He looked into her eyes. He had always liked looking into them, whenever he got the chance. It was not as if she didn’t let him, it was just that she was very shy, terribly shy. He would coax her for hours to let him look into his eyes for a minute. And then she would. Like she always did. He always won with her. She could never resist him. She, of the iron will, just melted whenever he was around. She had weathered a lot of storms in life. She said that's what had made her strong. He said, I don’t think so. You were not meant to be strong. God didn’t create you that way. He created you with a soft core and then he sent me take care of you. To guard you, shield you, hold you close and tight. Hold you in my arms and look into your eyes.

He held her close that night. He looked into her eyes. It had again taken coaxing since the morning for her to finally agree to meet him in the evening, after work and let him look into her yes.

He had parked the car under the streetlight, two lanes away from her house. The yellow light cast a warm glow on her face. It made her look breathtakingly beautiful. But then he never looked at her face. He looked into her eyes. They always looked like pools of a thousand myriad whirring emotions. But today was different; He could see that something was amiss. That her eyes had one predominant emotion, which drowned out all the rest of them. And what killed him was he didn’t know what it was. Or maybe he did and he didn’t want to face it. It was in that very moment, he could actually feel his heart turn into a deadweight. He could feel it turning into a drowning mass of stone. He could feel it choking him. He could feel life slipping out of his lungs. He started grasping for air. She sat there paralyzed. She just kept looking at him. It was guilt now. He saw it. And he knew the time had come for him to die. The time when all he had ever dreamt of, all the dreams he had ever seen, the very reason of his existence would come crashing down and would take him down with them. He kept looking into her eyes still, it was the last thing he wanted to d before he closed his. And then he smiled. After all, this is how he wanted to die, looking into her eyes.

                                                                  "Be my Valentine"

Yes I find the idea of celebrating Valentine’s Day utterly stupid. And No. I don’t belong to any right wing organization who take up cudgels against lovers celebrating the day.

What I have a problem with is celebrating a day with obscure and mysterious origins. Of the many St. Valentines who are considered to be the patron saints or the original upholder of love has been sufficiently hyped to have been the champion of lovers. He refused an unattested law attributed to Roman Emperor Claudius II, allegedly ordering that young men remain single. The Emperor believed that married men did not make for good soldiers. The priest Valentine, however, secretly performed marriage ceremonies for young men. When the emperor found out about this, he had Valentine arrested and thrown in jail

Makes for an interesting story and all part of folklore.

So should we now be reduced to whimpering sweet nothings just because Card companies today have been able add glitz to the idea that you can’t be in love unless you have proven it by gifting each other gifts on Valentine’s day.

Over the years this one day has dominated the calendar as one of the most important days in the life of any teen growing up in India in the 90s.

In that age of innocence(pre-internet-boom era), Valentine’s day was looked forward to by most teenagers as the day of reckoning.

The popularity of a girl was pretty much decided by the material evidence which was what you received on Valentine’s day form your admirers, secret or not. For guys I think it was more about just having a girl who wouldn’t throw your gift back at your face before slapping you hard.

But it was still harder on girls, the pressure being immense to be counted as a “desirable” girl and many girls would spent sleepless nights thinking of whether or not they would receive the card saying “From your Valentine”.

From cards/gifts for the school kids the focus gradually shifted to how were you celebrating your love for college kids already in relationships.  Where were going, what were you eating and what were you gifting?

More important than the idea of love what has hogged the Centre stage is the idea of the expression of love. How do you express your love to your loved one? “Cards, flowers, gifts, chocolates and what have you in the name of mushy love.

Shouldn’t we stop to ask ourselves this question are we really that devoid of intelligence to start driving ourselves into a tizzy over some folklore and play into the hands of clever marketers who have made an industry out of it. Yes the Valentine’s Day business stands at 12000 crore per annum!

While I have nothing against the idea of love or even the idea of expressing it, what I find funny is why take out one day in the year to do it? And really what happiness do we get out of buying each other silly cards? And more importantly why do we need to express it only by buying each other gifts?

Shouldn’t love be all about feelings and emotions rather than being tangible and material?

Before we rush to the next card shop on our way, let us just ponder on the people who we love and who love us back or not, is love something that really should be measured in gifts and on a particular day? Is love hostage to the most innovative/expensive way of expression?

Isn’t being there when you loved ones need you, showing them you care by being around enough, isn’t spending time all the time all through the year important? Should we just let a day in the year to hog all the attention and then go loveless for the rest of it?

Is this what Love is all about? Are we giving the most used word in the English dictionary the seriousness it deserves or are we just being shallow by following the trend and doing the done thing?

Think about it while you decide on which gift to buy for your valentine.