Love, For Sale!

No, we are not going to discuss prostitution.

Love – an intense feeling of deep affection

Legend says that there was a Roman emperor who believed that married men did not make good soldiers. He banned young men from getting married during his time. A young priest named Valentius (or Valentine) went against the emperor’s orders and got young lovers secretly married. Due to him violating the emperor’s orders, Valentine was ordered to be sentenced to death. During his time in prison, he fell in love with the jailor’s daughter (don’t ask me what she was doing there!). It is said that days before his death, he wrote a letter to the jailor’s daughter and signed it off as “your Valentine”. He became a symbol of love.

From the story above, we learn that all good love stories involve two happy people with a happy ending. However, what makes a love story great and immortal is one person dying somewhere or facing the abyss of all miseries (Romeo & Juliet, the couple in “A Walk to Remember”, et al..). Secondly, Valentine would have probably got friend-zoned later. There are no stories from friends of the jailor’s daughter’s to confirm whether or not she liked Valentine. Guess we would never know.

What we really know about is how to express love. Quintessential to this expression is making the other person feel special. Back in the older times, people did not have a lot to give in terms of materialistic objects. Hence, a hand-written greeting card, a flower or a love letter would be just enough to keep the other person happy. Come on, if you had plagues, famines and small pox and dictators killing people all around the world, even you would appreciate all the little things someone did for you.

Fast forward to today. Plague is gone and we have consumerism around us. Somehow, somewhere, some of us, have confused the expression of love with buying over-priced, redundant stuff and doing things which would not make sense if one was thinking rationally. Why else would you buy a stuffed toy for a grown up because it felt ‘cute’? How else would you explain a person haggling over Rs. 5 when buying a kilogram of apple but willing to pay five times the cost to buy a rose on “Rose Day”. And those cringey greeting cards with unrealistic lines like – “You will be my only one.” How can you give a card like that to someone when you are still figuring out if you are going to reach CA final or just have had enough of it at CPT?

Here’s an alternative. Why not be realistic and have a greeting card which reads the following –

“You’re my only one (at this moment)

And things are going to be great (apparently)

But in case, and just in case, it does not work for us,

Darling, you’ll still be among my top 3.”

Let us talk about the week ahead. Hug day, Kiss day, Teddy day, Propose day, Chocolate Day, Fool’s day and then, Valentine’s day. All the things that the aforesaid days stand for can be done on any day whatsoever, throughout the year, without getting arrested. But you gotta do all this in a dedicated week. I am pretty sure that these days came into existence due to someone having a great business acumen rather than people in love. Remember those diamond jewelry advertisements? They used to say something like “diamonds are for infinity”, and the woman forgives the man for some crap that he did. A great business idea again. “I was a jerk, but hey, here’s a diamond for you.” “Thanks honey, now I know you love me.”

Buying expensive stuff for the person you love is not the only way to express your affection. There are other ways, and better ways. But if your partner expects too many gifts from you, remember, you are just a Santa Claus to them.

I hope you all have a good Valentine’s week. I also hope, that you all have a good (and not great) love story. And even in case you don’t, remember, we are facing corona virus threat and might get extinct anyways.

With lots of love.

Yours bitterly,

Ashish M.

P. S. - 
1) No, this post isn't anti love. It just says that love is bigger than all of this. The biggest gifts that you can give your loved ones are your care, protection, support, encouragement, respect and sensitivity towards them. Everything else, is secondary.

2) There are many versions of St. Valentine's story online. I just chose one of the versions. It's a legend dating back more than 1500 years and the story can never be corroborated.