Valentine’s Day

A sweet story about romantic love, late-stage capitalism, and other illusions.

I often proclaim that I only write about ideas I have lived with for a long time, turning them over in my head for weeks, months, sometimes years. Most of what I explore in my writing—the meaning of home, work identity, the institution of marriage, the public and private spaces that women inhabit, ageing, and the passage of time—has stayed with me for much of my adult life.

But, every now and then, I give in to impulse. Today’s piece is an example of that, something I hastily typed out on my phone just a short while ago, in response to the overwhelming flood of Valentine’s Day marketing. I haven’t stepped out today, but I haven’t needed to—my phone shows me what the world looks like today, and I suspect it's the screen that’s rose-tinted.

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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Valentine’s Day, like every other commercially ordained celebration, has meant nothing to me. Perhaps only in the fleeting years of my early teens did I hope for a little magic, for a little something just beyond reach. But it wasn’t long before I saw through the sleight of hand and learned to distrust anything that only seemed to matter once a year. What we once mistook for the magic of romantic love was just late-stage capitalism at work, forcing shy sentiment into gaudy spectacle.

Even so, I have memories of this day, some of which I will recount today. On Valentine’s Day in 2010, I went out for coffee with two close friends of mine at the time. To describe those friendships in purely platonic terms could be misleading. There was romance in the mix, though how real and transcendental it was, and not simply the product of circumstantial ennui, will always be up for debate. The café was a stone’s throw from where I live now. It was a bookstore café, charming and quaint in the way those places used to be. This café died a Covid death, as many things did, quietly disappearing without making it to the statistics. All through my years at college, I frequented the place for solo writing dates and their carrot cake. I no longer believe in the magic of carrot cake, and to go on a solo writing date, I have to be writing.

That evening, as I sat with my two self-proclaimed “boyfriends” for the occasion (we were on an ironic V-Day date), I received an email unlike any other. I read it right there at the table (quietly, of course), on my phone. This was the era of the business phone, which wasn’t so smart that it drove you crazy, but it was smart enough to let you read your email on it.

The email was from a longstanding “pen pal”, someone I had never met in person. Ours was a relationship built entirely on the written word, which is why, in many ways, it was probably the strongest one I’ve ever had. The email began with an assumption, one that was tinged with perceptible hesitation, that I had likely received a hundred such messages that day. I hadn’t. This was unlike any I had received until then, or thereafter.

I didn’t respond to the email right away, because its contents had caught me off guard, and I could hardly think of an appropriate response that combined rejection with kindness in the right measure.

It took me ten years to find the right words. While talking to a friend yesterday, I realised that the instances in which you think you have “no words” are precisely the ones where you have too many. On Valentine’s Day, 2020, in the city of Bangalore, I printed that email, wrote a handwritten letter in response, and delivered it in person—along with a promise. Later that year, I married this person. Lest I make this sound like a reckless leap of faith, know that this was as deliberate and well-thought-out a decision as can be.

This piece is to assure you that Valentine’s Day means nothing to me. It never has. I don’t subscribe to the construct of romantic love, much less to making a show of the private life. But February 14? It’s a day of strangely beautiful coincidences.

Love will come and go, but what will stay is the memory of how it made you feel while it lasted.

~

This post is dedicated to:

Sandeep, my Valentine, then and now.

Arpita, without whom I wouldn’t have been ready to write today.