BENGALURU: An Insta reel from a desi standup comic in Bengaluru popped up on my feed last week where the comic was talking about giving mid-priced Belgian chocolates and getting a pre-packaged bouquet of flowers, yellow roses to be precise, for Valentine’s Day.
The routine was a humorous critique on how easily a performance of love can be undertaken in a consumerist world where, depending on how much money you are willing to spend, there’s always a provider for something at that exact price.
The comic talked of different things available at varying price points starting from expensive dinners specially curated by Michelin-starred chefs in yachts in the Mediterranean, to little packets of heart-shaped groundnut brittle, our good old chikki, and single roses sold at traffic junctions everywhere in India, repurposed from bouquets and decorations at weddings the previous day, or worse, from graveyards where grieving families left them behind for loved ones who have passed on.
It set me thinking about the little performances of love. It seems quite appropriate when it for Valentine’s Day or birthdays and anniversaries, but when it happens for International Women’s Day that is coming up now, it gets to be a bit much. It is enough of an eye-roll inducing cringe-fest when corporates and institutions reduce the day to samosas, tea and rangoli competitions, but when people in relationships make a gendered performance of love and affection on this day, it needs to be looked at again.
Sure, we could take the perspective that any and all occasions can be an occasion for the expression of love. Why should it not? Let every day be a celebration with a loved one. Yet, if it happens without checking in on what the day is supposed to make us think about, then we lose the plot.
International Women’s Day started not as a celebration of women, their role is the family and the world, but as a war cry for equality and inclusion in the workplace and the world at large. It is a day that is to bring to all of our attention how little we have really done in this space, how any little gain that has been achieved is quickly threatened, and how easily it can all go back to a non-inclusive, gendered place where everything is a struggle for anyone who isn’t in the privileged position of class, caste, gender, ability and other aspects.
Yet, today the day often gets diluted to go and thank women for the otherwise thankless tasks of life, and without any sense of irony, to thank women as bringers of life while simultaneously shrinking choices women can make about their own bodies and lives.
Love needs to be empowering and encouraging. Love cannot sell to possess and control, and certainly not a system of reward and punishment for performing to one’s gendered benchmarks. Love in relationships cannot be about mid-priced chocolates or flowers alone. Love needs to be about helping each of us live our best lives.
(The writer’s views are his own)