the girls by giving them roses and chocolates, and of course, stuffed teddy bears were a plus. From there onwards, every year was an insane trip of the commercialization of the whole thing in myriads of ways. I am not even embellishing anything here.

On holidays our markets are full of flood lights and are open even longer than the regular hours with no parking places and not an elbow’s space to move in humongous Malls. People flood outside of their homes looking for parties, eating out, watching movies and having fun. They do not gather at home cooking dinner with and/or for their family and friends. The local street vendors appear out of nowhere on Christmas day with weird Santa Claus masks on. Everyone is seen selling and buying something, in the name of the holiday. Those who are not would be seen fighting about it.

A couple of years back there was a good road show put by Shiv Sena (a group of self-proclaimed patriots better known as fascists) against the young girls and guys who were celebrating the day to which the youngsters responded pretty well only last year by distributing pink panties to the patrons of Indian cultural heritage who were against westernizing “love” in India. So, the whole day is not just commercialized, now even politicized there. Though love in the times of Valentine’s Day can be the toughest love in the history of mankind anywhere in the world. There is a fair chance of someone calling it off with their current mate just because they would not do the usual stuff, the ritual on the day, so to speak. Would not say that I ever did that but I know a few girls who did. Thinking in retrospect, however, all my beaus were gone just less than a year after dating, and there was one thing in common, they all vanished before the Valentine’s Day approached. Some even on 12th or 13th of February. So could it be a reason, the day? Who knows?

Anyway, so today morning, I saw on a site’s home page an image of a little boy and girl sitting with their backs facing us, holding hands cuddled in sweet embrace. Watching the pink candies all over the grocery stores and the bunches of roses with sky rocketing prices as the day approaches, the heart shaped cookies and goodies…creating a wonderful microcosm of a virtual reality named “love” or “love is in the air”, I have always wondered, if love actually was in thin air and hence we needed more ways to show that appreciation on just one day. As a single person who has been ditched by guys just before the day, I couldn’t but hate the whole atmosphere that these little pink candles create. You can find pink and heart shaped things everywhere and believe me they are scarier than the Halloween masks. As they say in alien movies “They are everywhere” and no matter what you do, if you are out on the day or during the week “They will find you or you are going to face them”.

As my reconciliation with my singlehood and lack of appreciation on the most popular day of showing affection, I had often presented my first love, my mom, gifts and roses or my best single and lonely girl friends heart shaped candies in past. But this year was different as all my single friends were married and I was bored of group gatherings or wishing my parents a happy Valentine’s Day or working late hours just to compensate. I had crossed the age when one craves for that kind of a bitter-sweet romantic love where expression is an important aspect. I did not want roses, chocolates or gifts for sure but I did want love in my life. Could I ever get rid of that desire?

Even when I am growing old single and even when life seems to preoccupy me all the time with its beautiful manifestations and activities, there always remains a warm nook in the heart that awaits love- a love as ideal as one of those fairy tales or great love stories. There is longing and there is hope. Recently I also discovered that only divine love can be that perfect but we all are divine, then why can’t it be possible amongst us. We are oblivious to ourselves and incapable of loving, hence we label sentiments with things. A great sentiment that Saint Valentine wanted to convey gradually is really misinterpreted and grossed into shallow show off more than anything else.

I might not want mushy romantic love or the conventional gifts as I really don’t care but I don’t want every website to haunt me either by putting some pink or romantic images or sponsoring for flower advertisements for the day. Come on! Can we please at least spare the search engines or hospital offices? No! The plain answer is “No” because no matter how much you want the monkey off your back, “They are always there and they are watching us!” Shouldn’t you have guessed by now that otherwise I wouldn’t be writing a blog on the whole thing.