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While most people spend sleepless nights planning the right moment to utter those three feared words, Valentine's Day makes it seem all so simple. It's all right there onthe market shelves, discovers a jaded IVAN T.
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We have Friendship Day, Bosses' Day, Second Cousin Twice Removed Day, Cute Stranger on Bus Day... none of which really have the sheer cultural and commercial value that romantic love can pack in. — Photo: K.R. Deepak
IT'S THAT time of year again. Valentine's Day is upon our calendars and our lives, cajoling, exhorting, blackmailing us into admissions of affection. Once again, sales of greeting cards, roses, and "that heart-shaped chocolate, next to the pink teddy bear" will go into high orbit. Once again, Bajrang Dal activists will claim erosion of Indian Culture{trade} by the West, and will try to counter this by breaking gift shop windows. Marketing mavens will turn into messiahs of freedom of (consumer) choice, while some naοve souls will agonise about how commercial it's all become.
What is it about Valentine's Day that draws such extreme reactions? How did it get so important that people could use your opinion about it to slot you into neat categories (see above)? Most importantly, why is there so much angst about a day that is supposedly about something that all of us, at least secretly, hope to get or keep?
Those words
Alain de Botton's delightful Essays on Love (highly recommended for anyone who has been, is, or is planning to be in "love", or not) has the narrator struggling to tell his beloved those three fateful words. "She really was adorable," he thinks. "But how could I tell her so in a way that would suggest the distinctive nature of my attraction? Words like love or devotion or infatuation were exhausted by the weight of successive love stories, by the layers imposed on them through the uses of others... There seemed to be no way to transport love in the word l-o-v-e, without at the same time throwing the most banal associations into the basket." (He finally settles for saying that he marshmallows her, and she, oddly enough, understands.)
Valentine's Day, on the face of it, seems to hold a way to transcend this barrier of language. It flirtingly suggests that it is, deep down inside, about a different vocabulary of love — one that recognizes passion and desire, sure, but also admiration, friendship, lust. Plato and Aristotle wrote about eros, philia and agape — different concepts of love one could feel for one's lover, community or God — and Valentine's Day could have been about respecting these sentiments too. It promised to be a day when you could, without awkwardness or self-consciousness, tell your boss how much you looked up to her, or call up a friend and say what he meant to you, or even maybe tell someone just how you get that little spring inside when you see them. It could have been the day when we all just left our awkwardness and self-consciousness at home, and wore our hearts on our rolled-up sleeves. Except that V-Day left home late, got stuck in traffic, took the wrong one-way, and is still trying to overtake the Hallmark truck in front of it.
Meanwhile we have Friendship Day, Bosses' Day, Second Cousin Twice Removed Day, Cute Stranger on Bus Day... none of which really have the sheer cultural and commercial value that romantic love can pack in. So while all these second-rung Almost-Days languish on the back shelves of greeting card racks, V-Day is, effectively, dressed up as Lover's Day. Sure you'll hear the occasional miracle story about someone who told their parents how much they loved them on V-Day, and there are even some urban legends about presents specifically for non-lovers. But V-Day now is really about expressing romantic love.
Narrowed down
Which wouldn't have been that bad an idea if it had been a little more inclusive, or even just more creative. Valentine's Day is about one narrow, shallow, heterosexual version of love only — a one-size-fits-all manufactured product which slaps you about the face and tells you that its true worth lies in how expensive it is, how it's unique but you can celebrate it like a million others by eating dinner at a romantic place, giving them a gift voucher, ordering a special pizza and getting another free, all this only on Valentine's day special offer — relish the eternal moment, cherish the memory, share the greatest of emotions with that special person...
With so much being packed into it, is it any wonder the word "love" is in danger of becoming empty?
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