NRI Maami

I don’t recollect when I first observed Valentine’s day. Perhaps a few went by when I was in college, wondering if perhaps some miracle might drop an archies card my way signed by ‘???’ or ‘you know who’ or ‘your special someone’. Of course none of that ever happened.  My last year in college, the 28 girls in my class decided to turn some attention on ourselves by all wearing identical pink sarees. The only effect was that we got a second look wherever we went that day.

Then I was engaged to my husband and married to him before a valentine’s day came along. On our first valentine’s day, I took the trouble to buy the typical archies card, stayed up until 12 that night and presented it to him as a surprise. He retorted - ” I don’t believe in this valentine’s day and all…. anyway thank you”. Of course, he saved himself that day by quickly following with ‘For me everyday is valentine’s day’, but all my aspirations for valentines day for the rest of my life, ended right then.

However, there are those couples who still do special things on special occassions. Suprise each other on Valentine’s day. Some help the economy by going out and paying exorbitant prices for a box of chocolates or a stuffed monkey holding a big red heart. We on the other hand, do our valentines day shopping on Feb 15, help the stores by buying the chocolates on clearance and enjoying them for a few weeks after. We also buy the monkey, cut loose the heart from the monkey’s hands, and get it to hang from the ceiling fan in my daughter’s jungle themed room.

I suppose many years later, when I am deaf and hopefully my husband is fussing over me like a dog after a bone, we will finally decide to use a valentine’s card with good reason.

Life outside blogosphere has been busy over the past few weeks. I’ve been so preoccupied, that I have only managed to briefly glance at my favorite blogs, and not even look at  my blog stats (which I usually watch almost every couple of hours every day). To say the least, the winter and my daughter have been taking much of my time and energy.

The winter has caused me to spend way too much time on the road, at speeds that may have made crawling a faster alternative. The result of which is me coming home too tired and impatient to deal with ‘terrible twos’. On the other hand, my toddler’s manages to consume my time, by either totally testing my patience or amusing me beyond words.

One of her most recent hobbies has been singing her favorite nursery rhymes and Barney songs. One of those songs is called ‘I love you.. You love me’. My daughter totally loves that song and makes a very sincere attempt to sing it. She manages the first 2 phrases quite decipherably, beyond that it’s a lot of toddler gibberish which only we could comprehend.

She has been singing so often, that I began wondering how much ‘I love you’ is used in this country and conspicuously how less it is used in India.

In India, it is not used in any other context but that of romantic involvement. So much so, the word ‘love’ rarely has any other meanings in India. The 14 year old boy living down the road would rush to the 12 year old girl, thrust a rose in her hand, say ‘I love you’ and fled the scene as if he had just performed a bank heist. Of course one hears it most often when used by modern day heroes - they can go from the very lengthy romantic proposal to a simple ‘I louw you’. Of course, I would never in  my life every imagine telling my father or mother ‘I love you appa’ or ‘I love you amma’. It’s not that I don’t love them, but surely explicitly saying so would make everyone feel so uncomfortable.

On the other hand, here in the US, no occassion is missed when a parent does not tell their child how much they love them, or vice-versa. Same among siblings. I sometimes wonder, by the way that they do it so ‘matter-of-factedly’ whether they actually mean what they are saying, or still worse even realize they said it.

If valentine’s day was loathed by my father amid my protests that a valentine could be anybody not necessarily a lover, I on the other hand have offered to supply chips for my toddler’s valentines day party at her day care.