What's the big deal about it? I don't think anyone knows. Some people say why pick out one day to celebrate love? Others say, why shouldn't we? It's about cherishing that particular person in our lives. Some people become very emotional about their spouses, single people sometimes feel bad and at other times try to behave like "grapes are sour" and say all sorts of stupid things to feel good. In all this flows the strong current of commercialization. Humans have not yet failed to amuse me!
I read some articles about the original St. Valentine and then this being a festival to herald spring and what not. Yes, for people who live in cold climates (or in Seattle), spring is very much a welcome break. I see why people became so happy after seeing the climate warm up a little and blue skies shining. And then if there is a way to welcome spring and meet other young people, then why not!
I love Valentine's Day celebrations. Well, I generally like celebrations of all sorts and now I have the American festivals along with the Indian festivals to celebrate so I am double happy! That's why I do celebrate Valentine's Day. I counted this is my 17th Valentine's Day celebration. There are two things that have changed, one is the people and two is the way I celebrate it.
Initially, in the late 90s when this became a big deal back in India, going to "Archie's Gallery" and buying cards were a luxury to us. We would save pocket money (allowances) to buy those and get chocolates. Well, I shouldn't quite say "we". It were the boys who did it. Then they wrote passionate love letters on ruled papers torn from notebooks. Those letters were always in English and they quoted lines from famous songs. Those letters were invariably torn up by the girls to whom they were given and the chocolates always eaten up by friends of that girl. It was at that time when as girls, our sole mission in life was to hate boys. Now, in retrospect I feel so sorry for those boys. Poor kids, they just wanted to be our boyfriends!
Gradually that changed and we slowly started to reciprocate their feelings. This I am talking about late school, early college days. We would sometimes even get permission to go out with those boys in the afternoon and had to definitely get home before evening. Other than exchanging simple gifts, if we could afford it, some people would go to movies or to coffee shops. I remember going to Barista once and eating a pastry worth Rs. 35 which was an exorbitant sum of money for a piece of cake! But yes, that was just one day in the year. Going out for movies or early dinner was ok in our late college days. I personally didn't like going to movies (unless there's some specific movie I wanted to watch) with friends as I thought it to be a total waste of time. You can't talk while watching movies! As most of our friends were single at this time, I have to write about them too. I remember one friend jokingly saying on 14th Feb that she would go search for a boyfriend with a flashlight in hand! There used to be a lot of drama invariably going on around Valentine's Day.
In UAB there was a time when all of my friends were single and that was the time we enjoyed a lot! These people were in general very happy and friendly beings and on being single they were available to hang out with the entire group almost all the time unless they had to study or were busy for academic reasons. There wasn't any drama in this group and I think we all liked everyone else, quite a difficult thing to achieve when there are so many girls! In 2009, we had an "International Girls' potluck" for all the girls in the group and like I said before they were all single, some "geographically single" because of long distance relationships, one "technically single" because she was about to break up, another was "totally single" because she never wanted to be in any relationships. We are wore pink clothes and didn't invite any guys so had all the food to ourselves.
I thought I had grown up after I got married, but then I found out that I haven't. At work, we gave pink, white and red girly cards to the guys in our team with geeky love messages written in them. Like - "always together like a key and a value" or "roses are red, violets are blue, I promise never to open a bug against you". Then we ate funny cupcakes with pink and red frosting which had heart shaped rings as toppers. the guys are cool, they loved this.
I don't believe that once you get married you should stop celebrating Valentine's Day. The only thing is the style changes. Like for me, I'd prefer to have a nice home cooked dinner with Arnab now rather than sitting and talking in a coffee shop. The main thing is if you know that you are loved then it doesn't matter whether you got nice presents, or had a dinner cooked for you. If someone makes you feel special, then chances are that you are anyway celebrating love all through your life :)
I read some articles about the original St. Valentine and then this being a festival to herald spring and what not. Yes, for people who live in cold climates (or in Seattle), spring is very much a welcome break. I see why people became so happy after seeing the climate warm up a little and blue skies shining. And then if there is a way to welcome spring and meet other young people, then why not!
I love Valentine's Day celebrations. Well, I generally like celebrations of all sorts and now I have the American festivals along with the Indian festivals to celebrate so I am double happy! That's why I do celebrate Valentine's Day. I counted this is my 17th Valentine's Day celebration. There are two things that have changed, one is the people and two is the way I celebrate it.
Initially, in the late 90s when this became a big deal back in India, going to "Archie's Gallery" and buying cards were a luxury to us. We would save pocket money (allowances) to buy those and get chocolates. Well, I shouldn't quite say "we". It were the boys who did it. Then they wrote passionate love letters on ruled papers torn from notebooks. Those letters were always in English and they quoted lines from famous songs. Those letters were invariably torn up by the girls to whom they were given and the chocolates always eaten up by friends of that girl. It was at that time when as girls, our sole mission in life was to hate boys. Now, in retrospect I feel so sorry for those boys. Poor kids, they just wanted to be our boyfriends!
Gradually that changed and we slowly started to reciprocate their feelings. This I am talking about late school, early college days. We would sometimes even get permission to go out with those boys in the afternoon and had to definitely get home before evening. Other than exchanging simple gifts, if we could afford it, some people would go to movies or to coffee shops. I remember going to Barista once and eating a pastry worth Rs. 35 which was an exorbitant sum of money for a piece of cake! But yes, that was just one day in the year. Going out for movies or early dinner was ok in our late college days. I personally didn't like going to movies (unless there's some specific movie I wanted to watch) with friends as I thought it to be a total waste of time. You can't talk while watching movies! As most of our friends were single at this time, I have to write about them too. I remember one friend jokingly saying on 14th Feb that she would go search for a boyfriend with a flashlight in hand! There used to be a lot of drama invariably going on around Valentine's Day.
In UAB there was a time when all of my friends were single and that was the time we enjoyed a lot! These people were in general very happy and friendly beings and on being single they were available to hang out with the entire group almost all the time unless they had to study or were busy for academic reasons. There wasn't any drama in this group and I think we all liked everyone else, quite a difficult thing to achieve when there are so many girls! In 2009, we had an "International Girls' potluck" for all the girls in the group and like I said before they were all single, some "geographically single" because of long distance relationships, one "technically single" because she was about to break up, another was "totally single" because she never wanted to be in any relationships. We are wore pink clothes and didn't invite any guys so had all the food to ourselves.
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I thought I had grown up after I got married, but then I found out that I haven't. At work, we gave pink, white and red girly cards to the guys in our team with geeky love messages written in them. Like - "always together like a key and a value" or "roses are red, violets are blue, I promise never to open a bug against you". Then we ate funny cupcakes with pink and red frosting which had heart shaped rings as toppers. the guys are cool, they loved this.
I don't believe that once you get married you should stop celebrating Valentine's Day. The only thing is the style changes. Like for me, I'd prefer to have a nice home cooked dinner with Arnab now rather than sitting and talking in a coffee shop. The main thing is if you know that you are loved then it doesn't matter whether you got nice presents, or had a dinner cooked for you. If someone makes you feel special, then chances are that you are anyway celebrating love all through your life :)
1 comment:
In my school/college days Saraswati Puja was an unofficial Valentines' Day. But the scope remained very limited and roaming around Gariahat was the maximum you could do. But think about the Basontatsav of the olden days as described by Sharadindu - life was real 'free' at that time. Actually after the drab days of winter Spring brings in new life and the youth takes up the mantle from it to enliven their world.
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