Desicritics Category: Culture: Relationships

Comic Strip: It's Not A Lie If It Makes Someone Happy

IdeaSmith — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:30:22 EDT

Well, what else is a woman to do?

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Relationship Lawlessness & Social Criminals

IdeaSmith — Fri, 6 Mar 2009 13:01:42 EST

I recently saw a movie about relationships and love. In one scene, a man and a woman meet in a department store and strike up a conversation over the cash register which continues till they walk out. Standing on the sidewalk, they talk, like any two strangers who've just met, of things that interest the other and ooh and aah over what they have in common. Then, just on the verge of that crucial 'ask for her number' moment, the guy shrugs and says,

I can't do this. I'm married.

It struck me right between my eyes just then. They were following a socially accepted ritual. Then they reached a point where an expression of interest had to be made or not. And it could not be made since he was clearly unavailable. The social mores dictated that he not go any further unless he was intending to take it forward seriously.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Last year I went to Europe on holiday. After enduring much ribbing about Turkish delights and Greek gods, I returned to report that no man had flirted with me. My mother, on the other hand, told me of one of our co-passengers who had struck up a conversation and told her she was beautiful, adding with a snide look at my dad that he couldn't say the same about her husband.

She was highly surprised (even though I spend all my time telling her that she looks at least a decade younger than she is - and she does!) till I added that in some western communities, it was considered polite, practically a social requirement to mock-flirt with a lady and compliment her on her fine form. This especially for a married woman, since it was quite clear that it was in light vein and was not intended to be taken seriously. Quite unlike India where it would be considered highly inappropriate to flirt or compliment a married woman.

On the other hand, my father pointed out, that it would be equally inappropriate for the same men to have flirted with me since I was clearly available. Flirting would have been an indication of serious intent, a formal expression of interest.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~We are still in a nascent society as far as dating goes. Our parents generation invented love marriages in this society; we are the generation that brings in friendship between the sexes as well as socially sanctioned romantic/sexual relationships before marriage. We haven't quite learned where to draw the line between friendship-comfort and attraction-commitment. We are still experimenting with how far we go with being funny/cool/charming and where it trespasses into flirtation.

Think about some of the relationship scenarios that are very real to us today. The 'best friend' of the opposite sex that makes the girlfriend/boyfriend so uncomfortable. The good friends (sister-brother...this is really the most convoluted one of all) who vehemently decree that other people have dirty minds. The older colleague/father of a friend/friend of father/husband of a friend who are really friendly, but perhaps a little too much sometimes?

Don't we all know a guy who promises the moon and earth to every second girl, believing correctly, that she'll keep it to herself because in the larger sense, it still isn't done for a girl to admit that she's been with a guy? There is nothing to check him from repeating the same over and over again, no one to brand him for the cad he is. Even after the crime is complete and guy is far away, possibly chasing a whole new set of girls or actually married, how many of the women he has wronged are actually going to speak up? And if you say you don't know such a guy, give me a call. I have a private 'Hall of Shame' of these social criminals.

How about the committed ones who pass off their behaviour as harmless friendliness? There's a general 'kehne mein kya harz hai?' syndrome working here. The problem is that people do fall in love, hearts get broken, trust is rended and lives are shattered. You can deny those are very real crimes, nasty things that people do to people.

As modern women, we are expected to be 'okay' with a certain degree of liberal expression. The question how far does that stretch? It's okay to know a lot of guys, it's fine to go out with them, even flirt with them, get into relationships with them. But all of that provided it ends in the institution of marriage or at least a 'stable, steady relationship'. But from meeting a guy to ending up in that last socially sanctioned comfortable relationship, it's a long way. Most men fall short far before that. Or I suspect a lot of them aren't even intending to go that far but try and drag out as much as they can get before they need to rat-tail it 'before it gets too serious'.

We stuff our best-looking side into our public persona and bury our insecurities. We put up with a guy who is 'commitment-phobic' for months and months because we don't want to be nags. We're okay with the 'just good friends' tag. We even tolerate cheating and tell ourselves patience is a virtue. What happens when he dumps you to go chase another girl and propose marriage to her in a week? You can be sure a crime of sorts has been committed but who's going to haul in the offender?

