VALENTINE’S DAY: AN AFTERTHOUGHT

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. The annual hysteria over the pink feeling has turned everything rosy and has befuddled the romantic minds to no end. Young people have gone overboard in buying record amounts of roses, chocolates and hampers to splurge on their loved ones. E-commerce platforms, along with dating sites, have pushed the trend and have engaged in aggressive campaigns to promote romantic products as it has been a flagship event for them for quite some time. During this time the country’s growing middle-class, particularly young adults, also spend extensively on dining in glitzy restaurants and cafes. Experts predicted that the Indian market in 2026 could see a 40-45% increase in overall sales related to Valentine’s Day, potentially reaching 60-75 crore rupees. And in the US, consumers are expected to spend $29.1 billion on the romance day this year. Soon we will see how far the pundits’ predictions came true. But side–by-side with all the hullaballoo, there is an occasion called Ant-Valentine’s Week that comes just after the Love Day. Starting from February 15 to February 22, the anti-Valentine’s week is all about subtle teasing and vengeance. The first day is celebrated as Slap Day followed by Kick Day, Perfume Day, Flirt Day, Confession Day, Missing Day and finally, Breakup Day. While many people participate in anti-valentine week in a lighter vein, this counterculture for the broken hearts is also gaining popularity these days given the amount of violence and betrayals that take place in recent years in the name of love. But incidents of passion involving man and woman has had many mind-boggling, soul-inspiring as well as macabre and gut-wrenching conclusions since the arrival of human beings on earth, and they have cut across countries, cultures, castes, creeds and religions. While most religious scriptures and traditional cultural norms find true fruition of such passionate relationships in marital love and happy life ever after, an uncountable number of such relationships unfortunately end or have ended, in real life as well as in fiction, mythologies, legends and folklore, catastrophically resulting in the murders, deaths, grievous injuries, barbaric revenge or other painful consequences of one or both the lovers and in many cases involving families of one or both the lovers. Cases of unnerving nature involving “love” are being reported from many parts of the globe on a regular basis and pleasant romantic tales are getting replaced by sordid passion sagas with motives of greed, conversion, violence and vendetta. The draconian shadows of conspiracy theories, honour killings, partner abuse, financial fraud, blackmail and domestic violence loom ominously over innumerable love and marital cases as they are reported in print, electronic and social media these days.
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​Cherished and celebrated in all ages and by all religions, communities, poets and philosophers, love, both in real life as well as in fiction and mythologies, has quite often generated feelings like possessiveness, jealousy, mendacity, treachery, faithlessness, fickleness and violence. Leafing through the pages of ancient epics and mythologies one finds instances of violent and unethical acts and behaviour of leading characters that stun our sensibilities and pain our conscience. With love, violence is usually never far behind in a number of Shakespeare’s plays like Romeo and Juliet and Troilus and Cressida, where violence and vile feelings have been unleashed ruthlessly. In the major tragedies like Hamlet and Othello, love is encountered by or mired in villainy, virulence, treachery and suspicion. Even in his comedies and romances, love is often overwhelmed by vicious conspiracies, disloyalty, abuse and acrimony. A classic example of the portrayal of violent love is Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights where the central character Heathcliff pursues love with violent passion rather than with intelligence, gentleness and sophistication. In fairy tales, love often encounters vile plots and scheming villains delaying the otherwise smooth march of love. In today’s world too, love often gets entangled with violence, falsehood, brutality, and unscrupulousness. Violence in love knots, marital or otherwise, have been generally taken for granted by women as they are guided by traditional social or cultural norms which prescribe and normalise dominance and superiority for men and deference and dependence for women. Women quite often cite or rely on romantic narratives — which entail both fairy tale and dark versions — to make sense of violence in their relationships. Partner abuse takes on many forms: physical, emotional or verbal and sexual. Other forms of abuse include stalking, financial abuse and digital abuse (use of technology to harass, stalk or intimidate the partner). Love takes a lurid turn where the lover allegedly forces the beloved to convert to his or her faith for the purpose of marriage. Love jihad has been a burning topic in India for quite some time, yet an equally alarming thing is the rise of ‘honour killing” incidents where a boy or girl is killed by their family members to “protect” the reputation or honour of their families.

