Why Valentine's Day?

One Ring and Single Light Source
united to form a Heart. I clicked
this picture by directing the
mobile flash light on my ring held
rigidly by the edges of the book.

I've seen a lot of people against this whole notion of Celebration of Love and they come up with very deep answers when asked to advocate their point. They say,

"Love is not a thing to be celebrated once a year. If you love someone, every day is a Valentine's Day and if you're not in Love or trying to get away from your relationship, days like this can't hold you back. [It might hold you back for one day but the aftermath would be more horrible]"

And they're right. Love in true sense doesn't need to labelled on a day, especially not on a day which when followed nine months after results in Children's Day, 14th November. :-D

So, do we celebrate just as a forced tradition or is there any meaning left behind this. If this day is just to make College Life  or School Life more wonderful, then believe me it doesn't serve it purpose, not even a bit; rather it frustrates all the Singles. [I'm a student of Mechanical Engineering and I know what this frustration is].

Why do we celebrate it anyway?

What I think is that, it's neither for singles (as obvious) nor for committed (they don't need a day). This day is for all the pseudo-single people  who in their heart adore certain someone.

This day gives them courage to talk.
This day gives them strength to stare right through.

For on this day it is difficult for people to turn down someone. So, a stalker  can have his level upped and can be now in a Friends category.

While for some, it might be a day to enter in the "Friends" Category, for some it might be a day to get out from the FriendZone.

And quite often in a marriage, people are so much caught up in their day to day affairs (esp. when they have a child) that it is impossible to be in a romantic mood all the time. This day gives them an opportunity to be so.

And if this day unites even two single souls in the whole world or bring the old days back for some old lovers, then
Yeah! It is worth celebrating.

Why Rose?

"Why Rose? Why? You're so stupid. Why did you do that?" Jack scolded Rose, but there was pride in his eyes. Pride screaming loudly that, "Love brought his Love from the rescuing boat".

This scene from Titanic  comes to my mind as soon as I read the title but right now,  I'm talking about Rose the common noun, and not the proper noun. Here I'd like to talk about Rose- the flower.

7th of February, a week before Valentine's Day.

People celebrate this day as Rose Day as a starting indication that "Valentine's Week" is here again. As a part of the celebration, I shared an old photo from my digital album on Facebook wishing everyone.

The photo to your right was clicked back when I was in Kota. It was during that time when I developed fondness for Photography and my prime motivation were these Flowers. They taught me that Popularity and Fame is for few days only and then people forget about you, but then those days are worth living for. The sense of Pride and Love that you receive for such a short duration is worth a Lifetime and the hard work that we put into, as plants put their efforts in reproducing such beautiful flowers is worth putting effort into.

As the day was about to end and I was carefully tucked in my blanket, I thought, Why Rose?

Why is that of all the flowers in the world, Rose gets the privilege to be associated with Love. The thing that intrigued me even more was this is not some recent phenomenon rather it has been here right from the time to which written history can date back to.

Here are the few reasons that I lay in support.

Roses are Beautiful, yes they are but then there are many flowers that are beautiful.

Roses are Seasonal (which makes people admire them more because they can't find it around themselves at all times) Still there are few cactus flower which live for only a day. They are even more seasonal, aren't they?

Botany too doesn't provide us with any sharp answer to this question as there is nothing very special about growing Rose.

Multi-layered Petals (which shows that Love can't be understood easily) But then there is Chrysanthemum  which got even more number of petals and it is very beautiful at the same time.

Singularly Coloured (which shows Love is Pure) This category is easy to beat out as many examples would turn up.

There are many flowers which would fulfil all the five conditions, but we have only one winner in the end. We're still missing on one point.

Thorns - Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, thorns.
Love isn't Love if it hasn't been through rough patch.
It's not Love when you haven't face hardship together.
It's not Love, when it hasn't made you cry.
It's not Love, when it hasn't hurt you.

Thorns are inevitable part of Rose which is there to remind us of all the difficulties and obstacle that lie ahead of us or have been crossed while we pursue this path.

This last condition reduces us to only one winner and i.e., Rose.


A very happy Valentine's Week to everyone.

Habit

I was thinking of sending this as a text message to Deeksha to wish her Good Morning but then once I started writing it, it just went on and on, you know, and then it overshot the word limit. Just then I thought, "Let's put this on my blog". Thereafter the laziness struck me, because, you see, this was going to be my first blog this year as I wrote it earlier. And now I'm posting it.

Old habits die hard but once they die, they are hard to retain (Lesson learnt when I was trying to get back to my texting habit). Sometimes, it is because a new habit has taken it's place and in order to retain that old habit, one has to get rid of new one. (but new one by that time might get classified into the old habit criteria). and a few times, it's simply because it reminds you of the time when you left it.

Leaving a habit is always painful experience but at the same time it's very subtle. Usually, people around us get to know when we're going through turbulent phase but unlikely in this case, it's hard to notice.

It is difficult because Love in it's true form is also a habit; an addiction in a certain way. Perhaps this is the reason why we see that even the most incompatible people that we can find on the face of earth, when married, eventually fall in Love. [Indian Marriages are historical and living examples of that].

We may 'like' a thing at first sight, become fond of it over a brief period of time but Love needs a habit, it needs time, it is a gradual process.

In Facebook terminology or what we can say that in it's Timeline preview, it's evolution can be explained as, starting with a like,  then going on to sharing, thereafter tagging along and finally change in relationship status. (recently, they have incorporated change in marriage icons with different icon for straight, gay and lesbians. :P)

The problem (may be I shouldn't refer it this way), the thing with today's generation is that we want results very quickly. We don't want to wait for things. Even in a three hour lab session, what we shout most of the time is, " Yaar! Output nahi aa raha". We don't wait for things to occur, we just make it occur. As a result, there is a severe Backlash. Artificial Rains for example

We don't linger on a process long enough to make it a habit and as a result like  is easily misinterpreted as love and vice versa. Sharing  is misunderstood for  caring. 


I wonder how this started with an idea of sending a text message. May be this also is a habit.