And if you're thinking this is equally true of women as well, I agree. With one small exception. Men who have been wronged in this manner can speak up about it and they do. Where else do we get such nasty phrases like slag and tease from? On the other hand, a woman who has been wronged cannot speak up. Liberated-ness be damned, one of those aforementioned crimes was perpetrated on me. I didn't dare speak up since I knew even our common friends would just think I was stupid for having believed such a guy in the first place. Well, you live, you learn.

Last month, I was flirted with by a committed man. I was unsure on when exactly I could draw the line and just relieved to get away without too much embarrassment. As I'm writing this post, I'm being propositioned by a married friend. This relationship is sometimes questioned by my friends who believe (quite correctly) that he is a social criminal. I agree and yet I continue to be friends (only in every sense of the word) with him. But few relationships are this manageable and heavenaloneknows that this one wasn't easy either.

Let me end this by just saying that delightful as this state may be with its glorious rule-lessness, the very lawlessness of it leaves each of us vulnerable to social crimes.

A Journey That Continues

Kishore — Thu, 5 Mar 2009 13:04:24 EST

He was a nice looking gentleman wearing an oversize coat and thick mufflers around his neck, who acceded to taking a picture of me and V standing on the edge of Dolphin’s Nose. “So where are you from?” he asked me handing over the camera to V. “I... Er... I’m from...”, I fumbled. V did better. She smiled, as she secured the camera into its case.

It was an incredible moment in our lives. A moment when we realized, we didn’t have an answer to the most rudimentary question of existence – “Where are you from?” Well, let me see. We have moved three cities in two countries in four months, have our belongings lying in five cities across the two countries and have no idea where we would be four weeks from this minute.

Things weren’t supposed to be this way. It was supposed to be happy days ahead. Family, elders and all that, you know? A fairy tale of the prince and princess living happily ever after. It sure was a fairy tale of sorts, until the day we called bitter-gourd bitter. Ever wondered calling bitter-gourd bitter could bring you trouble for the rest of your life?

Many months after that ignominious moment of getting reprimanded for stating the obvious, troubles continued. “Elementary my dear Watson.”, a well wisher suggested, “Everyone has troubles. Just deal with it.” Deal with it, huh? At what price? A few hundred dollars of happiness would do? Heard they started selling that thing in Wal-mart these days. So I could’ve helped myself, you know, with a few capsules whenever there was trouble.

We are dealing with it alright. But not like the Goody two shoes that we used to be. Although no one knows it that way. Life is simple. People are not. They are high on illusion or hung over on reality. So much so that any attempts at talking them out of their ridiculous assumptions or psychic outbursts only falls into deaf years. We became weary of our condemned routine and decided to find our own way.

We are on the move, although no one knows the real reasons of what we are doing or where we are moving. "Family" thinks we are happy. The indicators are there – we travel, we do the vacations, we shop, we laugh, what else one needs to know if someone is actually happy? For them, we are the good kids who do a lot of traveling on business. To ourselves, we are lost rowing in a sea without a compass and the shore is nowhere in sight.

May be we could still have waited for more time, until the day when the deaf ears would open up. May be, if we could’ve drugged ourselves with a few capsules of Solvomycin from Wal-mart, everything would’ve been solved and life would’ve been back to being a fairy tale. Life is a honey moon. Except that the honey doesn’t taste good at some times, and the moon is hidden by clouds at other times.

“Deal with it, kid”, an elder told me. “It’s the same with everyone”, a veteran confided. “You can’t run away from troubles. You’ll have to come back to it someday”, told a peer. I agree with everyone. Except that they are not me, and they haven’t seen what I’ve seen. But how do you tell the world you don’t bother about it anymore? I guess you just don’t. And that’s what we’ve done. Kept quiet, and moved. “Cheeky, but you did the right thing”, a friend smiled when he heard our story, “Life finds a way”.

We’ve set out to do what we think is our pursuit of happiness. We are moving places, driving in near-zero visibility. We don’t know where our next turn is, or how long until we stop again. We don’t know if we’ll run out of gas, or reach our hitherto unknown destination soon enough. We don’t know if we are alone, or there are other cars beside us. But we do know that we’ll keep driving.

