What's so wrong with celebrating valentine's day?

What's so wrong with celebrating valentine's day?

Introduction:

Lovebirds are excited as the week of love starts, Hallmarks and Archie's brooding with love tokens, there is love in the air but someone has to be offended if you are doing anything at all in India. This time again its VHP and Hindu Mahasabha with plans to ruin all that the lovebirds might have planned ahead. They have already made official announcements for forcibly marrying the couples caught expressing love in public or even on social networking sites. Well that's not all, they have plans for inter-religion marriages as well along with yet another conversion process to begin with. Chhattisgarh made it official that 14th February will now be celebrated as 'parents worship day.' What is so wrong with celebrating Valentine's day or expressing love in public?

In support of Valentine's day:

1. There is nothing wrong with pampering your loved ones with gifts and surprises, married or not, everybody loves being showered with love and gifts. We Indians have a controversy with almost anything to everything and this is just one such good occasion being condemned by haters. What happened to freedom of expression now?

2. Forcing couples to get married and that too after conversion if they are of another religion is immoral and they talk about preventing their society from the evils of western culture. While teaching extremism and intolerance they are expecting their youth to grow into a better citizen of the country. This kind of moral policing has to stop immediately in India not just on Valentine's day but any other day when a couple in love should be free to express themselves anywhere.

3. Taking a day off from the freaking busy lives we live these days to spend with someone we love is not a bad thing after all. Putting a big smile on the faces of those that you love, not necessarily with pricey gifts, is not bad either. Relieving you stress with a day's celebration of love cannot be harmful too. Warning couples from indulging in expression of love in public is dangerous indeed. Any guesses where they would otherwise be hiding to celebrate their day of love? These extremists should just stop trying to be saints and simply accept that they are nothing more than a bunch of hypocrites doing nothing good for the society.

4. Those first gestures of love with cards and flowers that you get in your teens to those not so anticipated gestures of love with which your husband surprises you when you wake up one morning to find him making breakfast for you are simply adorable. They make life feel so beautiful and being loved is undoubtedly one of the best feelings ever. Not everyone is open to expressing themselves easily and Valentine's day gives them the perfect excuse to show that they care.

5. These extremists need to understand that they cannot ever stop lovebirds and by putting up these restrictions they are only making India intolerant and ignorant to beautiful things. It was height of extremism when one such extremist was heard quoting for TOI that incidents of rape happen just because of such celebrations of love. What kind of ethics are these morons teaching our youth?

Against Valentine's day:

1. Money can't bring you love, nor can expensive gifts and luxurious holidays. Act of care, kindness and faith is enough for expressing love to your beloved. Valentine's day has actually set norms for youngsters where they are made to believe that they have to shower their partner with expensive gifts to keep the relationship going even when they are just students and the gift would come from their pocket money savings.

2. Why should there be just one special day to tell your beloved how much they mean to you? This is supposed to be a daily mantra for relationships to go with bliss. In fact the very notion of expecting gifts on Valentine's day has created this materialistic view about love these days. All those who benefit from this extraordinary show of love on a single day in a year are Hallmarks and Archie's.

3. This day brings nightmares to the singles out there who are either done with being in a relationship or tired of expecting love from those they have huge crush on. Everyone around is talking dates and chocolates and they simply feel like hiding under stones for the rest of the day, the entire month actually. This could be one of the reasons why these extremists who are singles mostly are so against Valentine's day celebrations. Jokes apart, this day should not make anyone feel low just because everyone else is about boyfriend and girlfriend, love yourself and love your family and friends, make them feel special.

4. While falling in and out of love is quite normal, it is extremely absurd when people start comparing how their previous date was so much better with teddies and tulips. It has become a problem with youth judging on materialistic ideas of expressing love. They often land up regretting later so why not ban this day itself?

Conclusion:

While there are different views amongst people for either liking or disliking this day, nothing gives a group of extremists the right to forcibly marry off couples seen expressing love in public or social networking sites. What is troubling is the silence of our PM we so ardently believed to be against any sort of extremism and intolerance. While we should not be letting things that ruin our culture happen, we should not start moral policing at everything around.