Politics of Love: Valentine’s Day Rebranded as Cow Hug Day

With the electoral jamboree reaching a fever pitch, Prof Swaraj investigates the rightist parties’ attempts to politicise Valentine’s Day by calling it Cow Hug Day — a brilliant, multifaceted political humour exclusively for Different Truths.

While Valentine’s Day holds significance for many, some may view it as peculiar or not applicable to their experiences. However, this year’s renaming of the holiday as “Cow Hug Day” has provided an opportunity to address concerns surrounding the treatment of cows in India and has opened up new avenues for discussion.

Sometimes, the feeling that you are out of joint with time strikes hard. Especially when matters of the heart are concerned. I don’t mean heart attack in the medical sense. Dalliances of amorous nature can also lead to broken hearts, even if not heart attacks. Just look at this old Hindi film song sung by Rafi and penned by Qamar Jalalabadi: “Ikk dil ke tukde hazaar huay / Koi yahan gira koi wahan gira” (A heart shattered into a thousand pieces / Some fell hither, some thither). This metaphoric breaking of the heart is much more serious than a heart attack. All lovers know it well.

Valentine’s Day is an auspicious occasion with everything to do with our hearts. But Valentine’s Day only makes me feel out of joint with time. I was born either too early or too late to enjoy its blessings. However, perhaps for the first time in February this year, things appeared bright and cheerful. The reason was the rechristening of this year’s Valentine’s Day as Cow Hug Day. The more I thought about it, the happier I felt at the immense possibilities. This would be in keeping with our national ethos. Surely enough, this would have bolstered our claim to superpower status too. This universal cow love would have pulled the rug from under the cow vigilantes. With everyone loving the cow, the vigilantes would have nobody to target as a cow smuggler. It would definitely improve our world ranking on Freedom Index.

For the first time, I thought I would no longer feel anachronistic. How wonderful it would be to hug cows roaming the streets! And there are plenty of them, not only in the streets but on highways also. All want to be loved and hugged! I even thought of ordering a large number of garlands for the day. Not the usual marigold ones, but fragrant ones of jasmine and tuberose. Just think of it. People garland cows with lumps of jaggery in their hands to feed them! How romantic it would be! And the holy cows obliged with affectionate mooing and hugs! How heavenly! For the first time, there would be a public display of love. Without inhibition, without any moral hang-up.

Alas! It was not to be. Enemies of love ganged up in large numbers to oppose the move. The advocates of Cow Hug Day were trolled badly. Social media sites were flooded with idiotic memes. Some dunderheads were worried about the jealous bulls seeing red in men hugging cows. Others suggested that garlanding cows without their consent was unethical — all this clever sophistry to merely scuttle the idea of celebrating the Day the Indian way.

Consequently, the splendid proposal was withdrawn to the chagrin of its advocates. The likes of me were left fuming. After all, this was the only opportunity to soak in love without feeling guilty. No moral police could stop anyone from hugging cows.

But then, each age has its share of enemies of love. For centuries such people have been putting impediments in the “way of marriage of true minds.” Shakespeare or no Shakespeare. Woe betides such people! For me, the withdrawal of Cow Hug Day meant the loss of a golden opportunity. Was the idea of cow love too premature for a society not yet ready for such inclusivity? Whatever the reason, my hopes this time also turned out to be unseasonable. Valentine’s Day arrived, and I left with nothing to cheer about. Rather, it aggravated my deep-seated feeling of being out of joint with time. It left me sulking and casting wistful glances down memory lane. I am still in a brown study two months after the event was called off.

Well, some people’s lives are a saga of missed opportunities and shattered hopes. My story of missed opportunities started in high school. This was half a century ago. The word ‘Valentine’ had a different meaning then. It simply meant a love letter. I read it in Hardy’s novel “Far from the Madding Crowd”. In the book, Bathsheba Everdene, the beautiful, frolicsome heroine, sends a Valentine to William Boldwood. She did not love Boldwood, a gentleman farmer of forty-two. She wrote to him out of sheer whimsy. Boldwood had never paid any attention to the beautiful lady. Feeling slighted, she wrote to him, unmindful of the consequences. The anonymous Valentine contained the verse: “A rose is red/ The violet blue/Carnation’s sweet/ And so are you”. She sealed the envelope with the words “Marry Me in red.” The letter had an unimaginably devastating impact on Boldwood. He lost his mental equilibrium. Like a monomaniac, he started pursuing the dream of marrying Bathsheba. Such was the force of a Valentine! It proved to be a spark that set the stoical farmer’s heart on fire.

The episode in Hardy’s novel left a deep impression on my mind. The letter had turned the reputable farmer into a lovesick puppy. I started imagining someday I would also receive a Valentine from some Bathsheba of my dreams. If that didn’t happen, I would pen one to make her swoon over me. And to tell you the truth, I had many Bathshebas in my dreams those days. Let me add here hurriedly, lest someone misunderstand me for being such a flirt. I wasn’t the only one who entertained such impossible hopes. Most of my friends were also like me. Actually, we lived in Puritanical times, obviously a wrong time to be born in. The sort of permissive society we have today was unthinkable in those times. The love between a young boy and a girl was a hush-hush affair. Our parents drilled into us daily that all boys and girls were brothers and sisters except for the one they would select for us as our life partner.

