Valentine's Day celebrations in India

It was Valentine's yesterday. Phew! Every year this phirang festival comes with a unique set of problems for indians. The indian junta gets divided over whether or not the day should be given its share of celebrations.

Every year, for the last 20 years the indian newspapers have been carrying articles on the origin of the festival. How the day is meant to be an innocent acknowledgement of love- love for your near and dear ones. But in India, up untill then, love was never innocent and acknowledgment of love more so. We indians believed in love being only of the legendary kind ( Shahjahan-Mumtaz Mahal, Heer-Ranjha etc), only of the earth-shaking kinds, not for all and sundry.It was a forbidden fruit not meant to be tasted by all, just a few lucky ones got a taste of it in their lifetimes.The others found a definition for love within the confines of their marriage. Acknowledgement of love happened i.e. if at all it did, only within the 4 walls of the house. In public places most couples got by using subtle symbolic gestures of love.

In this veiled scenario of love, "Valentine's Day" entered with it's ideas of PDA( public displays of affection), turning the indian notion of love on it's head. The "Youngistan" generation suddenly found itself liberated from the chains of undemonstrable love. They now felt free to practise on the streets, if only for a day, all that they had been watching in their beloved Hollywood movies. And that is when the "Bujurgs" in the indian population saw red (pun unintended!). Whoever had heard of or seen such blatant expression of love- gifts, flowers, teddies, dinners, kisses and what not. Was this really love- the enduring kind that they had seen in their day? Or was it just a generation revolting against it's tradition of unexpressive love? Or was it just some card/gift seller making a quick buck at our youngistan's expense?

In this milieu there were some youngsters who took to Valentine's in defiance of everything traditional, some others who took to it under peer pressure- hurriedly finding a valentine to gift a card to, some looked at it as an opportunity to win pleasurable favours from the opposite sex, some others were drawn to it because it made them feel very western celebrating a phirang festival. Whatever their reasons, the ultimate winner turned out to be the card/flower/gift seller/hotelier.In short the festival became a huge commercial success in India. Over time not only the young generation but even the middle-aged happily-married-for-ever-couples fell to its spell, vainly trying to a add a red spark to their dull grey married lives.

Well, does that mean there is more love in the air, in the streets, in the malls, in the houses, in the hearts of the indian people now? Whoever said that? From the looks of it, all that has happened is that there are fewer fights between couples on the 14th of February(it's definitely not cool to fight with your beau when he has just splurged his entire pocket money mid-month on gifts for you. The bickering can wait for the next day). The indian populace has fallen to the commercial spell of Valentine's lock, stock and barrel.

We indians celebrate festivals with a lot of fervour. We have festivals to celebrate every mood, every religion as well as state has its own calendar of festivals for the year. No other country takes as many public holidays to celebrate festivals as we indians do. It definitely says something about our vivacious nature that we take to a phirang festival and celebrate it with more gusto than them.

This cynic would like to pose a few questions though- (1) What is so unique about Valentine's, are not all our festivals about love? (2) If Valentine's is about celebrating love between a couple, how is it different from an anniversary? (3) I agree, the entire world is one and festivals need not be limited by borders, but are we really getting the essence of the festival? (4) Are we not just falling prey to the commercialisation of the festival, is'nt it just about spending money? (5) Is'nt Valentine's one of those festivals that lends itself better to a private celebration rather than a public one?

We can definitely discern and decide how we wish to celebrate our love or for that matter any of our festivals. We can either celebrate them in the proper manner that they were meant to be celebrated in or we can choose to eat off the hands of the commercial enterprises and make our celebrations a show of our money power. Jai Ho!

Do actions speak louder than thoughts?

I read an article today that weighed a person's actions against his thoughts. Do a person's actions alone decide his goodness or should the genuinity of his thoughts and feelings count. To elaborate, is it okay if we perform "good" deeds however disgruntled we may be while doing so; whatever ulterior motives we may have while doing so; whatever thoughts and feelings may motivate the act? For ultimately the world only concerns itself with acknowledging a good deed. You are good and honourable for the world because "actions speak louder than words". Does it then become okay when the page3 types indulge in some "social work" to be in their coveted p3 space? For they are doing a good deed whatever the motivation. Then what is the difference between them and a Mother Teresa or a Baba Amte? Why are they then not spoken of in the same exalted tones as the highly awarded Mother Teresa and Baba Amte? I am in no way pushing the cause of the p3 people but there has to be something amiss somewhere. If actions are all that count then the acts of these differently-motivated people should be at par. But they are most definitely not. So does not then the thought or motivation behind the act become prime. Should not then the thoughts or feelings leading to an act be given weightage? For these two great social workers acted on what they felt and felt with their heart what they chose to act on. And that is what made them great. So can we then conclude that genuineness of thought behind an act leads to a higher state of being.


