Madan Utsav

Published on 12th February, 2017, in Mid-day. Here it comes. 14th February. The day dreaded by some earnest Indian youth leaders who are convinced that love and desire and sex are foreign contaminations that will destroy the minds of young Indians. Terrified, they would rather spend the day worshipping fathers and mothers, or brutally assaulting lovers on dates. Surely, a more powerful 'nationalist' act would have been to reclaim or reframe Valentine's Day and call it Kama's day, or Madan-utsva, the festival of desire and pleasure, so vividly described in ancient Sanskrit plays, when women danced and sang in royal gardens, and celebrated the arrival ..