Valentine's Day

Published on 14th February, 2021, in Mumbai Mirror. Valentine’s Day upsets Hindutva, that valorises men over women, celibacy over sensuality, politics over arts, and lets saffron eclipse the rainbow. They want to save India’s culture but this does not include the vast tradition of love festivals, the Madan-utsava, and at springtime, Vasant-utsava. Hindutva prefers to mimic the Victorian British, who they claim to oppose, when they mock the great Indian tradition of Kama-shastra (sensual delights), full of shringara-bhaav (mood of romance) and madhurya-rasa (mood of sweetness) as they go about encouraging vibhitsa-bhaav (mood of disgust) and vira-bhaav (mood of triumph). Even the Mughal kings welcomed ..

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 ..