I was part of a course recently that spoke of completing with the people in your life for healthy relationships. Completions involve a complete owning up of all past hurts, negative feelings, disappointments etc vis-a-vis the same people. Is it really possible to live a life of such high integrity? Apart from the high risk of losing the love of your loved ones after owning up to all the negative thoughts that crossed your mind regarding them i think there lies the practical problem of mouthing completionns 24x7. So does it then not make us all hypocrites where we are mouthing platitudes of love but at the same time thinking negatively of our loved ones. Not a high state of being at all.

I have a healthy relationship with my mother-in-law, we don't get into each other's hair a lot, respect each other's privacy so to say. But if i were to admit to her that in the initial years of my marriage i found her a "Lalita Pawar", dreading her totally, i think it could be the end of our happily working relationship.I may be playing it safe by not completing with her on this count, but i think the philosophy to follow here should be "let sleeping dogs be". There has to be a limit to the extent to which you wish to complete with people, YOU have to draw a line on that. A very convenient state of being.


Purity of thought and feeling is a highly admirable quality, something that all of us should strive for. Once you attain control over your thoughts and feelings you come close to being a "Mahapurush". Noble thoughts will lead to noble deeds and that is when the dilemma ends for you. Jai Ho to that!

Winter mornings

I have lived in Bombay for the better part of my life. Bombay, where the weather is the same throughout the year except for the downpour of the monsoons that lasts for 4 months - June to September. I had only heard of the winters of North India, and most of it was dreadfull. As luck would have it i got married to someone living in the north and the new married me landed in Delhi during the peak winter of 1988. Unequipped to face the winters and unaware of how to protect myself from the cold i had a terrible time with chillblains ravaging my fingers and toes. I have had a hate-hate relationship with winters ever since. Not even the promise of winter goodies like til laddoos, gajak, gajar halwa could make me utter a word or 2 in favour of the winters. Bringing up 2 kids who happened to be at the crawling stage during their first winters, dressing them and packing them off to school in our non-geyser days on foggy winter mornings, finding the determination to forego the warmth of the rajai and get into the freezing kitchen to cook the family a warm meal- all these tests of my endurance only intensified my dislike for the weather.
It has taken the weather 20 years to finally count me as a convert. I no longer dread the winters but kind of look forward to the warmth that they bring- cozy breakfasts in the kitchen, early dinners- mostly steaming soups, the variety of winter vegetables with which to juggle up a meal, the lazy afternoons in the sun, the smartness that scarfs and jackets and coats lend to the winter wardrobe. The promise of warmth generated after physical exercise woos you into keeping yourself active when feeling cold, in fact even going to the extent of taking up a sport.
Winter mornings were still spent indoors specially foggy mornings which were considered nothing short of the devil's veil ( not surprising since most murders in Bollywood mystery movies occur on a foggy or rainy night). It took a walk in the park on one such foggy morning for me to see the beauty that the fog embraces in its folds. Every sight had a mystery to it, clouded with a vagueness. People on the other side appeared as if they were there and yet not there, as if they were part of a painting, part of a photograph that had not developed clearly, had developed hazily. Like if you wanted to touch them you would have to move a lot of distance into nothingness to do that and even then they may not be for real. And it was humbling to realise that you may be appearing in the same manner to them. Trees enveloped by the fog with a flock of flying birds in the foreground. That was the sight that truly had me change the way i looked at foggy mornings, i could see them in a completely different light. I could see their beauty, something i had never seen because up untill then i had resisted being outdoors on foggy mornings. And it's a fact, anything you resist you can never grow to love.

