Vanishing V-Day to Basant baggage
This year, February 14 was not only about Tweeple’s triple sensory overload, but also about Vanishing Valentine’s Day narratives
February 14 this year was hat ke. It was a red-letter day in more ways than one. It saw a rewriting of a cultural narrative that ‘crossed all lines’. Literally.
For one, it was a day thrice blessed. It lived up to the saying, “Three’s a crowd”, by hosting three festivals - two desi and one a videshi hybrid. This jolly well made it a classic case of the sensory overload we Tweeple have to live with. Or are learning to live with.
Basant Panchami, Saraswati Puja and Valentine’s Day all descended upon us on the same day. Like that quintessential Indian “atithi” who was supposed to arrive solo, but lands at your door with the entire clan. Bag and baggage.
What this translated into was that we Tweeple ended up handling even more baggage -- the Big Fat Sensory Overload of Cyberia. Of selfie-ism, of status update-ism, of Reel-ism.
It was a great mixup moment. Bong friends, to whom one was meant to send Basant Panchami greetings, got forwarded Valentine’s messages with a million heart emojis blinking from Gifs, like Usha Uthup’s bindis gone berserk into nritya mode.
A riot of red infiltrated where there was meant to be only “Peela”.
Saraswati Puja messages got forwarded to those who had greeted one with Valentine’s Day mush. Such was the “Khichdi Reel-ism” that Cupid’s romanticism and the Goddess of Knowledge’s realism had to grapple with.
The phone photo gallery was such a riot of colour. Which made one yearn all the more for days of yore.
Whither those days when Basant was announced not by phone galleries turning a riot of colour, but by a riot of colour bursting upon the galleries of the skyscape.
Vanished V-Day
Ah, but if we factor in campaigns by certain parties to give Valentine’s Day a ‘skip’, February 14 may have seen one less of the three events it hosted. And how!
That Cadbury 5 Star was running operation “Erase Valentine’s Day”, might have left Calendar 2024 a little confused.
Cadbury had mounted a curious campaign that saw it roping in leading space scientist Nambi Narayanan to even devise a special time travel vessel.
The global blitzkrieg entailed an anti-Vday ship, INS Cringe Vinash, crossing the International Date Line at 11.59pm on February 13 from American Samoa into Samoa.
That was meant to do the trick, since Samoa is 24 hours ahead of American Samoa.
Voila! Vanish V-Day!
Whether our desi calendars took kindly to this geographical foxing of its contents, could make for another story (eh, another column)
It came riding the swelling desi disenchantment against festivals that are seen as foreign cultural imports. The globally live-streamed spectacle was all about the sweet brand’s symbolism against the saccharine sentimentality of the consumerist V-Day template. A rescripting of a cultural narrative that was as sweet, and as tweet, as it gets.
The curious case of “Honey, I Shrunk the Clocks”!
Dosa Diaries
Talking of vanishing, what Basant Panchami, made us rue was the slow but sure disappearance of those traditional peele pakwaan so synonymous with it in childhood days. Naani-Daadi ke homemade kesari meethe chawal to kesari laddoos and puran polis.
In the midst of all this nostalgia, the heartening tidings that popped in Basant season had to do with the Dosa.
Taste Atlas, a global food ranking platform, named the humble Dosa among the world’s Top 10 pancakes.
Maybe for next season’s Basant feast, one could innovate to toss up Peela Dosas.
The curious case of ‘To have your pancake and tweet it too’.
chetnakeer@yahoo.com