Fiction: Matched Frequencies

Anurag Dixit — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 07:17:27 EST

“Hey! What happened?” Randeep said to Sushmita with a big smile on his face, entering the class room.

“Uh nothing” She replied with a sigh which meant many things were going in her mind but she was too tired to explain.

“Oh come on I’m not that bad a person. OK listen first of all drink this water…” he said, sitting beside her.

“That’s the problem you are too good.” She interrupted him.

“First of all drink this water and show me that lovely smile of yours. You look pale.”

“Huh ok you and your water hmmm I just hate you.” She said with a smile and punched him on his chest.

“Hmmm… you are tough.” He said and they both laughed and then he became a little serious.

“Sush I just love this sweet smile of yours and I live for all these little happy moments with you.” He continued, putting his hand on her on her shoulder. Now she, the mother of a young daughter, was blushing like a school girl, who was in love for the first time.

She was twenty seven and was trying to convince herself that her married life was perfect and that she could always look beyond the problems until she met Randeep who was seven years younger than her. He was a little shy but both of them shared good chemistry and as they say the frequencies matched.

“And you know what every problem has a solution so why to worry. Hmmm?” He said, almost trying to convince himself.

It was hard for her to accept her own feelings but he told her that it’s not wrong to be happy; to be in love is the most wonderful thing. Now she had decided to be with him but was going through a mélange of emotions.

Poetry: Roadkill On Memory Lane

IdeaSmith — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:55:50 EST

Did you ever hear the call of memory
that screeching wail of nostalgia
like tires on tar
and you couldn't help looking back,
wondering if anybody died
and realising it wasn't you?

Did you turn back to proceed
and gape at the unfamiliarity of now
the past and its accidents seem so much real
and feel yourself lose footing on the road of reality
while even the blood stains from yesterday's carnage
fade away before you can grasp them?

Did you ever walk back into your past
and then find yourself lost,
not knowing how to come back
- Nostalgia is so disorienting -
and while you're frozen in your own mind
you get hit by a flood of something you never saw coming?

Maybe forgetfulness is just a way of ensuring we don't become roadkill.

BBB Inc. - With Bare Hands If Necessary

temporal — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:33:38 EST

Rehan Ansari's lament is passionately articulated. It exposes the growing sub-continental fault line. He writes about the subversive elements, the interest groups, the politicians, leaders and government honchos who may not be in collusion but who certainly appear to favour lack of detente:

Partition has resulted in nationalism, borders, and visa regimes that make sure that people know even less about each other. As a result, they are more likely to be taken for a ride by the agendas of lashkars , fascists, and the realpolitik of Islamabad and New Delhi. A United India – or even an India and Pakistan that were friendly states, much like contemporary France and Germany – would never have been vulnerable to an American agenda of jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan against the Soviets. Better relations would also have negated this ‘problem’ of Kashmir.

On those (now increasingly rare) occasions, when individuals and groups from one country visit the other, they invariably follow up with glowing praises. They discover the commonness ignored by the government and media in their respective countries. They instinctively discover the common ground and find the warmth and friendliness in the other not revealed and expressed openly in their home country.

And this causes dismay and consternation in the groups and lobbies in both India and Pakistan who want the enmity, suspicion and hostility maintained. That such efforts are nudged and aided from other powers in the region and the world can be argued another time.

While the extremist fringes in India and Pakistan can be identified, there are many others that are harder to identify. But their maneuverings are easily discernible. It is good for business - their business. Hatred, intolerance and suspicion must be kept brewing. Peace and amity must be kept at bay.

BBB

These three have a common interest to ferment and instigate the chasm between India and Pakistan:

Big Business: They see profit big ticket defense expenditure. Peace is bad business. If only they realise that peace has its own dividends, and can add more to their bottom line than selling instruments of death and destruction.

Big Beards: The religious fringe do not want amity and friendship between people. Bad for their business - these Babas in green and saffron revel in hatred and enmity.

Bureaucratic Babus: The bureaucrats have lost their sheen and magic and are now in cahoots with big business and MNCs.

