Vision of Life; by Sanjay: Valentine's Day; "Apana Time Bhi Aayega", Lol !!

14t Feb, it was usual morning & just out of habit I checked the cell phone WhatsApp icon, & it's full of red & pink greetings , mostly forwards & I realized its Valentine's Day. With some free time (and free mind too) at hand I could afford to remember this day decades back in my college time. At that time celebrating Valentine’s Day means watching other people i.e. boyz & girlz celebrating it because for a boy coming from Marathi medium & remote parts of eastern Maharashtra, I never knew in the first place that such day exists in this society! And with no fellow girl student in civil diploma at Amravati Poly & with just five of them in MIT Engg Pune (no offense) all of them were & are still good friends, how could you expect someone to feel the vibe of this day! On the evening before Valentine’s Day, Archie Shop at Deccan decorated in all red & pink ribbons used to get full with queues outside to enter. We also used to visit the Archie shop, not to buy something but just to get the feel of the day as people used to spend hours searching through the greeting cards full of poetry! The today's genre which lives in the virtual world may consider this as a waste of time but I still feel the power of the words in written form of a greeting is much more than a forward or a download, maybe that's what you call as "Old School'!

And on the Valentine's Day, boyz in "kadakks" ie dressed up-to-date carrying roses (which used to get sold at Rs 10 a piece when doda in vaishali was Rs 15) , cards & chocolates & giving them to the girlz & vice-versa which again was a cultural shock as back in my town even a girl talking to the boys in the class was considered as a taboo! And this way Valentine's Day used to end with the thought, boss, "apana time aayega"! That "apana time”, never came for most of us actually & life kept flowing, so passed the years! Today all those moments came alive with the forwards & the writer in me thought of penning down feelings about Valentine's Day for my genre, here it goes....

Only for the generation, which is on the wrong side of 40's!!

Valentine Day 2022

“When the world was learning alphabets, she was a poem already”...

Dear....

Well, I haven't written the above words as they are too beautiful & deep to ever enter in my logical or middle-class mind but thanks to your presence in life I can at least respect, appreciate & admire when these wonderful words I came across in my life! And that's why I think even though they are not written by me I can use them for you on this day to start penning down my feelings about love & relationships! That way my genre (shall I say our genre, lol) grew up just admiring (read as, jealousy admiring) some lucky boyz & girlz, gifting each other roses & chocolates on Valentine's Day! Reason was, we had none of the three i.e. no money to spend on roses & chocolates & no Valentine to spend for, so the Valentine Days came & went & so went our age but somewhere deep within, each of us secretly (well, we all have our own dark secrets) kept thinking or wishing for one Valentine Day where we can share these feelings at least with that person whom we would have wished as our Valentine! Roses & chocolates are still not possible as if earlier the money was constrained then today money is enough but timing & society's eyes are the constraints but that's ok as our genre is used to live with adjustments!

The silver rather or say the pink lining is, today I can hold my Valentine's hand, (virtually) & tell her that you meant a lot to me & you have given a purpose to life which in itself is the best gift I could ever have on a Valentine's! Today I can buy any gift for you which the money can buy yet you can't accept it, such is the situation life has put us in, but I know you love this thought of mine & that's the most important gift actually, for both of us! No more I am jealous of looking at boys & girlz or men & women, celebrating Valentine Day openly by holding hands & looking in each other's eyes over coffee, as I have lived my Valentine's Day, in my way or say in our way, which will always be very close to me & will cherish it forever! As now there may not be lunch outings openly or booking a dinner table decorated in all red & pink with heart shaped balloons but there is this feeling or say understanding that somewhere someone cares for me as well happy with the thought of being with me & so do I; Happy Valentine!

To conclude, long back have watched Dev Aanand's Gambler movie & kishore"s famous song दिल आज शायर है's lyrics, "दुनियासे जिते पर तुझसे हारे, यु खेल अपना हुआ"; for years I used to had that feel about this day but now I don't feel defeated, as some victories are not to be shown but to be celebrated with our own self, is I have understood!!