Will you be my Valentine?

It started again last week. Noori excitedly came home with a huge card stuffed in her bag. She shoved it into my hands, gave me a hug, planted a kiss on my nose, and asked, “Baba, will you be my Valentine?” 

I could’ve said yes, no, or I don’t know. Several options. But, how does one really answer that question? I could’ve asked her what that meant to her. First impulse was that she was giving in to her kindergarten peer pressure and that had led to the ‘inquisition’. My mind generated alternative scenarios as to what would happen if I were to ‘discuss’ this more with her.

Based on my past performances of forgetting love demonstration situations (birthdays, anniversaries, and the like), I have been taken to task frequently. I have been told that I don’t love or care enough. That is an absurd thought to me. You either love or care or you don’t: in my (simplistic, maybe?) mind there’s no gradation of love. Thus, doing more (or not) or saying more (or not) should not necessarily be a gauge of the intensity of love, devotion, or care. But that’s me.

Not being an expert in the realm of love and romanticism, many times I have tried to come up with a working definition of love. This becomes a more pressing issue closer to Valentine’s because of a perceived expectation of something special being done that day. Maybe it’s the programming that love projected for a special someone that particular day will be more pristine and meaningful?

On a macrocosmic level, the commercial aspect of Valentine’s Day, like Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and so on, turns me off. It all seems to boil down to gifts being exchanged and expensive dinners being had. However, I think I’m on the verge of a novel discovery, for myself at least. That there’s a simpler version of love. 

This Valentine’s Day, I realized something that my kindergartner had already fathomed.

Love need not be a complex mass of ideas, emotions, thoughts and discussions. Nor does one have to get into the ins and outs of one of the most confounding of human emotions.

Love is about that hand-made card for one’s baba, and it is about those numerous small Valentine cards to be exchanged with one’s class mates.

It is also about the ‘Love Box’.

[Aside: sorry to disappoint the mature audiences in case it had a sudden flight of ideas].

So Yes, Noori, I will always be your Valentine…

 [from the kindergarten diaries]

Acknowledgment: A version of this story appeared as 'Ash' in the book 'An Itinerant Observer'.