Once upon a time there was the Valentine’s Day, a heinous construct dedicated to the celebration of love in its most decadent distillation: couples hunched over a pricey piece of steak, sitting across a candle exhaling a flimsy flame, prismatic bouquets reeking of saccharine scents, red balloons littering the walls, filled to the brim with people hoping that this caricature of a display will fulfil their partners’ need for attention, affirmation, validation… love(?)

Every year, young lovers indoctrinated in this import of Western consumerism, recreate their own (mal)adaptation of Love Actually, where demure school-going girls sneak winks and hints at their pre-pubescent Ryan Goslings. But “little do they know that this is haram,” according to my eighth-grade Islamiyat teacher who traced it to a Roman sacrificial festival where men hit on women by, well, hitting them with the hides of the animals slain.

With the tirade on the history of this devil’s day still resounding in my ears, I walked towards the school playground only to find my share of embarrassing Valentine’s proclamations: a gawky guy kneeling before me with his heart on his thirteen-year-young sleeve, and a rose as red as my mortified cheeks in his hand, stuttering… “I… I…”

I rolled my eyes and walked away like I still do when I see young couples buying all things crushed-velvet and chocolate-dipped, thinking it a rightful and realistic display of love.

Valentine’s, ushered into Pakistan as a by-product of globalisation, commercialisation, industrialisation, and the rest of the ‘isations,’ is shunned by the religious majority, penetrating only youth deep. Here, hot-blooded, light-hearted, naïve minds congregate in college cafeterias for premature confessions, or sneak to neighbourhood parks for clandestine meetings, which shed their charm with a single wrinkle on skin, in time. The once free-spirited, libertarian couples replace maudlin gifts with stoic indifference, mundane drudgery, preoccupation with children, unsolicited rants, self-righteous admonitions or maybe a full-blown anti-Valentine’s movement, depending on the degree of frustration and stalemate in their marriage.

Despite the controversy, one has just to step outside to see shops decked in heart-shaped neon signs, bakeries stacked with chocolate-dipped cakes, and streets peppered with rose-selling beggars chasing after cars to capitalise on this hallowed holiday. 

Tossed away by some as a manufactured consumer holiday, vilified by some as an anti-religious sin celebration, and embraced by others as an ostentatious confession opportunity, Valentine’s Day provokes a whole host of opinions.

Despite the controversy, one has just to step outside to see shops decked in heart-shaped neon signs, bakeries stacked with chocolate-dipped cakes, and streets peppered with rose-selling beggars chasing after cars to capitalise on this hallowed holiday.

Just like Valentine sights, Valentine’s stories too offer a kaleidoscope of feelings and flavours, from reminiscing about low-budget and less harried kulfi dates to long love letters to unrelenting rage from elders to modern degeneracy and Western conformism of it all…

The variegated renditions of 2014’s Haya Day that morphed into the 2018 ban, crystallising into the satirical 2019 Love Day, have left little room for creative prohibitions against the 2021 Corona Cupid Day. With everyone already masked and veiled, institutions shut and distance established, what is left for government regulations and commentaries, rebellious actions and consequences?

Whatever comes of this Valentine’s Day one cannot deny that at least, in its miscellaneous mishmash of culture, business, fashion and family, it is similar to the cloying love it claims to celebrate. The end of this taxing day reminds us that love is not just the flower that will wilt by morning or the teddy bear abandoned on the bedside. Love is just one word for a million things, a million colours. Not all red.

The writer is a student at Stanford University, currently doing research in experimental plasma physics at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. She can be reached at     fatimafb@hotmail.com