Festivals

FESTIVAL: V-DAY-ISHQBAAZI…OR DRAMABAAZI??!

by Monojit Lahiri February 15 2025, 12:00 am Estimated Reading Time: 5 mins, 13 secs

Monojit Lahiri checks out if the just-ended V Day is a magical way of looking at a glorious celebration, or is it a powerless acceptance of a global phenomenon that falls prey to hollow and emotional posturing?

Valentine’s Day 2025 is more than just a celebration of love—it's a cultural phenomenon that sparks high anticipation, grand romantic gestures, and deep emotional connections. From extravagant displays of affection to the heartache of those left out, V-Day evokes strong reactions across generations. In India, Valentine’s Day has evolved beyond just romantic relationships, embracing friendships and familial bonds, making it a unique festival of love. However, with increasing commercialization, many question whether the essence of love is being overshadowed by marketing gimmicks. As social media trends dictate new expectations, the pressure to find the perfect Valentine’s gift or partner intensifies, leaving many to wonder—has love become just another commodity?

February 14, 2025, is one helluva day for guys and gals floating on a lavender cloud, totally lost in their very own game of love! Different degrees of hysteria and high-decibel anticipation and action accompany V-Day. It’s the one day when the Cupid-struck mob has the sanction to openly demonstrate their version of pyaar, mohabbat, ishq to their very special soulmate!

The Thrill of V-Day Celebrations

Offers a candid and forthright 28-year-old, Vicky Kapoor, an ad person: “In today’s insanely busy 24x7 life, choc-a-bloc with stress, tensions, and anxieties, occasions and opportunities related to love are mostly limited to stolen moments. Sure, the emotions, feelings, and sentiments are there, but the chance—and, more importantly, the appropriate ambience, setting, time, and occasion—is non-existent. V-Day is a blessing in disguise because, for hot-blooded guys like us, it provides the perfect platform to show how much we love her! It’s the one time we can freak out and let our imagination go wild in the endeavor to express our feelings. We can actually, metaphorically, let it all hang out! V-Day, for us, is the real Big O!”

Petite Parul Khanna, an 18-year-old second-year student, is much more restrained. “For me, V-Day is a glorious occasion, both in terms of romance and bonding. If you are romantically aligned, then it’s that special day to show how much you care for your beloved. If you aren’t, no probs, because bonding with friends, cousins, family, or whoever you love comes with the V-Day territory in India. Unlike in the West, this day goes beyond just boy-girl romance to embrace a joyous reaffirmation of relationships—the more passionate, colorful, and dramatic, the better!”

The Other Side of Valentine’s Day

Wonderful—but let's just do a quick flip side of this whole V-Day hungama and take a hard look at the poor, unfortunate souls who don’t have anyone special, the sad constituency that neither receives nor offers the mandatory cards and roses. In this crushingly competitive, peer-pressure-driven, “Guess what my guy gave me for V-Day?” zone, can you even begin to imagine what these poor guys and gals go through?

Confesses Vandana, a 20-year-old college-going co-ed, “I pretend to chill and remain indifferent, but somewhere, I feel alienated, isolated, strangely eased out of a crowd where I belong. It’s not a nice feeling.” And her college buddy Priya adds, “Spot on! Till last year, I had no one, and it was quite horrible being a passive onlooker to this great pyaar-mohabbat-numaish exploding all around you! This year, it was different… it was (blushes) bliss, yaar!”

“So, whatever people say, kids do feel a sense of being ‘left out’ if they don’t have their partner on V-Day,” confides another pal, Mala. “It’s such a huge thing with the Gen X crowd that, even if they are hermits for eleven months in the year, a month before V-Day, solid chakkar chalate hain to ensure that they don’t go solo on that day! They won’t admit it, but it’s the real truth, boss!”

When Love Meets Commerce

Cut to another aspect—what about guys and gals whose “Valentine surprise gifts” have disappointed them? In 2021, it was reported that roses, for many new-age guys and dolls, were considered corny, passé, old-fashioned, and boring. Instead, there was a strong preference for more solid and substantial (read: expensive) offerings! Where does that leave the romantic lover, cocooned in his old-world notions of love, dressed in the garb of Romeo and Majnu? Confused? Disillusioned? Heartbroken? In the doghouse?

A behavioral scientist observes with part amusement, part regret, “Let’s take this big, fat Valentine’s Day bazaar and put it in perspective. To begin with, doesn’t it appear a little dumb that the defining emotion that rules our lives is allocated just one lousy day for public airing? The hype and hoopla that attend this madness underscore one simple truth, rather dramatically—that the celebration of V-Day as a ritual and festival completely hijacks the essence of what the day stands for. That marketing and merchandising call the shots while the heart is really under a cloud. That, all things considered, it is nothing more than a high-pitched, smartly orchestrated ad campaign glamorously flaunting a product called love—a blatant, calculated commodification of a sentiment that makes the world go round. A total, vulgar commercialization of what the poet has eulogized as ‘a many-splendored thing.’ It’s the April rose that only grows in the early spring. It’s nature’s way of giving a reason to live, the golden crown that makes a man a king.”

For me, in a savagely consumerist society that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, is V-Day a modern way of looking at a celebration, keeping pace with the tone, tenor, and testosterone of the times? Or is it a helpless and vulnerable acceptance of a global phenomenon that falls prey to hollow and emotional posturing?

Over to you, gentle reader.