The irony is each one of these three think of the other two as their puppets.

Each time the two countries try to come close by, a force generated by the BBB Inc. pulls them away. The past sixty years are rife with such examples. Three generations have grown apart. The unstated goal of nourishing and maintaining a wall of suspicion, enmity and intolerance towards each other is growing taller, wider and deeper.

In India, amidst a plethora of cable TV channels available, there is no Pakistani channel available for subscribers. Likewise, in Pakistan there is a ban on Indian channels, naach-gaana channels are surreptitiously allowed though.

What is good for BBB Inc. is bad business for the majority of middle classes on both sides of the divide. And it is not only middle class that suffers as Rehan argues, but the common person is victimised too.

Barring past six decades, for centuries they drank the water from the same well, participated in each others religious and cultural celebrations, fought against the colonizers and invaders.

This wall is an artificial construct that needs to be brought down - with bare hands if necessary - one brick at a time.

Valentine, Schmalentine

Deepa Krishnan — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 05:59:15 EST

At breakfast yesterday, my daughter put down the newspaper in irritation.

"What's all this fuss about saving 'Indian culture', anyway?", she said. "Shouldn't we be more worried about poverty and hunger?"

She was referring to the ongoing brouhaha over Valentine's Day. The press is full of it - there are those who say festivals like these are foreign transplants, which destroy Indian culture. There are those who stoutly defend the right of people to adopt whatever culture they like, whether it is Western or otherwise.

It's not just Valentine's Day, but also other Western influences that irk many Indians. Many of us are bewildered by Bollywood videos of near-naked women gyrating to 'disco' songs. Where did these come from, we wonder, these images that are almost soft porn? While the lyrics are Hindi, the setting is undoubtedly Western. The actors toss down tequila shots, the music has strong Western influences, and there's not a salwar kameez in sight.

Parents and teachers are also coping with the spread of McDonalds, the increasing absorption with skinny bodies, the new mall culture, the alienation of children from their traditions, the growing incidence of divorce, the popularity of chat sites...somehow, all of these are perceived to be the results of the increasing influence of the West (read America) on the world.

My husband looked up from the sports section that he was reading.

"I can see why they want to stop this Westernisation", he smiled. "I half want to stop it myself!" (this from a very liberal man who loves jazz and the blues and thinks no party is complete without scotch whisky!)

"Ah?" I said, vastly amused. "And why is that?"

"Cultural exchange is great", he said. "But this is all so one-way! How come so little of Indian culture gets exported in the other direction?"

I thought it was a very interesting perspective. If the West celebrated Indian festivals the way we celebrate theirs, perhaps people wouldn't feel so threatened? Perhaps if Holi became a popular world festival, we'd learn to take Valentine's Day in our stride!

Anyway, this whole conversation went on and on, the three of us argued the merits of preserving and documenting culture, the rate at which cultural change happens today, historical trends, and all sorts of other interesting things. Finally, we all agreed, like the sensible family we are, that change is inevitable, and we must change with the times; adopting some changes and ignoring some.

Last night, my husband boarded a flight for Chennai, where he is spending this weekend with his parents. Today is Valentine's Day. I haven't wished him, and he hasn't wished me. Looks like I'm not changing my ways on this and neither is he.

No Valentine-Schmalentine for THIS couple!

My Funny Valentine - Sweet Comic Valentine

Aditi Nadkarni — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:22:52 EST

There is something to be said about friends. I mean, they give us their all without expectation. At least mine do. I have friends who will listen to me yap about everything from completely transitory issues such as missing periods or acne to permanent problems that I suddenly have become aware of such as world peace and intolerance. They will never tell me that I am boring them and will loyally stifle yawns. None of them expect rings or a gift, much less a flower bouquet.