Any violation of this interdiction invited the harshest punishment. Now a heart is a heart. Love always makes it go aflutter. Nobody has ever been able to exercise any control over the heart’s wayward ways. Ghalib put it very aptly when he said, “Ishq par zor nahin, hai ye woh aatish Ghalib / Jo lagae na lage, aur bujhae na bane” (One has no power over Love, it is that flame / Which neither can be set alight, nor quenched once lit).

Unknown to their parents, love-smitten teenagers cast many furtive glances on their sweethearts. It was impossible to stop the heart from galloping at break-heart speed on such occasions. But it was mostly a one-sided affair. Or let’s say a one-sided flame lighted by a fleeting, mysterious smile on a longed-for face. Each Mona Lisaesque smile could and did set the heart ablaze. An old song sung by Asha Bhonsle sums it up all: “Woh hanske mile humse / hum pyar samajh baithe” (He met me with a smile / I mistook it for love). How did the heart know that a smile is a smile and nothing more than that? Especially at that impressionable age? Amidst the plenitude of smiles, only the dame luck refused to smile!

I penned many Valentines, but they remained on paper only. There was no way to send them to someone I liked. However, there was one notable exception. It was socially permissible to have a penfriend. And that too, in a foreign country, preferably. There was no fear of such friendships ever slipping down from the lofty Platonic pedestal. Physical distance was the key. I, too, had a pen pal in Finland. This was acceptable to everyone, my parents in particular.

We wrote to each other quite regularly. But it took months to get a reply. There were no instant messaging systems available then. Forbearance was the watchword. Waiting for a letter was an apt lesson in monumental patience. I wrote to my pen pal on colourful letter pads. One such letter pad had pink pages. Each page was adorned with the watermark of a heart pierced by Cupid’s dart. By way of a letterhead, there was a rhyme encircled by a flowery border. It went like this: “Will you won’t you, Won’t you will you marry me / If you won’t, then sweet death will carry me.” I wrote my very mundane thoughts to her on this pad for no specific reason. To me, it was nothing more than an innocent prank. There was no hint of any proposal from my side. But then, with many unfathomable crypts in our hearts, only the heart knows its truths. Blaise Pascal was right in suggesting that “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know….” Why I did what I did, I’m still not 1hundred percent sure. I faintly remember waiting for the reply with my heart in my mouth! 

She responded with unusual alacrity. I was delighted. Seeing her reply on pages embellished with flowery watermarks, my spirits soared heavenward. Enclosed in the envelope were three photos also. She was posing with her boyfriend on either side of a snowman in all three. The whole landscape was white. The icy winds issuing forth from the photos froze my soul, as it were. I wondered how my innocent gesture could have had such disastrous consequences. In retrospect, I think of Sara Teasdale, who says: “It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.” Except that years did not make mine wiser!

This episode drove home the fact of my being always out of joint with time. I was late this time. What if I had sent my epistle earlier before she had had a boyfriend? Who knows the trajectory our friendship could have taken? Munir Niazi has written a moving nazm, “Hamesha deir kar deta hoon mein” (I am always late). I feel he wrote it for me only.

Coming back to the Valentine saga, Valentine’s Day became a marketable product in India in the late 1980s. This was when many students in the college where I taught started exchanging Valentine’s gifts. Even in a sleepy town like Patiala, gift shops started wearing a festive look. In the West, the consumer industry had appropriated Valentine’s Day much earlier. We caught up with the West rather late.

Youngsters started celebrating Valentine’s Day with gusto. The pusillanimity characterising earlier times had given way to daring. Sometime in the 1990s, some students put up a Valentine’s Day goodies kiosk on my college campus. No wonder droves of youngsters gravitated towards the kiosk. Girls outnumbered boys in buying flowers. They were asserting their freedom from repressive gender mores. To me, this was a rebellion against priggish morality that had enslaved our minds for a long time. I simply wished I were born just twenty years ago, not forty. In that case, I, too, would have been among those celebrating the holy day.

The event, however, didn’t pass off peacefully. Some boys objected to others offering flowers to the girls they liked. There was a scuffle among these green-eyed rivals. The college was closed to avoid a scandal. The management decided never to allow Valentine’s Day celebrations on campus. Many hearts bled on the altar of morality.

Not much seems to have changed when I compare Valentine’s Day to this year’s. The enemies of love did not allow the celebration of Valentine’s Day then and now. Well, it’s no good giving up hope. Perhaps the next Valentine’s Day may turn out to be different. Till then, the ones out of joint with time have Allama Iqbal for the company: “Tere azad bandon ki na yeh duniya na woh duniya / Yahan marne pe pabandi / vahan jeene pe pabandi” (Neither this world nor the afterworld is for Thy free slaves / They are compelled to die here and compelled to live there).

Picture design by Anumita Roy