If you are reading this article, then it is obvious enough that you are familiar with the vogue associated with February 14th each year. People from all over the world - in a relationship or not - have something to contribute to the ever-expanding debate as to what is the ideal way to push through the day till it’s time for you to go to bed. Trying to not scroll through #foreveralone memes, we’d like to do something different this year. Now, since it’s an article co-written by two avid, work-in-progress students who like to call themselves Feminists, we promise to provide a holistic yet wholesome view, one which is set apart from the usual relationship blues.
Historically, the ultimate day for lovers, Valentine’s day is an archaic tradition believed to have originated from an old Roman festival - ‘‘Lupercalia’’. The festival was commemorated by sacrifices of animals followed by all the young women placing their names in a big urn and being paired for the year with the bachelor choosing their name. These matches more than often ended in marriage. Another legend suggests that Claudius II executed two men — both named Valentine — on Feb. 14 of relatively different years in the 3rd century A.D. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church as a means to christianize the Pagan festival with the celebration of St. Valentine's Day.
As the years went on, writers romanticized it in their works and the holiday grew ‘sweeter’ with hand-made cards growing as accepted tokens. The contemporary scenario represents Valentine’s day as a day of love and gratitude. A day of flowers, gifts, chocolates, greeting cards, and fluttering hearts. Valentine’s Day wasn’t mainstreamed in India until around 1992. It caught on in our social environment with the growing influence of TV channels for the youth such as MTV and rising internet popularity at the turn of the millennium. These celebrations have caused a sharp change in the Indian PDA culture. This initially received a lot of backlash from the Indian conservative society, considering it as a bad western influence. Eventually, the idea found a pillar in the youth who accepted and waited for Valentine’s day every year.
Despite this, some groups (read- Bajrang Dal, anti-Romeo warriors) continue to assault couples in different parts of our country in the name of religion and culture. Trying to seize the cupid by its diapers, attacking and lecturing couples, making them do sit-ups these groups are busy convincing that Valentine’s Day is celebrated only by anti-nationals! I mean, who needs love when you can beat the shit out of people? (count us in!). Let’s just say, if these people could permanently alter calenders to jump from 13th to 15th February, they would.
Apart from humor and jokes, here are some subdomains to look at; cut from the ideal-love induced by the notion of Valentine’s, but still in the shade waiting to be talked about.
Love is Love. Or is it? Does it get easy in India?
‘Are you normal?’, ‘Is it allowed in our culture?’, ‘Are you sure you don’t just need a doctor?’ yada yada, are some of the common phrases stamped into the already barely-coping-with-societal-norms non-hetero human being with a massivelist of common follow-ups from Indians when it comes to talking about or validating a same-sex relationship. As a matter of fact, if you look closely enough you’d realize that given the existence of a separate tag -’ same-sex relationship’ for a technically natural, romantic relationship is evidence enough that no love is still not love in our country except heterosexual. Despite the decriminalization of homosexuality, homosexual relationships still have a long way to go which is not only problematic but also shows how a country of billions of humans still has such an obsolete mindset and dearth of compassion( ironically one of the defining qualities of humans) for somebody else’s love.
However, we wish for and we look forward to a world and an India where all the couples have space and ‘freedom’ to let their love be the way they want it to be.
Fact: Love is the Third Highest Murder Motive in India
“According to a recent report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), love affairs are the third biggest reason behind murders in India”. Love indeed kills in India. Some of the most commonly cited reasons and crimes include - extra-marital affairs, love triangles, honor killing, inter-caste marriages, or simply, just moving on or deciding to break up. Let’s not forget acid-thrown by apparently wounded in love culprits (Um.. maybe not do that just because your wounded ego couldn’t bear somebody’s rejection.)
Valentine’s takes such a number when it comes to the practices most enthusiastically taken from or adapted from the western culture, yet the day of love manages to remain in headlines with similar incidents surfacing from all over the country.
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
The Problematic Portrayal of Love in Bollywood
Yes, romance takes the cake when it comes to the best that Bollywood gives, but little do we realize (or do we now?) how grave relationship mistakes are effortlessly glorified in the same movies? From ‘changing yourself and your life for the one’, sexism and misogyny to physical and emotional assault, gaslighting, objectification, and even stalking, Bollywood has from times immemorial accepted, normalized, and propagated the idea that ‘Everything is baselessly fair in love and war’.
The other side of the problematic portrayal includes preaching the faulty notion that everyone gets a single shot at true love and troublesome school of thought that you can never just be friends with someone from the opposite gender (which again also rules out the existence of homosexual relationships). To anybody still in this illusion, yes, you CAN fall in love again, and, yes, you CAN be friends with the opposite gender without any underlying romantic notions.
Is now really a time to continue appreciating and promoting the problematic portrayals or is it time that we challenge them and speak up to what actually, India needs from a platform as powerful and celebrated as Bollywood?
The Valentine’s FOMO and the Practice to Make Yourself (forcefully) Fall in Love
We get it. The fear of missing out on the experience of love and its celebration can be daunting and can make you question your self-worth. Scrolling through Instagram, seeing all the happy couples, celebrating their love can sting sometimes but that doesn’t give you the passage to make yourself fall in Love, without actually being in love.
Look, big-sister talk, 14th February comes every year doesn’t it?
You really don’t need to make yourself fall in love with somebody just to experience Valentine’s day and its shenanigans. Please don’t set yourself up for heartbreaks like that darling, you’re gonna be fine, with or without a Valentine. (Trust us we know!)
Having talked about the various facets of love and relationships in India, we now feel the need to put forth the fact that given the volatile, individualistic, ever-evolving or simply vast phenomena that love is and is supposed to, isn’t it unfair to box it all and spill it over a single day to call it the day of love? It certainly is. They say that the right place is a person. We agree. But, with the right person isn’t, cheesily much, any time the right time? Well, that did make us think.
Technically, love is an intense feeling of affection. Having said that, we feel, it is also high-time that the focus of such an affection, shifts from saving it for a single person or celebrating Valentine’s with the same person to distributing it among everyone in your life who both deserve it and make you genuinely happy.
(Here- Some playlists to dance/cry/romanticize your life to if you want. We can’t tell you what to do-
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