Valentine’s Day, the grand celebration of Love has come and gone. A day, when one can feel love in the air, literally. A day associated with romance and couples; chocolates and red roses; and bright red hearts. But is it, really?? The popular perception of love is really romantic love. A concept difficult to put in words, but it is something that all of us as humans are designed to feel. It is a feeling that has inspired generations of poets and writers. And for some people, romantic love is the bedrock of their entire lives. They are happy when they are close to their romantic partner and pine for them when they are not around. However, what a lot of us fail to realize is, how encompassing and larger than life, Love actually is. Love, is the most profound of human feelings. An involuntary feeling, that is as essential and as basic to human survival as the involuntary action of breathing.
This love, that is so much a part of us, in fact, transcends all boundaries of romantic love. It could take any form – love between siblings, love between parents and children, love between grandparents and grandchildren, love between friends and maybe for some, love for God and the universe! And then there is Agape, a love defined as so pure and unconditional that it consumes the giver. It is this love, that exists but goes unnoticed, that is unspoken of, which in its deglamourised form is life’s driving force.
The best examples of this pure love can be seen not only in daily life but also through the annals of history. How could one ever forget the Sufis, those mystics who lived just to sing and preach love? Or the Bauls of Bengal, who in their multicoloured patchwork robes walked from villages to village, and belted out their ballads of love? Or can one ever forget Mother Teresa, that frail old lady, who symbolised love itself? Moving closer to our daily lives, could one ever question the love between a mother and her child, or the love of a sibling who shares his share of chocolates with the other, just because the other really likes chocolates, or the love of a friend who finds time from his busy schedule to help the other? Why then, on this grand day of love, are we are primed to celebrate only romantic love? Is it because it is easy to glamorise and commercialise? Is it because, when we imported this concept of Valentine’s Day from the West, we only imported half of it, without really understanding, the true essence of it. Interestingly, Valentine’s Day in Finland is also known as “Friend’s day” and in Guatemala it is known as a “Day of Love and Friendship”.
In the United States – the hallowed land of Stars and Stripes, which we in India love to ape, this is a day to appreciate friends and family. While in the West, taking one’s grandparents out for a meal and treating them as your Valentines (two in this case!!), would be completely routine, in India such an act would be unthinkable and treated as a joke among peers. As this concept of celebrating the day of love catches on in India, it would be worthwhile to treat this day as a day that celebrates love in all its forms, in its entirety. Love, after all is the essence of life.
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