Skip to main content

Happy Valentine’s Day


When I was in school (late 1960s and early 70s), I had never heard of Valentine’s Day. I studied in a village school which had more than 2000 students. The boys and girls were meticulously kept apart from each other in completely different blocks. They were not even expected to look at each other. Our society in those days was so straitjacketed especially in matters of sex and gender relationships. Love affairs belonged to movies. And they usually ended as tragedies.

Why were Indians so averse to love? I don’t know. We haven’t grown up much even now, have we? Look at the kind of injunctions and instructions issued by our ruling party regarding the Valentine’s Day. They went to the extent of declaring it Cow Hug Day. Comedy has no limits in India. One of the leaders told us to hug the cow really close because we will get oxygenated. Well, I hope he wasn’t mistaking it with oxen or something.

India is a country that produced a book like the Kama Sutra back in the 4th century BCE or some time around that. Our kings and a lot of other powerful people had many wives and concubines. There was even a tradition in the kingdom of Patiala whereby the Maharaja would appear once a year before his subjects naked except for a diamond breastplate, “his organ in full and glorious erection” [Freedom at Midnight]. The king’s erectile performance was viewed as a temporal manifestation of the Shivaling. The king’s erect penis was “supposed to be radiating magic powers to drive evil spirits from the land.” [ibid]

Many of our temples have glorified sexual unions in arts and sculptures, in music and dances. Yet the simple displays of affection on a Valentine’s Day become taboo here!

There’s something seriously wrong with our perceptions and attitudes. The right wingers of India need to get at least one thing right: what do they really believe in? What do they really want? Personally, I am confused by their actions as well as their rhetoric. I’m sure there are millions of other Indians who will agree with me on this. Instead of going around playing moral police, these right wingers need to spend time in reflection and learning so that they can come up with some convincing creeds and deeds.

In the meanwhile, Happy Valentine’s Day to those who plan to hug their real loves. Go ahead and hug. Love is a great emotion. Express it. Experience it. Enjoy it.

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanFebruary 13, 2023 at 10:28 PM

    Hari Om
    Jashodaben-ji will attest to the hollowness of 'Valentine' in life, I am sure... clearly her estranged (and even stranger) husband has no interest in romance. Prefers to be gopika, it seems... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rajeev MoothedathFebruary 14, 2023 at 8:15 AM

    It is time to see the fun in the statements of jokers who are seemingly very serious and just enjoy..Variety is the spice of life.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 14, 2023 at 8:33 AM

      I do laugh on hearing the statements of these clowns. But the country shouldn't be made such a laughing stock.

      Delete
  3. magiceyeFebruary 14, 2023 at 6:22 PM

    In their minds power is directly proportional to hate.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more