THE PINK REVOLUTION: D DAY ON V DAY

Valentine's Day ushers a wave of new politics against the Hindutva moral police

Amit Sengupta, New Delhi, Hardnews

If love's in the air, it's not really visible. But, like a cliché, it repeats itself relentlessly, breathlessly. In more ways than, one, it's a sign of the times, a Freudian slip if you wish, the unrequited longing for love, the insatiability of desire, the emptiness of easy emotions, of ritualistic unfulfilment. In the capital of India, though, there is a sensuous arrival of moist north winds from the Himalayas, where the snow is moving like a dream sequence. Post rain, the nip in the air reminds us of the absence of love, as much as the longing and presence of love. And like a character in a PD James novel, you can walk anonymous on lonely streets, looking for that crossroad when she will suddenly arrive and take you out for a drink to the nearest pub - near a fireplace maybe.

Pubs remind me of Mangalore and the mindless, masculine rabble rousers and goons of the Ram Sene etc, certainly an offshoot of the hydra-head Sangh Parivar of the Hindutva types. But pubs in the current post-spring scenario comes with a catch - the V Day: Valentine's Day.

Now we know too well, like the Mother's Day, or Father's Day, or Uncle and Aunty's Day, or the Sweetie-Cutie Doodie Doodle Puppy Poodle Day, the Valentine's Day has nothing to do with love or roses or spring or snow. First of all, these artificial 'Days' (what about nights?) never existed in the nomenclature of our festivals or rituals or annual landmarks, certainly not in the realm of our most private and intimate expressions of love or desire or longing. Not even in the school calendar of holidays, or like miraculous 'rainy days'. These are manufactured commodity fetishes celebrated by multinational and sundry local card companies, and various assorted gifts, flower-cartels, shopping malls, discos, hotels, restaurants and fast food joints. So much so that if a young stud doesn't choose to give an Archie card and a mushy candle-light dinner to his love-dove-babe on V Day, she might take offence. While the corporate industry and the 'lifestyle media' celebrates this culture trap, the most intimate emotions and private spaces of young minds and bodies get caught in this political economy of commercialised love.

Nothing eclectic or innocent about it. Love as a commodity. Love for sale. Buy one get two free or vice versa. Love to be consumed on a particular day. Love to be purchased in the nearest shop. Love in the marketplace. Love to be measured in the competitive value system of how much money you can spend on that babe you dig. While we all know that after all, a rose is a rose is a rose. And Be Mine Forever or Forget Me Not are more metaphors. Bitter realism. Sweet and sour realism. Hence, this 'I Love You' seems a bit too concocted and badly cooked, isn't it, like chicken chowmeen with paneer masala gravy and raw onions, cucumber and carrots, eaten with chopsticks.

This is where the pub syndrome enters. And the Valentine Day becomes an uncanny coincidence. The flip side is that the attack on the pub by the Taliban Hindutva gangsters have triggered a new wave of urban politics: the Valentine's Day has been turned upside down into large-scale protests against the fanatic moral police, which is basically anti-woman and anti-free love (and let's not even mention the 'F' word, or the debate on Free Sex or the Bra-burning feminist epoch in the West.)