A day for love

FOR several years I knew of only two Valentines, B.H. Valentine of England and Alf Valentine of Jamaica. Both were reputed cricketers. I don't know much about B.H. Valentine's achievements on the field, but along with Sonny Ramadhin, Alf Valentine formed a deadly spin duo in West Indies cricket.

Neither of these Valentines had anything to do with love and romance. Yet for the past five or six years, as February 14 approached, I am witness to an eruption of love all around me.

TV channels, newspapers and hoardings blast the message - Valentine's Day is here. The "Personal" columns in newspapers bulge with messages, Shekhar declaring his love for Sushma, Franklyn overwhelmed with his feelings for Fiona and so on. I don't know if Tamil newspapers carried similar messages from Pappanan to Palani Ammal or Ramabhadran to Narayani. If they did, I wish them well.

Valentine's Day is all about love and was linked with St. Valentine, a Bishop of Terni, martyred at Rome, but whose name had now been deleted from the calendar of saint's days as non- existent. Poor chap! But people continued to celebrate February 14 as St.Valentine's Day exchanging gifts with their sweethearts. What a nice way to remember someone.

I am all for love. It is the only force which can solve the problems of the world. There is no better sight than a young (or even old) couple walking arm-in-arm, looking into each others' eyes and happy in the belief that the world exists only for them.

"It's love, it's love which makes the world go round" said an ancient proverb and that was a pretty good summing up. John Dryden, the English poet, named his play on the story of Antony and Cleopatra as "All for Love", or "The World Well Lost" and I can't think of a better title.

Some of today's Valentine's Day messages may reflect only calf love or puppy love but these cannot be discarded as silly.

When you are young, you often have stars in your eyes. But love is not the exclusive property of the young. When Francesca Johnson, wife of an Iowa farmer, fell in love with the National Geographic magazine photographer, Robert Kincaid in Robert James Waller's unforgettable romantic novel, The Bridges of Madison County, she was 45 and he, 52. Love can afflict both the young and the old. That is why it is such an all pervading force.

Is there such a thing as "love at first sight"? Elizabethan playwright, Christopher Marlowe believed so if we went by his lines in "Hero and Leander". Marlowe's famous lines, "Whoever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight!" was repeated by Shakespeare in "As You Like It". Yet, over the years while doing human interest articles, I had questioned many couples who had fallen in love and got married. They did not believe they fell in love at first sight. The process was gradual and became more intense after they began to understand each other better. But I am not prepared to discard the "Love at first sight" theory, though instances of this could be seen only in films and books.

Do people behave oddly when they are in love? Is it because they were thinking only of those with whom they were in love? Love has other problems too. Shakespeare in "The Merchant of Venice" labels love as "blind" and lovers could not see the pretty follies they committed. He again refers to the whimsical nature of love in "As You Like It" while discussing the seven stages of Man: "And then the lover, sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad, Made to his mistress' eyebrow." Suckling, another English poet, raises the issue, "Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee, why so pale?" But ultimately, there is the consolation of a happy ending. According to Virgil, "Love conquers all, let us yield to love." Amen to that. I had wondered many times why tragic love stories had withstood the test of time more than the happier endings. There are so many examples of these. Antony and Cleopatra, Laila and Majnu, Prince Saleem and Anarkali and so on. Take the case of Kalki's historical novel, Sivakamiyin Sabatham where the beautiful dancer Sivakami falls in love with the Pallava prince.

We remember the novel and classify it as "great" because of the unhappy, though, logical ending. The Prince Narasimha Pallavar, had to marry a Pandian princess and his sweetheart Sivakami chose the lord as her partner spending the rest of her life dancing in his presence. A happy ending would not have satisfied us at all.

Love over the years had been immortalised in poetry, literature, theatre and films. Yet how often do we listen to contemptuous references to this noble feeling? The timid daughter tells her parents she is in love with a particular man. What is the reaction in most cases? An explosion of rage and frustration as though the daughter has done something very wrong. In Hindi films, the father will shout, "Yeh shadi kabhi nahin hoga" (This marriage will never take place) while in Tamil films, the reaction would be "Kadhalum achu! Katharikaiyum achu! Podi Ulle". Of course, after many twists and turns, the parents will come around but the initial reactions are always the same.

Coming back to the modern Valentine's Day, the occasion is a boon for big business. Gift shops do a roaring trade in cards, flowers, chocolates. This year's business was expected to be around Rs. 100 crores and that is a lot of money. My daughter gets lots of gifts from her admirers, some known and some unknown and takes them in her stride. Call him Valentine, Cupid or Manmadhan, the god of love was certainly very busy on February 14.

V. GANGADHAR

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