They will be completely fine if I don't call them for Valentine's Day or might even be slightly embarrassed if I do. I can just imagine my friend whisper a quick "Hmm, wish you the same but are you trying to murder my love life?" when I scream "Happy Valentine's Day!" through telephone lines while he is trying to chat up a cute girl who having heard my loud Valentine's Day wishes walked away quickly excusing herself.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love them dearly but my family can drive me nuts because, lets face it, that is their job. A year before turning thirty, I have come to accept that as a woman I will forever disappoint my mother. That's it. I feel better just having made that admission. Let me elaborate. My dad once told me of a doctor in his locality who they later discovered was somewhat of a quack. No matter what ailment one brought to Dr.Kamat, he would immediately ask them to stop drinking tea.

"But doctor I don't drink tea" the patient would sometimes respond.

"Ok so don't drink coffee" Dr.Kamat would tell him distractedly, filling out a generic prescription that everybody received unless they were having a heart attack in which case, Dr.Kamat's drunk compounder quickly shoved them into a taxi and sent them to the nearest hospital.

"Umm I don't drink coffee either doctor" the patient would tell him, hoping this information would give Dr.Kamat some brilliant insight into what was causing his affliction.

"You must drink something no....juice, cola, something. Stop drinking that" Dr.Kamat would snap at the confused patient. The poor man would nod and walk away with his prescription wondering why drinking his wife's nimbu sharbat had resulted in such a terrible case of butt-acne.

My mother is like Dr. Kamat.

"Are you drinking enough water?" she will ask without occasion

"Yes mom, I am drinking water all the friggin time" I respond in my high-pitched whiny "talkin-to-mom" voice

"Maybe you shouldn't drink too much water. You should drink a bit less. Too much water is also probably not good" she'll say.

"What's with your skin? Are you going out too much in the sun?" she'll comment, putting on her glasses, her keen stare making me squirm

"I rarely go out. I am always in the office or in lab. What are you talking about?" I answer with a shrug, rubbing my cheeks and forehead as if hoping for the tan to come off.

"Maybe that's what it is. If you stay cooped up at home, you don't get enough sun. You need some sunlight." And so on.

So basically no matter what I say, I'm screwed.

My dad is mostly neutral. But sometimes his neutrality is like that of Aishwarya Rai's where you just want to scream "Dude, say something!"

He once read my short story and I sat waiting in front of him, with baited breath to hear some feedback. He finished reading, took his glasses off and got up. I thought maybe he would walk over to me and pat my back. No such thing happened. I followed him inside until he walked into the bathroom. I stood outside only to hear him fart. That was my feedback.

Lets not even talk about extended family. They care so much for you that they have decidedly compartmentalized your life and now have inquiry committees set up for each section. Reproductivity, weight and marital status make up the three big departments and by the end of this concerned scrutiny, you are half the person you once were.

So that leaves us with friends. And it leaves our friends with this beaten down version of us, to deal with our woes, to lift our trampled self-esteem, to assuage our tested patience and soothe our hurt feelings.

Last year, I had to have surgery and just before they wheeled me into the OR, my friend's face loomed over my bed. She held a cell phone in her hand and was taking a picture.

"OMG, what are you doing?" I asked her, nervous in the anticipation of my first surgery ever, my face pink in embarrassment.

"Smile" she said loudly, as doctors and nurses looked on wondering whether or not to tell her that this was not allowed.

"Come on...just one picture, you look hot in that surgery robe and the blue cap" she told me as I smiled into the cell phone feeling like a complete moron.

When I woke up several hours later and suddenly threw up she was already holding the vomit-pan as if waiting for the puke to fly.

"Oh yeah baby!" she said victoriously as if she had caught a frisbee in the pan, "the doctor said you'd be nauseous from the anesthesia" she told me when I looked up confused wondering how she had managed to just be ready for such an unwarranted bout.

Men make amazing friends. They believe that disagreements or fights end when the phone call comes to an end. Can you imagine? One day we have a heated argument and so during the next conversation I try acting all aloof hoping he'll get the hint and apologize. He just chuckles and chortles while telling me about this colleague who was caught looking at some weird porn at work. A few minutes later, I sheepishly realize that he has completely forgotten about any fight whatsoever and even wonder if I had imagined the whole heated argument we'd had two days ago. Now I am starting to get the hang of it. This attitude keeps the friendship child-like and therefore stress-free.

