#MetroDiary42: The Season of Love

The season of love is fast approaching! That is, if you consider the week of the 14th February as the climax week of celebrating love. Do not kill me for calling it the climax week though! I know you are tempted. All you anti-market types (who read my blog) and the Indian traditional value types (who hardly ever read my blogs). I am only the messenger at worst and the emissary at best. And the emissary as you know is unkillable! Long story short: do not kill me and let me remain the story-teller. 

As the season of love approaches, I get to spot more lovers in the metro. Is it my eyes or it it really that more people feel compelled to be in love in the season? Although my favourite poet says it is a season that grips her city by the throat and squeezes and "it has been months since anyone saw daylight or loved someone". May be that is why it is the perfect time to be generous and love. Do you think we tolerate lovers' cuddling much more in the month of January and February? Are we better as we are not sweating profusely and grumpy, which we do in most months in Delhi? Like this man who kept busy with his phone while the couple standing in front of him let their hands express their love for each other. Looking at him I already wondered if my diary entry 20 was already redundant (https://dillimetrodiary.blogspot.com/2018/02/metrodiary-20-duniya-wale-pyar-ke.html) I wanted to give a shout out for the man standing right across! While people like me just felt jealous and tried to note the various languages of love that those hands communicated in 😉 he just kept up a passive face and kept looking at his phone. My evil mind said, "He is probably going to meet his on lady-love. That's why!" My angel mind said, "Be like him!" Well! I do not see the angel winning anytime soon. 

If you are not in the boat of celebrating "Valentine's Day", you can always ride the other boat that is celebrating Friendship Day.  As I see it, most of the friendships are now App dependent whether they ask you "what" or make you "snap". The most happening place there are the "friends' groups" or (even better) the "classmates' groups" where participants act as friends of each other but the reality is very different. As I was sitting in the early morning metro coach today, the one sitting next to me was trying to navigate the slippery slope of friendship in one such group. Her face was somewhat tense but she tried hard to show nonchalance in the group. She wrote, "She will come back! Mark my word! Where will she go?" That is some confidence. I already felt deep admiration for her. She was the proverbial nerve-soother of the group. As she continued assuring the rest of the members, I wondered how I navigated the space of collective friendship before the Whatsapp era. However, I had to only do that once or twice in a year with the school announcing a picnic or some such thing. This pressure of "friendship" available dime a dozen, every day seem too much for me and I already need a nerve-soother!