Next week, this time we would all have read enough and more about how “love is in the air”, along with, all the other gases in the atmosphere, what flowers best match your partner’s personality, how to spend an inexpensive but fun day with the same partner (or a different one, if you’re into polyamory), and the Hindu Mahasabha’s efforts in getting “couples” to marry.
However, February 14 is inconsequential for other reasons: church services, advent of spring and a Christian holiday. There’s a theory that Geoffrey Chaucer brought about the connotation of romantic love on Valentine’s Day and that Hallmark Cards probably commercialised it.
Valentine’s Day or not, there’s always ridiculous advice sprouting from people’s mouths, in newspaper or magazine columns, and creeping up on corners of the vast edifice that is the interweb. I remember reading a cartoon strip featuring the talented Rashida Jones having a conversation with her friend where they analyse “Cupid’s propaganda”, as they call it. And as I read the strip, I couldn’t help but convulse at the infinite ridiculousness of the topic (finding love) and simultaneously recalled so many conversations about the same with friends, both male and female.
One approach, the Paulo Coelho as I call it, involves telling the universe what you want, wishing upon a star, waving your invisible wand in the air and other such fairy-like procedures, which ergo procures your Mr. Right. Another school of thought believes in not making the first move whatsoever, in case you seem desperate. Of course, self-help guides are aplenty and if I’m right ‘dating a girl who reads’ is in vogue.
And then you find yourself unpredictably on a date. What next?
(Part two appears next week.)
