Tuesday, February 2, 2010

A case in favor of abolishing Valentine's Day!!!

Unlike other posts, I am not wasting any time before coming to the topic. This time of the year is certainly one of the most stressful to me and to many others of my ilk.
 As soon as India finishes observing a minute's silence to remember Gandhiji's martyrdom, the next big thing on the agenda for everyone is Valentine's Day. But why so, I must ask??
 Yours truly is leading a solitary life and my relationship status is well-publicised among my friends and yet, I have already been bombarded with a substantial set of queries asking about my plans on V-day. Further, what is with these colors and how can a color really be used to indicate "if I am on the market"?? Every time somebody asks me the question ..so what color are you wearing this V-day... I am reminded of a stupid gimmick many ppl carried out on social media to increase awareness about breast cancer. Only I am not sure what is more embarassing.. flashing my underwear color on social media or wearing my relationship status all over my physical existence on V-Day. To an average bachelor residing in a hostel, managing two clean pieces of clothing is tricky enough, without the additional of complexity of colors conveying your love life's deepest secrets.
    I googled out this whole color coding phenomenon and I am listing here the most popular connotations of colors:
  • Blue- I’m free
  • Green- I’m waiting
  • Orange- going to propose
  • Pink- accepted just now!!!
  • Black- proposal rejected
  • White- already booked
  • Yellow- broke up!!!
  • Gray- not interested…
  • Red- leave me
While I am not contesting these codes, I do have some questions in my mind. Does a deeper shade of RED mean a strong "leave me" as in "dont even think about it!!" or did the people wearing PINK keep it as spare, just in case, and just got lucky?? On the whole this entire coding business is driving us back to racial discrimination in its most sophisticated form, differentiating people on the basis of color. 
  Imagine the scenario, you enter a pub and see a person wearing BLACK or YELLOW, do you really want to sit near this character and hear their sob story (my gender neutrality begs appreciation here!!).On the other hand, you probably want to sit next to a PINKy person and try to grab to a free drink or two as celebration. Bingo... discrimination on the basis of color!!! (Me thinks, worse would be actually landing up next to an ORANGE and end up as his dress rehearsal partner...take that!!)
Now that socially essential arguments have been put forward, let me come down to the more personal/emotional arguments.
The two broad lines of argument on this topic are as follows:
  1. this is a day for all the lovers to celebrate Love (almost as if its Diwali!!)
  2. this is a day for all the others to find Love
Now lets rip them apart systematically.
Argument 1 is nonsense. Don't all lovers make/create/manufacture/concoct love for the remaining 364 days of the year. Its not like Diwali when you are bombarded with sweets and crackers for just that one day. We, the single, have been painful witnesses to your public cuddling, kootchi-cooing and what not!!! So don't tell me that you are celebrating Love on that particular day and abstain on the other days of the year. And what the hell.. when did you folks ever need a reason to gift a teddy bear, a chocolate box or watever else is in vogue now!!! Just don't call it the festival of Love...and to think that you are actually celebrating somebody's death!!!

Argument 2 is offensive. Nobody, take it from me NOBODY, ever finds love during Valentine's day. Not only does it provide false hope to the usual-suspects of solitary living, it also gives the whole romance thing a marketplace atmosphere, feeding on supply and demand. You are either already in love and the mass hysteria is helping you express it or you are just feeling the peer pressure of not being found alone (screw the subtlety, without arm candy!!). In the first case you get your hindside kicked and in the second case you are in deep $h&t with either a wrong decision or worse, a compromise!!! Anyways, in case any of you thinks that it is possible to find love on Valentine's Day, this is what I have to say on it:
 Planning to find love on Valentine's Day is like selling notional futures contract in love. You will most probably end up squaring up your positions in the spot market!!!


 Thus, having successfully and single handedly, sounded the alarm bell on Valentine Day celebrations, I request the powers that be to abolish the celebration of V-Day thus, protecting the society from racial hatred and keeping the population on a realistic leash of romanticism.
 My Lord, I thereby rest my case!!!


P.S. Now time for something useful:
 Check out this new cool Facebook group, as a designer you might be interested. Otherwise just spread the word.