India And Love In Ancient Tradition

Only One Day For Love

Really hilarious in many ways, and unfortunate in others, this war over various issues of western influence in India, including the rights to pubgoing for urban women, and now over a day for love every year. And as happens over many world issues that suddenly get an unexpected twist in India, this one has capped them and got more than one twist.
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The news however is disheartening, to anyone with some sense, some compassion. The media reports goons out in full force through the day, attacking couples everywhere.There were few exceptions. Some places were quiet.

In a few places there were ordinary citizens out in force through all sorts of age groups and firm about saying, they understood culture of India just as well as anyone else and were out to make it known. In some places - one, at least - they had celebrations of a cultural sort celebrating old couples with youngsters performing classical music and old couples taken out in buggies in procession with applause.

Other places had cultural celebrations about their own roots, with beautiful indigenous dresses and processions including elephants and horses.

Some people sold greeting cards at nominal prices, as a sensible way to counter the exorbitant prices of cards and flowers this day normally that seems like a day for profit by some name or other - which really is one factor the various protestors could speak out against sensibly.

Most places however shown on news show couples beaten up, including one case of a pair of siblings whom nobody asked if they were related and in what way, before they beat him up even as she was screaming and protesting. Their crime was to be out together on this day, in a place where normally girls are safer taking their brothers with them for protection.

One is really put off by all of this goon culture on rampage and wishes this mud on face of India was not thrown at it by those that are of India in the name of Indian culture, bringing them in line with misogynists by any name across the world. These goons do not know about Indian culture really.
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One leader however went clear on the issue and said, love exists in many forms and should be in every relationship whether parents and children or couples or siblings or whatever, and they are not against love in any relationship, but they do not see the need to limit a celebration to one day that happens to be memorial to some ancient Roman who is supposed to have been lovers' protector - there are many love stories in India and love is celebrated in India and should be, not just one day but all through the year, all through life.

This made immense sense, although then his next words quoting various love stories told of his having forgotten his own heritage - he spoke of various legendary lovers but forgot the really important ones, the heritage of the ancient Indian tradition.

If one begins to count, one does not know where to stop, so many are the tales, of heroes, heroines and worshipped Avataars. Not only they loved and married for love, but often they went against the parents or society, and mind you it is all sanctioned in the Dharma itself.

No other social or religious or cultural tradition gives a santity to a wedding of two lovers with only Gods as witness.

Or has a tradition of a would be bride's parents inviting appropriate and eligible would be grooms for inspection so she could select one for herself, which then stands true.

Sometimes it used to involve a test of valour of the would be groom, the more desirable the bride the more difficult the test. And sometimes, it was merely the selection by the bride, going around inspecting each one while her designated friend for the purpose would relate to her about each one as she stood before him. Either way the chosen one was honoured and others accepted the choice of the bride.
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Where does one begin to count as far as the love stories go?

One might begin with Satie and Shiva, then Rudra, who were disparaged by her father during a major occasion by her father - everyone else was offered gifts and her husband was not in spite of being a God. She corrected this slight from her father to her husband by jumping into the fire as an offering to her husband the God that had not been offered like other Gods were.

One can definitely begin with the young daughter of mountains Himaalaya, Uma or Parvatie (she has many names and many forms), who fell in love with Shiva the God who chose to be without belongings much less palaces or wealth such as silk clothing or ornaments - he sat alone in dire places and meditated, an austere life. Uma went out to find him with her mother crying after her, U, Ma (O, don't) and hence her name Uma; she meditated with a single wish, that of invoking love in Shiva, and began to fast; when she stopped eating even leaves she was put to a further test and she overcame that hurdle too effortlessly, and then appeared Shiva who was testing her. Their honeymoon was long and was only interrupted by other Gods needing his help to defeat a nether being that had become too powerful for the good of the world.

One might count Savitrie (the daughter of Sun the source of Divine Light), who went to find her heart's choice all around protected by her father's soldiers, and fell in love finally with a youth in a forest chopping wood, Satyavaan (Truthful) who was a prince living in the forest with his blind parents due to dire circumstances. She not only married him there and then, but then when relating about her choice to her parents was told by a Divine Messanger about his being short lived did not recant or relent due to her parents' grief, and stood by her choice and went back to live in the forest with him and his parents, without any royal accompaniment of servants this time except to bring and leave her there. Moreover she fought his death and won - by her sheer spirit. And love.

One can definitely take Raam and Sietaa, who married because he could alone satisfy the condition set extremely tough by her father for the purpose, but had in fact happened to see each other in the garden when he strolled about with his brother and she was proceeding to the temple with her friends - they saw one another, their eyes met, and that was it, they loved each other.

She could have lived safe and comfortable in the palace when subsequently he was banished to a forest life due to a pact between his stepmother and his father that was invoked before his being crowned, but Sietaa chose instead to accompany her husband to the fourteen years of an ascetic life in the forest with all possible dangers and discomforts it involved. He tried to make her stay back, but she was adamant, being together was more important for her love than comforts and security for her person.

Mind you the risks included wild beasts and this was an era of bows and arrows, and they were on foot for the duration.

Then of course there are the many, many couples of Mahaabhaarata, from Nala and Damayantie to Shakuntalaa and Dushyanta to Arjun and Subhadraa - why the most remarkable being Krshna and his first, chief, consort and wife and queen, Rukminie, for that matter. Her parents were too old to counter her not so nice brother, who was adamant about giving her away to a friend of his, while she loved Krshna. She wrote to the one she loved and he came and took her away, battling the armies of her brother and coming away victorious with his bride.
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Never a more true word was spoken - why one one day, for some Roman memorised? India has love galore in every form and love should be celebrated in India by India every day whole year.

