The word on the street is...Romeo Must Die

"I love you. I have been waiting so long to tel...". Bang!!

The guy's expression of love was made short by a rod that hit him on the back and sent him down flat on his face. The astonished girl sitting next to him turns back to discover 5-6 men all with lathis in their hands getting ready for the next shot.

No this is not another scene from a bollywood flick but from one of the thousand-odd parks spread across the country and the occasion is, of course, Valentine's Day.

After the guy collects himself and realizes that he cant take them over all alone, he hears himself say," Who are you people? Why did you hit me?". Just then he realizes from their stoned faces and a very familiar color of their cloth that what the matter was and utters,"Who are you to interfere in my personal matters ?".

The answer to this question is already out. "You are aping the Western culture and this Valentine's Day that you are celebrating goes against our Indian traditions".

While on one side of the town the restaurants and avenues are getting ready to offer their best of services, trying to make every buck out of the celebration, offering gifts, special bouquets, rides and other freebies to lure lovers in, the other side of town sees cards and gifts being burned in large bonfires, anti-valentine slogans being shouted and couples being harassed in parks and other places giving us a taste of the "diversity" that prevails in India.

Well, i would call this as celebrating just another holiday rather than aping the western culture. Even then if they insist on the simian tendency, why can't we ape what we like? And believe me, its not just valentine's day...its everything around us from fast-foods to movies to fashion. And the west apes the east too..think yoga, mehendi, Diwali, Khadi, feng-shui, oriental therapies...the list goes long.
In this age of economic mergers and globalization, a merger of cultures is inevitable.

The anti-valentine right-wing faction claims that this kind of western phenomenon corrupts the youth. To me it seems that its not the occasion but the spirit with which you celebrate it that matters. A holi or Diwali celebration can also lead to many accidents. A Ram navami or Ganesh Chaturthi or muharram procession (and the clashes that follow them) leave more people injured than any valentine's day but that doesn't mean that they should be banned.

Finally it turns out that it is this so-called protectors of our culture who are responsible for turning this day into a day of violence and disorder - Trying very hard to "impose" our culture on us.

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