If it’s nothing but a ‘western’ concept you are trying to understand, you surely are the eighties teen. The seventies teen however would have been well aware. We as a nation somehow just totally declassed in the eighties, crushing flower power happiness and ecstasy and moving on to crazy Sanjay Dutt hairstyle’s and obscene Govinda gyrations.
If it’s the nineties where your teens began, then Valentine’s has got to mean Archies. The retail chain of gooey mushy stuff. Giant heart balloons, giant teddies and giant cards. All scaled to unimaginable proportions. While most people would regard Valentine’s Day as a harmless, light-hearted diversion, to extreme right-wing Hindus and ultra-nationalists, the holiday represents a dire threat to traditional Indian values and represent part of what they believe is a conspiracy by the West to destroy Indian culture. However, the current scenario changes things.
Social media is creating a generation of people who are self absorbed. Are they building a persona of people who they are aspiring to be, not who they are?
Talking from experience, teenagers use the cell-phone as a constant companion! It is like the cell-phone has become an extension to their body. Whenever I see them, I see their cell-phone with them glued to their hands. While in a café, I saw a group of teenagers sitting close by. I noticed that every one of them had constant supervision on their cell-phone. If they don’t read from the screen or texting, they play with the cell, swing and turn it around, open and close the lid and they do this while they communicate with the ones that are present in reality! Amazing capacity! And nobody seems to be annoyed over the fact that the others are paying attention to their cell phones instead of being totally present. Is technology making them social or anti- social, the debate is never ending.
Selfie is the latest fad, it defines truly the type of self obsessed generation they have become. If you are a guy, you will tend to spend more on looking good and hanging out in the coolest place in town to find a great chick for a date for valentine’s. You will get a jazzy hairdo, dress up like Yo Yo Honey singh, and look for your blue eyed girl. How to find her, well in today’s day and age it’s simple. You have a smartphone, well that clearly makes you smart enough to find a date. Yes, just keep regularly updating your status on facebook, post a dashing macho photo with cool and branded clothes on Instagram and send a common message to all girls on your Watsapp and find out who’s available on the big day in a few seconds. When you go on a date, don’t forget to check in on facebook when you enter the jazzy pub or restaurant.
If you are a girl, then it ain’t gonna be that tough on you. You probably already have been offered number of proposals for a valentine date and are having a tough time choosing who to go with. Well, why worry, your smart phone will make it simple for you.
Love shove is gone out of the window. It’s just what makes you happy for some period of time that is what matters to the new Indian teen. Feelings, love, relationships are passé. Love is ‘ME’ and ‘ME’ is love.
And when your date is fixed, then now you get stressed as zomato gives you so much to choose from. What pub to go to? How much the entry will dent the wallet? It’s got to be a high end place or the girl/guy will dump you. Then what about the gift? Flowers and balloons don’t count anymore. Even for college kids. And are you going to score? Where? Friend’s place, her place, his place, hotel?
So much to plan, so much to do! And what about those hooligans that every boy fears encountering on this day. Drunk unsavoury characters trying to tease/grab/molest any girl even remotely revealing her nails, forget skin. Valentine’s has become nothing but a sick orgy of expensive theme parties, kids guzzling alcohol, doping, making out, buying outrageously expensive gifts and basically losing track. The same goes for adults. Well some of them at least. There is a section of them who don’t just bother and stay home which is actually kind of better in many ways.
Whatever images flash through your mind, there is one thing for sure. Never ever do you think of the kind St. Valentine marrying off couples in a time it was prohibited. The legend is lost; the obscenity lives on.
