The title of this one may sound like a bad weepy movie, or a deliberate pun or even an abbreviated way of telling someone that I am taking her newspaper for a while. But, as I keep telling people who cannot stop trying to figure out whether there is a twist in my tale, take it literally – what you see is, almost always, just what you get. No more, no less, no different, no ulterior motives.
Be all that as it may, I am actually giggling gently at the actual reason for doing this particular piece. I was arguing with my boss whether Halloween was even recognised in this country. Then I saw the windows of a popular store, an institution in Mumbai. It was dotted with small orange pumpkins, with a couple of ghosts and a leering witch for company. “Of course Indians know about Halloween,” I squeaked indignantly in response to the Big Man’s scoffing. And with the barrage of television shows, newspaper features (mostly lifts from foreign publications) and scary movies at this time of year, who could not know about the spooky night that ends October? It may have been a very American concept, borrowed from ancient European culture and refined to a nicety of crass commercialism, but it works as a universal occasion to go out and party and eat lots of candy in the process.
Halloween is not the only occasion that us Indians have ‘borrowed’ willy-nilly from the West. Take Valentine’s Day, for instance. It may have started as a marketing gimmick for a certain jewellery company to sell really bad diamonds at really low prices, but it is now a lot more – retail jewellers are making massive profits, cashing in on the sentiment of February 14 without have very much clue what it is all about. Card-makers, ticky-tacky junk sellers, florists, balloon vendors, chocolatiers…they all cash it is happily during the season of love. And does Valentine and his day have anything to do with the Indian ethos? Does the festival even fit in with the way life works in the country? Is there not a huge cultural divide?
That apart, consider the two days on which parents are centre focus – Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. The traditional Indian way of life is all about not just loving your family, but revering your parents. Once upon a time (and perhaps even today, in some parts) a married couple prayed for sons to support them when they were old and infirm. Today, those same sons, adored and indulged, often mistreat their aged parents, sometimes going so far as to evict them from their own homes. So where does a father and a mother have the time and space to be celebrated? But people who think that there is a market are not too far off the mark – after all, they make millions of rupees selling cutesy-pie cards, stuffed toys, mushy pendants and more by telling customers that Mom and Dad would love being feted on one particular occasion.
And then there is Christmas – there will be adorable little Santa Claus figures all over the city, tinsel will decorate the fakest trees this side of the plastic factory and cellphones, car-horns, reverse gears and classified advertisements will sing carols to the occasion. I myself love Christmas, what with wonderful memories of sliding on the ice straight into the church door one midnight in Denver, eating huge amounts of turkey and dressing at a family dinner in Long Island, sitting through a very strange kalachakra prayer and vegetarian dinner in Boulder, gingerly chewing through a salad full of spiky nettles in Milan and watching I Love Lucy during a bad bout of mumps in Heidelberg…the presents were fabulous, the food divine, the affection always to be treasured.
And, when you actually look carefully at all the pap and sentiment, that is why there is always an occasion to celebrate – ours or theirs.
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