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. 

Caption That!

Caption – A line, or few lines, used to elaborate a photograph

Bio – A few self-descriptive lines used to give a first impression of you

Social media is good. It’s good to connect and sometimes, maintain that connection. It’s good since we cannot meet people because we spend too much time on social media. It’s good because some of us are human and can forget birthdays. And the best and most important thing about social media is that it is great tool for stalking! If you’ve not stalked anyone through social media, you do not belong to the place.

Social media is sometimes not about others but about giving too much importance to one-self. Hence, when you see a picture captioned as “self-love”, please do not get any other ideas. It just means that someone is just feeling obsessed about themselves and that needed a picture, which was duly taken. That picture was also required to be uploaded somewhere, because “self-love” isn’t always the most satisfying if it is kept to one self.

There are other crazy captions. There are pictures which invoke the souls of mighty people. Hence, we get pictures captioned with words from Gandhi, Dr. Kalam, Confucius, Swami Vivekanand, Martin Luther King Jr., Oscar Wilde and others. That is still alright. My heart sinks when people put a quote from Mark Twain and credit it to a Hollywood actor!

Bios are quite difficult to understand as well. I am Sagittarius*, so I will behave like a jerk on Sundays. I am a Leo*, so I will be over-sensitive and over-dramatic at whatever I do. I go about being a prince/princess, because I come from a kingdom called “Nowhere”. The most creative people announce their birthdays by declaring, “I cut cakes on …………….”. These aren’t just your regular captions and bios, these are big time exaggerations.

Here are some interesting and over exploited captions.

Finally married

Am I the only one to think that this makes it sound all so desperate, for whatever reason it may be?

Mah life, mah rulezzzz…

They have restrictions at home and won’t be served dinner if they reached post 11 PM.

Perfectly flawed

Too many flaws that I lost the count

Meeting you was my destiny and falling in love was beyond my control (Every engagement/marriage pic ever)

Couldn’t fight those hormones any longer without society's approval.

Wanderlust

I am on a solo trip, but now I feel really lonely and empty and would upload a picture of every tree that I find.

I am not saying I have never used any exaggerated captions before. I may have and might again use one in the future. I would not realize it, though. There would be someone writing a blog about it then!

Yours bitterly,

Ashish M.

(* - Written with zero knowledge/interest in astrology. Any resemblance to reality is purely co-incidental)

On Writing

I have been thinking of putting my thoughts on paper (figuratively!) for a long time. Somewhere around 2017, I made a start and did type out a few pages. However, I lost my way and did not continue. I did learn. I learnt that starting is one of the most difficult things. To continue writing for some days is easier. To sustain the continuity over a longer period is the toughest of all. Another thing I learnt is that I would perhaps never be able to write good fiction. I can imagine, but I find it difficult to create something right from the scratch.

If I had to point out a reason why I could not start writing earlier, it would be feeling comfortable. Sure, some eventful break ups could have helped! On a serious note, however, I could not write because it was easy to not to write. Go to your job, slog like there’s no tomorrow and wait for payday. On your payday, settle all your credit card bills and other bills, do some more shopping and just wait for the next payday. I always felt that I should write, but never had the urge to do it. There was inner calling, but turning a deaf ear to it was rather more convenient.

A lot of people I know want to write. However, only a few of them have been able to take even a step in that direction. It does make me wonder why. Yes, not all of us would be good if we decided to create value with our writing. However, there are a lot of not-so-good writers as well out there. They are getting published. They are doing alright. Credit to them - they wanted to write and pursued with it. They prioritised writing. What they did not have in skills, they made up in determination. I am not saying that I am great at writing, what I can definitely tell you is I had a very weak determination about writing. 

You may not be great with words like Shakespeare, Wordsworth or Nietzsche. Charles Bukowski wasn't that great with words either. He was a postman who just could not stand his job. He stuck to writing because that provided him some income since he kept losing his jobs. He did alright. He made sense - not to everyone but to his own niche audience. You don't even need an audience, it could be just for yourself. 

It could be anything - a personal diary, micro blogging on social media websites, a blogging site, just anything. If you feel strongly about expressing, go for it. However, if you do express your ideas on public forum, do not be afraid to face those divergent opinions. Divergent and sometimes, illogical. It's your voice though, and be unapologetic about it. Just eliminate some of the trivial stuff from your lives and you will have the time. Everyone has enough time. Happy writing!

Yours bitterly, 

Ashish M. 

Yours bitterly

Yours bitterly. I thought over and over about the name of my blog page. I would have liked it to be something that sounded more positive. We all want to talk about the 'nice things' and the 'positive things' of the world. Understandably so, there are not so great things happening around us sometimes. Looking at the positives gives us hope and helps us to move ahead. Imagine opening the newspaper and the page 1 has news of drought, floods, heinous crime and everything negative possible - no one would want to see that (although, all we get to see on page 1 nowadays are advertisements!). Most of us, want to see a bright picture. 

However, sometimes the truth is not so sweet. It could be bitter, just like that bitter pill which you swallowed when advised by your doctor. Once you swallow the pill, there's no guarantee, but always a chance that things could be better. We - as individuals, societies, nations and human race as a whole need to swallow a lot of such pills. Pills, that could make us better. 

Yes - so 'yours bitterly' it is. I do not want to sound negative (or bitter) here. I am just another guy talking about things he feels strongly about. However, I am all okay to being called a pessimist in that process. 

We all should ask questions, challenge the precedents and wonder about things, that is how we have evolved. Let us continue evolving. Let us continue thinking!

Yours bitterly, 

Ashish M.