A few years ago I received a V's Day card from a friend. I was surprised. He hated mushy V's day crap and had told me so, many times. I opened the e-card at work and a big blue cloud turned into a pink heart and floated around. And just as I wondered what the hell had happened to my perfectly wry friend, the large pink-heart balloon turned into a humongous, burly, pink, dimpled ass and whats more, it loudly farted. This time I turned pink and wanted to float away as colleagues looked on when the audible offensive rip came from the general direction of my desk area.

In his personalized note he wrote: "Had to show you this hilarious card. I knew you'd laugh". I did.

My roommate and I are the best of friends. I am a Harry Potter fan. She is not. One night, I read late into the night and wept when at roughly 3 am, I found out that Professor Dumbledore had died. That poor, poor, dear old man with his soft beard, I thought, crying into my pillow. I can get weird like that. I will have pent up sorrow that will suddenly be unleashed by stray occurrences, ranging from watching tragic films to hearing Talat Mehmood's ghazals. Anyways, so my roommate heard me weep and came over worried, her sleepy eyes trying to focus on my face in the dark.

"Whats the matter, why are you crying?" she asked me, blinking rapidly, her voice hoarse and heavy with sleep.

"Professor Dumbledore died" I told her mumbling. I don't know what she heard but she immediately put her arms around me

"Aww, how did he die....I'm so sorry to hear that" she cooed

"I don't know" I wept. I probably had been repressing some weird grief that Dumbledore's death had now released.

"Was it an accident? How did the professor die?" she asked her face a picture of concern

"No, that asshole murdered him" I told her as she brought me tissues and wiped my face.

"with his wand" I added, my lip still quivering and she frowned.

"Murder! With his wand? Wait, did you say wand? Wand?!" she stammered, her eyebrows knitted in confusion

"Yeah you know he used this curse and..."

"Which professor is this again? This isn't the professor who taught you Maths who you adored?" she asked, rubbing her eyes, her lips pursed, now fully awake and suddenly having spotted the Harry Potter book on my bed.

When she found out that she had been helping me mourn the death of a character, from a Harry Potter book, she could have fumed, rolled her eyes and walked away, back to bed.

"You are such a drama queen!" she could have told me and dismissed me. I expected her to do that.

Instead she sighed and sat down beside me.

"Don't worry. It's not the last book. He'll come back in the next one...just watch" she told me, with a grave philosophical expression, tucking me in and giving me hope. Professor Dumbledore's death had most likely just been a trigger for some other anguish I had suppressed and even though it found vent in the most odd fashion, she was still there for me.

Two of my very best friends are guys. I have known them since I was a tomboyish teenager. They are quintessential men who love sports, cars and beer. But for my sake, they spent a whole day at Butterfly World in Florida just because it made me happy and I had been feeling low. They had probably wanted to go the beach and watch beautiful, tanned bikini-clad beauties. Instead, they stood patiently in Butterfly World, their hands in their pockets, with tight, uncomfortable smiles, while I clicked pictures and annoying little kids ran around everywhere screaming. They tried very hard to not swat the pretty butterflies that settled down sometimes on their shoulders and hair and even gave me enthusiastic nods and a thumbs-up when I fed two parakeets on my palm.

"Please do not show these pictures to other people" they told me quietly, as we left Butterfly World and headed straight to a sports bar where macho-ism can be painlessly revived.

When I finish a good book, I call them. When I am depressed, I call them and I later find out that they had walked out of a movie theater to talk me out of my blues. When I see a great movie, I talk them into watching it and argue with them when they tell me they hated it. St.Valentine has blessed the celebration of love with his name. Similarly, Plato has blessed friendships between the genders with his name but nobody seems too keen on celebrating Plato's Day. Maybe my post will start a new wave for Plato's Day and annoy those angry Senas even more.

Sadly, in case of Platonic friendships, sometimes I feel like I am on this long wait until the guy's wife comes into his life one day and refuses to see how this friendship of his could be "proper". I spend my days fearing that one day, my best friend will turn into somebody's husband, that one day his wife will claim that him and I are just too close for her comfort. It scares me that this one whim might decide the future of a friendship that I have cherished since I was a teenager. These people are the only witnesses who knew the original me. They knew the person before the cynicism of age and experience set in and they heard the laughter that grew inhibited with every passing year. I once told one of them about this recurring nightmare where he and his wife meet me at the mall years later and he refuses to acknowledge me because she might get offended. At the end of my narration, I waited for his reaction. I waited for him to tell me that I was panicking for no reason and this it was a thoroughly stupid paranoia. And instead he giggled.

