14 February,2010 01:24 PM IST | | Janaki Viswanathan
While the hate love brigade is largely made up of annoyed singles, several couples would also like to do away with pinks and reds on February 14u00a0u00a0
The Shiv Sena has competition. Love, read Valentine's Day, has a hate club, and it's burgeoning online. The Internet has turned into a hub for anti-Valentine's Day folk to network with their ilk, especially through social networking website Facebook, which has nearly 35 anti-love forums and more than 3,000 fans.u00a0
No Valentine, no thanks
'Valentine's Day Sucks!!' says a forum called Anti-Valentine's dayu00e2u0080u00a6 not Anti-LOVE!!. It's not against love, just the celebration of love on a particular day. The forum that was started last year, has creator Farhat Rahmatulla advising fans to go out and "blast" today.u00a0
Anti-Valentine's Day was started in 2008 and has gathered 700-odd fans. This forum believes in involving members in disturbing activities to celebrate February 14: distributing wilting flowers, handing out evil candy hearts and eviscerated teddy bears, wearing all-black and eating only bitter chocolate. It's not a pretty picture.u00a0
The most recent of all groups, again called Anti Valentine's Day. It cropped up only last month and addresses singles who are sorely reminded year-after-year of their insipid relationship status. "Aren't you always all alone on this damn day?!?" states the 'forum description' quite simply. One of the posts laments, "Wish it was on "29th February!" so won't be this painful!!!"
Online clubs range from the depressed to the violently angry to a few humourous ones that ask others to be their 'anti-Valentine'. An independent online forum compares the day to herpes ("That's why it's called VD") and states, 'This Valentine, don't say it with flowers, say it with bile.'
Overtime for shrinks
The number of singles and love-haters don't make life any easier for Mumbai-based clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Seema Hingorrany. Seema is trying hard to accommodate an increasing number of patients who are calling in to book appointments to combat love day. "Last year, we had six patients around to February 14. This time, it has doubled. I have already counselled 14 youngsters this week, and am gearing up for more," she says. Singles account for most of them, she says.
The reason she says is that Valentine's Day seems to blow up into a bigger commercial drama each passing year.
"These restaurant packages, special menus, product launches and discounts, special cards, the very fact that relationships are out in the open make singles feel miserable," she explains. The occasion, she says, has almost become like a festival, as important as Diwali or New Year. Her patients, most aged between 17 and 30, measure their self worth and hence self confidence, with the number of gifts they receive. "One of my female patients, a young girl, visited me a few days ago saying she wanted to escape the city because she broke up with her boyfriend last year and couldn't face Valentine's Day alone. I persuaded her to make her mum or dad her Valentine. After all, it's just a celebration of love," says Seema.
Revenge of the singles
This is probably why so many youngsters make their hatred for the day so obvious. They may not be a part of online forums, but freelance script-writer Gautam Hegde and animator Abhijeet Kini, loathe everything associated with February 14. "It's juvenile, it makes me nauseous," says Gautam, 27. It's the overdose of special chocolates, red roses, poetry and cards that gets to him. "And the music compilations! They are like the Preety-Pinky duo who appear out of nowhere just during Navratri. I mean, Titanic sank a century ago, but My heart will go on every year!" he adds.u00a0
For Abhijeet, 27, being indifferent to the idea of celebrating Valentine's Day has cost him a girlfriend or two in the past. But he chooses to brush that aside with a grin. "I hate the fact that people see it as a day on which you HAVE to buy softies and display affection, just because somebody said so. I have never celebrated it, and never will."
Single 30-something writer Janaki Ghatpande claims she continues to be against V-day but her fight for the cause has lost steam. "I maintain that no political party has the right to tell me how to celebrate," she says, pointing to the saffron brigade. V-Day makes her feel like being single is a crime. She avoids going to restaurants to stay away from "commercial mush".
It's V-Day, not wedding day!
Businessman Pranav Kanakia credits the rising love mania to the Sena. "The Sena and the police always manage to ensure that even if you forget the date, you will be reminded of it thanks to protests, and security that's put in place to fight it. So, they end up promoting it in a big way, although not directly." What annoys the 27-year-old is how many friends plan the day as if it's as big their wedding day. "I find it silly!" he shrugs.u00a0
Seema Hingorrany agrees. The shelf life of relationships is shorter these days because youngsters hook up with partners far too early on, and without much thought. "A 17-year-old crying about being alone on Valentine's Day is a bit much. That's the age to go out and have fun," she says.u00a0
Do you speak love? Nope!
According to just turned 'un-single' Copy Supervisor Vedashree Khambete, Valentine's Day isn't about love at all. "It's about ugly, twinkly red hearts and teddy bears that sing 'You are my sunshine' when you rub their belly. It's about political goons who don't get any action and pick on people who do. It's the one day of the year when single people ought to thank their stars that they are single, but end up finishing party-packs of Chocolate Ice-cream all by themselves."u00a0
While movie channels fall over each other to provide 'aww-inducing' chick flicks, a fan of an anti-Valentine forum, Max Harlow, states in a post, "Valentine's Day is the most romantic day of the year? B'''''ks it is! It's the one day of the year when it's absolutely impossible to be genuinely romantic, because romance requires things like spontanteity and originality, which VD completely ruins like... And if you're single, you have to endure seven weeks of being made to feel like a leperu00e2u0080u00a6 I may loathe being single, but I am not going to demean myself even further by making a sad desperate attempt to hook up in time for February 14, just to keep some florist in business!"u00a0
Love, sadism and atyachar
Dev D Lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya says the film's tracks, Emotional atyachar and Emosanal atyachar will help singles through February 14. Most love songs are sweet but these two numbers talk of anger, and say it like it is.
"They are a take on how we reduce ourselves in love, how we place someone above us, even calling them our 'khuda' and 'rab', as you will hear in several songs," he says. And when that love doesn't work out, you end up miserable. That's why he wrote the line 'Aankhon ka hai dhoka, aisa tera pyaaru00e2u0080u00a6'u00a0 Love, according to Amitabh, is overrated; not indispensable and dies out sooner or later.
The lyricist who admits to always falling in love with the wrong women, will be spending this V-day like he did the last couple of years: alone or with friends.
Strangely enough, he believes in the day and in celebrating loveu00a0 "It's a wonderful opportunity to make that special someone feel even more special. After all, as long as you are in love, it brings out the best in you. Whatever was before or whatever comes after, is wellu00e2u0080u00a6."u00a0
The 'after'math is probably what this Anti-Valentine's Day forum fan is feeling when she posts, "Saint Valentine" can kiss my a''!" We doubt he ever had a clue what his name would turn into. But that's another story.
