“Pyar se darr kyun lagta hai?” (why is one scared to love?) is nothing unusual in the sense that it no longer focuses on just platonic love. It has embedded its roots into romantic love, and that’s why February 14 spurs a kind of ‘seismic upheaval’ in our lives. The situation suddenly expands untenably like catastrophe bubbling up at Sivrice in eastern Elazig province of Turkey on January 24, which witnessed a 6.8 magnitude earthquake.
The fear, this emotional feeling, builds up between the two, and they proceed with their inherent individual status. If one remains disturbed because of the shame of stinging unemployment another discovers a new degree of crucial moments in their unfulfilled dreams, then, how could they make it work? The joy and excitement of the impatience of love must not be absent in all probability.
Strangely enough, this very, very special occasion had started as St. Valentine’s Day, but it now, it doesn’t appear to be maintaining any visible sheen of saintly attitudes and behaviours. The intensive grip by the market forces makes this day’s celebrations last. It is this point that remains connected with the entire sale during the week-long festivities.
Lovers flock to big or small markets to purchase gifts of different varieties and tastes. How can the youth, grappling with the hardships of employment, venture to buy a plethora of gifts for their chosen valentine(s)? It is not possible when they have no money in any of their five jeans pockets to face the dreaded devil of inflation in the market.
They even do not have money to pay for a piece of the cauliflower, so how could they exhibit or express love? Recently, I read a news report about a young couple, in Bitthoor, who attempted suicide, out of fear that their families would not agree to their marriage. The 20-year-old man and his allegedly minor lover, are battling for their lives at the hospital.
Perhaps the fear of a closed-off society or the parents’ supreme reign, along with not giving sufficient attention or thought on how to initiate the plunge into the extreme step of love, purportedly springing up because of this ‘ominous’ day.
Valentine’s Day itself emerged from a Roman festival called Lupercalia. There is an interesting story behind this day. St.Valentine was a Roman Catholic priest in 3rd century A.D. At that time King Claudius II had put a ban on marriage because of his thinking that married men were bad soldiers.
Regardless of the royal order Saint Valentine started making secret arrangements for their weddings. Infuriated with this the King ordered him to be jailed. During his prison, Valentine fell in love with a jailer’s daughter. He is also said to have cured her blindness. In the 270 A.D., he sent a letter to the girl signed ‘From Your Valentine,‘ prior to his death. It was after the passing of two-hundred long years that February 14 was proclaimed as Valentine’s Day.