​But violence in marriage and love has no moral or religious approval or sanction. St Augustine wrote that the true basis of married love is the attachment of hearts. World religions and the Natural Law have always protected the sanctity of marriage and the family. Marriage affords a framework for the mutual love and self-giving of man and woman to each other in human sexuality, and in so doing provides for continuity of the human family. In Hinduism, marriage is considered to harmonise two individuals for ultimate eternity, so that they can pursue dharma (responsibility/ duties), arth (meaning wealth or property), and kama (sensual pleasure). Romantic love holds an unusually important place in Hindu imagination. It is the prime focus of courtly poetry, and complex narratives about romantic love date as far back as 300 BCE. Love relationships maturing into marriage also find place in Hindu religion as is evident from the love legends of Dushyant and Shakuntala and Savitri and Satyavan. The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians (13:4-8) states: “Love is patient, love is kind, / love is not jealous or boastful, / it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.” C.S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves describes four kinds of human love: affection, romantic love, friendship and the love of God. Plato considered Eros or romantic love something like poetic rapture upon seeing the beauty of another. Eros is not mere carnal desire, but the longing for the beauty and company of the beloved when two persons fall in love. Karol Wojtyla who later became Pope John Paul the Second wrote in his book Love and Responsibility in 1960 that in true love between a man and woman, there is an evolution from attraction and desire to a feeling of good will towards the other. A healthy integration of sensuality, sentiment and kindness takes place so that one looks to the other with love and treasures the other person. The Danish existentialist philosopher Kierkegaard described love as uniting the temporal with the eternal. Even though one’s loved has died and is no longer with that person, love lives on for the one who is cherished. Love is the favourite subject of artists and poets throughout the ages. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a story of two star-crossed lovers, is one of the most moving plays ever written. Tennyson wrote that “tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”. The poet Kahil Gibran wrote “Love is to know the pain of too much tenderness… ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation”. Popular music is also filled with the subject of love, and some of the memorable love songs include “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion, “Earth Angels” by the Penguins, “Close to You” by Karen and Richard Carpenter and “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce.

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​But violence in personal relationships mars the blessed saga of love in a great way. According to the National Crime Records Bureau(NCRB) latest report released on December 3, 2023, crime against women has increased from 64.5 per cent in 2021 to 66 percent in 2022. A concerning rise of 30% has been observed in the specific crime category of “cruelty against a woman by her or his relative.” The Fifth Round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) Sheds light on a disheartening aspect of public perception. A significant portion of Indian population justifies a husband beating his wife for reasons like going out without informing, showing ‘disrespect’ to in-laws, or suspecting the husband’s loyalty. More shockingly, 45% of women and 44% of men aged between 15 and 49 years believe that it is acceptable for a husband to resort to violence based on any of the above-mentioned reasons listed in the NFHS survey. The situation is not much different in other countries and violence is only intensifying with time. Hundreds, if not thousands, of women are murdered globally by their families each year in the name of “family honour”, the perpetrators go unpunished, and the concept of family honour justifies the act in the eyes of some societies. Some reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that this despicable phenomenon has occurred in countries like Bangladesh, Great Britain, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Brazil and Uganda. Eric Fromm, the German social psychologist (1900-1990), stated: “There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and, yet, which fails so regularly as love.” Undoubtedly, the word “love”, as Shelley felt, “is too often profaned”, cheapened and vulgarized. But true love remains mankind’s greatest source of comfort at all hours of our existence, at all times and in all climes. Valentine’s Day may have become an overhyped and commercially significant holiday worldwide and those celebrating it may be accused of diluting a divine feeling given the dark scenario of hatred, distrust and ill-feeling among partners and fellow beings all around, Love is there to stay as, to quote St. Paul, “Love is eternal”.

​(The writer, a Ph D in English from Calcutta University, is a freelance contributor and teaches English at the Government-sponsored Sailendra Sircar Vidyalaya, Shyambazar, Kolkata. He is also the Research Head of Kolkata-based research group, Ullaskar Dutta Academy.)