What a tragedy it is for someone to stock up on roses, teddy bears, chocolates, outrageous heart-shaped decorations—only for their dear Valentine to detest it all. It really is a difficult era for delusional lovers who still haven’t denounced Valentine’s Day. They’re on one side of the internet liking cute reels of couples planning the big day, and their partner is passionately tweeting about how it’s all capitalist propaganda. The paper hearts don’t stand a chance.
Somewhere between small-town lovers braving the red to rebel against the moral police and Gen Z joking about joining the bhagwa gangs to terrorise lovey-dovey couples—14 February was downgraded to a cringefest. Bajrang Dal’s laathis became less triggering than Cupid’s arrow. Social media timelines are split between big confessions of love and singles hating on the whole concept. Couples insist it’s no special day—because every day is a celebration of love. A line that makes my eye roll so far back I briefly acquire 360-degree vision.
Perform and post
Brought up on a diet of romantic fiction and now hooked to BookTok, modern romantics often end up with someone who is at best indifferent to the Valentine business. There are two outcomes here. The excited party ends up saying, “It’s chill, I don’t care either.” Or the indifferent party decides to tolerate it at the cost of their principles.
Boyfriends send over Theobroma parcels and curated bouquets to their girlfriends’ offices, and the girlies rush to hide them under the desk. The anti-Valentines brigade hates to be embarrassed like that. But use the day as an excuse to treat them to a fancy dinner, and they won’t mind at all. After all, nobody is allergic to feeling special.
Thank goodness, this Valentine’s Day is falling on a Saturday, so the workplace spectacle can be completely avoided.
Grand gestures are anyway losing their charm. What use is a six-foot-tall teddy bear on one day of the year if the sender doesn’t reply to texts on time? I have seen too many public displays of affection, hiding the private loneliness. Couples at overpriced Valentine’s dinners barely exchange a word, united only by the need to post a story on Instagram.
I know a girl who received a huge card on Valentine’s Day, the kind that plays music when you open it, and a breakup text the next day. Apparently, she got “too excited” and ruined the relationship. The guy wanted to keep it on the down-low but she posted it on her story. Worse, she tagged him, too. He said “we are not on the same page.” It was a teaching moment: Just because the gesture is grand doesn’t mean it’s not a secret.
Valentine’s Day really tests relationships, doesn’t it? Not to mention, it’s a threat to the undefined “attachments” of the modern dating world. Don’t even ironically wish your humourless, insignificant other Happy Valentine’s Day if you don’t want to be ghosted. That’s wisdom learned from lived experience.
However, I did find myself flirting with a match on Hinge last year on Valentine’s Day by making fun of it—we both forgot about each other the next day.
Also read: What women want—a man who cooks and doesn’t seek a standing ovation for it
Allergic to effort
I wonder what made us all so weirdly ticked off by Valentine’s Day. It used to be a great rebellion to protect the right to love. Conservative Indians were practically scandalised by the day, which encouraged the young and hormonally optimistic to celebrate it more aggressively. For Hindu traditionalists, resisting Valentine’s Day is part of a broader project of de-Westernising Indian youth. For the politically woke, it had become an act of resistance—one that conveniently overlooked the capitalist cringe they would otherwise look down upon.
But now, the anti-Romeo squad puts more effort into dragging Valentine’s Day into the news cycle than any Romeo and Juliet.
In Madhya Pradesh’s Sagar, Shiv Sainiks hosted their annual ‘danda pujan’ at a temple. It’s a made-up ceremony observed by members of the party where they bathe a wooden stick in jasmine oil —in front of a priest—to prepare it for Valentine’s Day duty. Their slogan is actually very catchy— “Jaha milenge babu shona, tod denge kona kona.” (Wherever we find a couple, we will beat them black and blue) On top of that, they spend the party fund on pasting warning posters across the town.
Meanwhile, Bajrang Dal members beat up professors at an Indore college for allowing a Valentine’s Day event to take place.
And how did the liberated, woke youth respond to it all? A handful shared memes. The rest scrolled on. The modern lovers aren’t serious enough to outrage.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)