The Indian Working Woman

I have discovered in my 42years of interaction with men that there are basically 2 types of married men- the first kind will give permission to their wives to work outside the house and feel generous about it. The second kind will not give permission to their wives to work outside the house and make their wives feel that they are being generous about it. The bottom line is that the wife has to take permission from her pati-parmeshwar and deal with her husband's generosity all her life. In the case of the women working outside the house they first have to make sure they are bringing back home a respectable amount of money i.e. respectable by the husband's point of view.She then has to pamper her husband's ego at every moment by making him feel magnanimous for letting her work.She then has to make sure that she gives him no reason to complain on account of her stepping out of the house- meals to be ready on time, menus to pamper the pati's taste buds, standards of the house maintenance to be perfect, larder+ fridge to be stocked at all times, children to be taken care of, homeworks and projects to be tackled on time, relatives and in-laws to be visited and corresponded with regularly etc.. The list is endless. Slip on any one of those and she may have to give up her "time-pass" job. She has to be superwoman to pack in all that into a day and still be smiling at the end of the day with energy for a session in bed if the need arises.If she finds the load too much and asks for help with the household chores, the permission for that would again depend on a million factors like how much is she bringing home, would the standards of the house drop or would the cooking be the same etc etc..

Well if she belongs to the category who has not been given permission to work outside the house she still has to do all those things but she has to do something more. She has to forget the hard work she put in to get that Master's degree and that that degree was the reason her husband married her. A wife with a Master's degree would be able to teach his children in a better way!

Does this sound like an analysis of men of the dark ages? Just look around you into the eyes of the women around. What hurts do u think are hidden behind those lashes? What secrets are those lashes covering up? Sorry if i sound cynical but if you come across a husband who does not fall into these two categories, who seems genuinely happy with a working wife and is in fact very encouraging of her to progress in her job- well that couple is doing a huge cover-up job. And if that is not the case and no skeletons come tumbling out of the cupboard then i think that particular husband is a rare specimen. He should in fact do something for the larger cause of humanity- donate his sperm samples to a sperm bank so that we can have more of his kind in the coming generations. The womenfolk of the future would definitely be grateful for that. A collective "JAI HO" for that.

Welcome to my blog

Hi fellow bloggers, This is my first day at blogging. Emboldened my people's comments that i write well i have decided to try my hand at it, officially. More like make a ceremony of it. I am going to be writing on the times we live in, the way i see things. A lot that happens around me influences me, my opinions and i feel the need to air my views, make myself heard. Pretty hedonistic ( i looked in the dic'ary for that word and am not sure if i am using it correctly. It refers to behaviour that is motivated by the desire for pleasure). Since i will be writing with the sole aim of deriving pleasure from it without giving a thought to the hapless souls who will be reading it, i guess it does become a hedonistic activity on my part. Sorry folks.

Slumdog Millionaire has been all over the papers lately. The debate of India's underbelly being in full Oscar glare has come up again. First it were Indian directors doing it and now the foreign directors are also happy exposing , or can we say "espousing" it also. So much so that the author of the book on which the movie is based, Vikas Swarup's Q&A has had to defend his book saying that it is not " Poverty Porn". The Sunday Times of 18th Jan has an entire page devoted to writeups connected to the movie- "There's something about Mumbai", "From Bambai to Mumbai". There's even an article on Anil Kapoor donating the entire money he got for the movie to a social cause. What i found distressing was a writeup by a britisher Chris Way who regularly organises slum tours to Dharavi, Mumbai for his privileged friends back home. "Poverty Tourism"? It raises many q's in my mind. Are our lives up for show just coz we live differently? Taking it a little further then are the visits going to be reciprocated with invitations to come see how they live? If the tourists are taking back "admiration for the spirit of the people that live there" are they not commenting on the squalid living conditions? Is'nt their opinion of India being a dirty, filthy third world country only getting reiterated? What is it with we indians, we get all touchy about our underbellies being in full view? Is it the same as standing outside the Buckingham Palace and commenting on how the british royalty lives? Does "Poverty tourism" become okay if it brings in tourists and consequently cash which i believe is being used for community development projects? So in that sense then the movie becomes a huge ad for Mr. Chris Way's tourism venture. Does the tourist go back with a feeling of having been magnaminous?

In a country that has so much to offer a tourist culturally, architecturally and spiritually i am loathe if a westerner just sees its ugly sides and departs, charity or no charity!