Once someone in another country asked about how people fall in love, if they are under parents' control in India, unlike the person who was asking and their ways of finding love.

I simply explained that no one can really stop any lover from what is the heart's true desire - in any culture or country there is only a difference in name of finding a mate, for that matter. People who think they have a culture of finding love actually have a cuture of having to find their own mate and have to be geared to the search right from the school years, while people who claim they could not do something or other due to parental pressure ( - and who says parents approve everything in countries where love is supposed to be the norm? That is hypocrisy of course! Or else they would not always fall in love with suitable people generally) - they are forgetting they had the choice of suffering a disapproval and forging ahead with love and taking on any and every problem. Parental disapproval - when it does not consist of a whole society geared to hunt out and murder the couple - is merely the parents' right to their own opinion.

If a person insists on his or her love being only possible if approved by everyone or else lamenting about social pressure, is not serious about love. Or his or her choice and decision, or identity for that matter.

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Post Script - Why Media Push This Story

The battle lines are being drawn about something frivoulous on one level and very basic question of right on the other - do upper class and other well off young women have a right to go drink at pubs in western states of India?

Some channels won't let it go, and keep harping on this one. It is irritating and one wonders if they really care about what country they are in, what the people of the country care about.

One would like to hear about what level the investigations are at in grisly murders of women in Delhi on their way to or from work, or even about the man with a young family who has been beheaded by Taliban for a ransom of US $50,000.00 - a sum that could feed half a million people one sumptuous meal where he came from. But no, these channels, one especially, is like a dog with a bone to dig up - they won't let the pubs and women story be scaled down to where it belongs.

No matter that in Lucknow railways station a married couple walking towards the town just fresh from the train have a local male push his hand casually in the woman's crotch and look back with victory as the shocked couple looks back in rage. He can run, while they are unlikely to be able to catch and beat him up. It is his town.

No matter that in Allahabad a woman cannot go shopping for vegetables for her home in her neighbourhood without being similarly handled on the go by another local guy. She is dressed conservatively and is middle class, with no make up and no nonsense. Being a woman is one thing she cannot escape however she dresses, hence the manhandling is a factor of life unless one appoints a servant for the purpose with all its ensuing problems.

In short, these incidents - common, although no woman would admit to them publicly since the shame would be considered theirs, and they might just be beaten up by their own families for being looted of their honour for having stepped out.

Delhi is the worst unless you are a woman with a car, a driver, and a powerful male protector, preferably a husband rich and powerful. If you are middle class and walk to the market instead of having your husband take you or even better, send a servant - or the ultimate, phone in the list and have it delivered so you cannot look and shop around - you are fair game.

The media couldn't care less.

People by hundreds dying of multiple blasts on trains, buses, and other places middle class and other normal people frequent, are mere unfortunate payoff for one building (while hundreds of others are going up ever since everywhere else) to be blamed on the very convenient party without support from outside.

Women of middle class and poorer than that being abused, raped, murdered on regular basis in states north of the Vindhya is a mere fact of life, who cares, they are not the glitzy ones in pubs spending mucho dollars on drinks, they are merely trying their best to survive and take care of themselves and their families in their regular activities of work, shopping, and little else.

In the western states however the women are free to study and work and shop and go out and are relatively free of fear, until the recent murders - and even then televisions did not pick up on the women being murdered while they were at home, the blitz was short and it was about a couple of IT workers on night shift. That made news because they could go after good sturdy multinational companies and ask if women should be discouraged from working night shifts.

No one asked - what about the ordinary women being murdered at home?

And now, the whole hoopla about the pubs. Why - why is right to get drunk in public more important than right to be safe at home?

It isn't.

The whole point is, when a woman stays home, she is not spending on alcohol and so there is no vested interest involved. No one pays the television channels to go on a blitz to publicize the poor middle class women whose only fault was opening the door when someone knocked - they had been used to being fearless, living in the safe western states, you see.

So the pubs story about the right of women to go drinking in western states being given far more importance than any rights or safety issues of women as such, is not about women or their rights or safety at all.

On a small scale it is about hitting out at anyone who happens to bear the names that are not from outside uness you are shamed of that name and all it implies, and are deprecatory about it.

On a large scale it is about the importance of getting people to spend on things like alcohol where one gets into danger of life as a value received for money, since there are mucho sellers and producers and importers and fraudsters selling non imported in name of imported, in pubs .

If you buy from a shop, it is cheaper (German practical sense about drinking) and also you might check on the brand, the price, and not pay unless you are satisfied. And then you might not drink stupid and drive over a few innocent people, but instead have a little peg quietly at home and go to bed, safely.

Pub drinking however is about socialising mixed with drinking, a very dangerous beast. You are ashamed to question the brand and the honesty, ashamed to say no to begin with or as long as the server or your peers say come on have another one. And the rates are likely to be ten times as much as you would spend on comparative quality by shopping and taking home a bottle.

But anyone who drinks only at home and stays sober and safe is unlikely to promote a crowd of others to join. And there are billion people in India, all potential customers for liquor industry. The pay for channels to keep the pub story alive cannot be small.

Hence the lopsided amount of importance given to rights in various states for various aspects of life making it seem like drinking in pubs in western states is far more a fundamental right than being unmolested when going to school, college, university, work, or grocery shopping in northern states.

Just wonder - do these people want the billion people of India to live Angela's Ashes? Or worse, is it they couldn't care less as long as the get their payoff from the liquor industry?