"Was she hot...my wife in your nightmare?" he asked me cackling at his own joke as I groaned and protested his ill-timed humor. I was secretly glad that he had made light of the situation; how else could I have ever laughed in the face of such credible fear.

Come to think of it, it is even harder for two girls to stay friends through all the numerous life changes. Two women who are such good friends that they are more than sisters, in the United States, are either pronounced gay or are Gayle...and Oprah.

Marriages, romance, children, jobs, geography and in the face of all the chaos, change and exhaustion is the steady, scaffold, the pillar of a good strong friendship that keeps us all going. So I have decided that I won't wait for Friendship Day to come along and pass by unnoticed. This Valentine's Day, I raise a toast and a cupcake with pink frosting to the ones that keep me sane through all the insanity and yet manage to bring in ample craziness when things get more serious than they should. This Valentine's Day I celebrate this one love that hardly ever gets celebrated and the deep affection we have for the unsung heroes of our busy lives.

Here's to you, my friend, my funny, crazy Valentine.

Happy Valentine's Day

Hardik Ruparel — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:47:30 EST

Happy Valentine's Day INDIA !

This year, as young couples gear up to spend the day which is supposed to be a holy day for lovers, as they express their love to each other by giving each other Valentines, which are usually heart shaped cut out cards, or cakes, biscuits etc.

Now which part of this did the moral police feel "not in tune with Indian culture". As some reports suggest, in some states, couples that are caught hanging out together will be forced to get married off to each other!

Wow! I'm so proud to be Indian right now. I love this moment so much I wish I could marry it and spend the rest of my life with it ! (Thanks Dr. Cox)

I really feel for these moral policemen. When cute young couples get caught, you know what they should do? No not give him the finger !! He doesn't understand that! They should give him one tight hug. So he feels loved. Because it's nothing but insecurity leading these policemen on such paths in life. Forcing people to confess that they're lovers. It's all because they lack love in life. So just hug them and make them feel loved. Only then they shall understand the true meaning of V-Day.

And Mr. Muthalik really needs a big teddy bear. I have half a mind to send him a big huge teddy with a heart in the middle. I don't care what he does with it. Let him treat it as an effigy and burn it. Who gives a damn. That's just his way of showing love. We should remember that everyone is expressive in their own ways.

So next time you're with your boyfriend/girlfriend and get caught, do as I said. Or just tell him you're siblings. And it would take him to call you a very bad word to get you caught. And if he asks for proof, you're lucky if your lover has a surname same as you, or just look for the nearest exit !

So please feel for these moral policemen. They don't have anyone to celebrate V-Day with. Let "LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY" be the motto for this V-DAY, and celebrate the spirit of St. Valentine

Valentine's Day: Love Expressed On Desicritics

Deepti Lamba — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:18:17 EST

Valentine's Day is close by and we are already swimming in pink undies, pink sarees, listening to passionate calls for and against the celebrations but what is going unheard is the silent love that beats deep within our hearts. No matter how cliched it may sound Love deserves to be aired out like fresh sheets in sunny breeze and we'd run through our memories and those expressed by others like children enjoying nothing more than the carefree moment lived and forgotten within the darkened recesses of our hearts.

Love makes us pause and smell the roses, enjoy the caress or maybe for once realize that we have much to be grateful for no matter how hard life may get. Love heals wounds, love gives hope and more than anything love makes us want to be better than we are.

Its all about love and its being painted pink. Pink is not the color of love. Its rich red like the blood flowing in our veins. It lives within us and flows through a touch, a glance or a word. Express what deserves to be aired. Anger and hatred cloud our horizon but love barely scratches the grime reality we live.

Its time to express what makes us human and its called Love.

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Tell us how you feel. Posts for the competition are invited until February 16th, and prizes will be announced soon after.