V day - very bad day

Its valentine season and there is no way u can escape from it. Turn on the TV and every TV station worth its name has a v day special running. The music channels have evergreen love songs running all day long and of course boring you to death. The Movie channels have what they claim ‘all time great movie classics’ lined up as part of the valentine bouquet. Sadly, there is no Casablanca or Love story or at least Titanic in this bouquet. The news channels are no exception. There would be day long debates with all the usual suspects participating. One from the sangh parivar (RSS/BJP/Shiv sena) to talk about Indian culture, values and how Feb 14 is degrading it . One libertarian to defend the celebrations and one more to take a middle path and preach. God only knows when we will see a valentine s day without a debate about it in the news channels.

You want to escape from all this sham, turn the idiot box off and turn on the good old radio. Crash, boom, bang... the bombardment continues there as well. I tuned into a FM Station only to catch two TV starlets professing their undying love for each other and supposedly regaling us with the chronological history of their love story, which incidentally, is all of 6 months old. Another one had this innovative contest, it was something like this ... You love a girl and want to marry her. The normally opposing parents are all bally-ho about it. There is only one hitch; the girl comes with an excess baggage, in this case a dog. It’s a case of love me, love my dog. And your parents don’t want the damned dog. So the million dollar v day contest is... How will you convince your parents to let her bring the dog along with her? Good that Saint Valentine is dead, he would have committed suicide.

Now that the TV and the Radio have proved unbearable, it is with much trepidation that I open the newspaper. And my fears were not unfounded, every page has something or the other about the day, most of which are trite and boring and bringing a sense of déjà vu. The net is no different either, the pop ups fly at u with alarming regularity and selling everything from chocolates, flowers to candle light dinners.

Think I should join the shiv sena and join their valentine busting department. My target would not be the poor couples in public places, the other sainiks will take care of them, but all those radio andTV stations and newspaper columnists.