February 14 is a day like any other. Perhaps it is the birthday of someone you know. But then every day is someone's birthday, somewhere. But February 14 has lost its anonymity, its freshness, its newness, its everydayness, if you will. It has become a day marketed aggressively in the most insidious, beguiling fashion by a conglomerate of card manufacturers and the international diamond merchants De Beers, a day turned into an inane commercial celebration of love and sweethearts declared in mushy verse, wrapped in cellophane romance, edged in tinsel and lace, set in diamonds and glitter and thrust down a gullible market that keeps screaming for more. Others have jumped in for their share of the pie, exploring and exploiting 'romance' to the nth degree. Red hearts explode all over the city, on lapel pins and posters and hoardings, shop windows are dressed in red and pink accented by love knots and teddy bears, heart-shaped balloons in sickening pastel shades are proffered at street corners, the confectioners and jewellers and card makers rake in the profits while making a starry-eyed fool of you. The biggest Valentine card ever was erected on the beach at Chowpatty in south Bombay, passers-by invited to sign their name. And it was serious business. Celebrities of all shades, including ex-sheriffs and glitterati, signed their Valentine messages on this biggest ever. If you don't know what that is all about, you are way behind the times -- for the Guinness Book of Records, of course, dummy! That has become a national pastime with us, Indian entrants in every conceivable field, the more idiotic the better, for the Guinness. A couple of decades ago the diamond big-timers woke up to the possibility of a new and promising market in Japan. Women in Japan hardly wore jewellery then, except for the occasional string of pearls. De Beers, the diamond-is-forever people, insinuated themselves into this virgin territory and by skilful advertising urging girls to seal their engagement with a Solitaire ring -- never mind the kiss -- assured themselves a permanent and growing place in the Japanese market. Next target India. Soften up the territory with cosmetics and beauty products, entice them into a giddy whirl of contests and festivals and crowns, flash a diamond or two -- remember, diamonds are a girl's best friend -- and you get a huge market of gullibles salivating for more. With a cell phone attached to your ear, a can of Pepsi in your hand, a walkman to shut off the intrusions of reality, you can inhabit an illusory world where romance is declared in cards and chocolates and the diamond you will simply have to have, particularly when the 14th of February draws near. And who had the time to listen to the President of the country when he addressed us, rather sadly, on January 26 and remarked that "one half of our society guzzles aerated beverages while the other half has to make do with palmfuls of muddied water"? 'Let them buy Coke!' did I hear someone say? Once Bombay had fairly decent water supply, you could drink water straight from the tap and only the more fastidious boiled it or put it through a filter. In Mumbai we now drink bottled 'safe water' at a price and never mind where it comes from. Even the Sai Baba cannot materialise a glass of water from thin air. Who stops to think that after 50 years the first city of the country does not even have ready drinking water on tap? If water is scarce, there is always the taste of thunder, if indeed we ever pause in this frenzied pursuit of happiness and indulgence, to refresh us. Caught in this manic hoopla, reason seems to have been cast aside. The pursuit of beauty is big business. Serious business. These are the goals young women set themselves and a growing 'assembly line of highly skilled' dentists, cosmeticians, plastic surgeons, fitness and exercise trainers, dieticians, etiquette advisers, elocution teachers, hairdressers, fashion designers, make-up experts sculpt and chisel and whittle and push and prod and inject and mould and style and groom and coiffure girls into a prescribed international standard of perfection -- at an enormous price. In all that dazzle of lights and catwalks and beauty shows and crowns and titles, it is the spoilsport who tries to interject a cautionary word. Tries to remind a hysteric public that there are millions of us in this country to whom reality is very different. Very grim. It is easier to rush off and buy a heart-shaped box of chocolates and while you are about it toss in a Solitaire pendant or brooch too, to send off to the girl of your dreams. Humankind cannot bear very much reality. How long ago was it that part of the country was savagely battered by cyclones that swept away entire villages and devastated fields and ripped apart families and communities? Does anyone remember? Or care? Attempts to write about these realities are met with rejection; we are off the 'topic' of Orissa, one noted editor replied. Apathy is not confined to governments and bureaucrats. We are apathetic to anything that is real, that is serious, that concerns our other half, forgotten and discarded in distant pockets of the city, distant corners of the country. We are firmly and unabashedly divided into us and them -- and they do not matter. Somewhere in all this we have forgotten how to feel, how to reach out. How to care. Have a heart someone, even if it is not Valentine's Day.
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