Valentine's day and an SMS

Another Valentine’s Day has passed. I saw mixed reactions from many of my friends, where some people said it is not necessary that we celebrate this day and some people said there is no problem in celebrating such a day. Anyways, I feel there is no harm in celebrating one day as lovers’ day. We have Mothers’ day, Fathers’ day, Teachers’ day and all. A day for tiger, one for AIDS awareness, and we have a day for fools too! So, what is the problem in having a lovers’ day?

To those who say, “We don’t need a special day to say we love each other, if the love is true.” -  We love our parents, don’t we? Then why do we need a Mothers’ day and Fathers’ day? We do respect our teachers, well, most of them, don’t we? So why do we need a teachers’ day? So, don’t sweat yourself this hard thinking for reasons to hate Valentine’s Day. Of course, this is not from our traditions, but this doesn’t hurt anyone, does it? Then we have many things in our daily life which are not from our traditions, like cakes, toffee and many such things which make us happy.

I received a SMS on 14^th Feb which says, “On 14/02/1931, LAHORE, in morning time the legendary BHAGAT SINGH, RAJGURU & SUKHDEV were hanged to their deaths.  BUT we only remember & celebrate Valentine’s Day. Let us pass this message to everybody and remind them and salute their sacrifice.... BE AN INDIAN FIRST!”

Many of us know that Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Hari Rajguru and Sughdev Thapar became martyrs on 23^rd March 1931, in Lahore. There is an image of "The Tribune" newspaper, which published the story on 25th March 1931, given in the Wiki page! I was struck when I read this message, because I knew the day given is not right. How could someone claim to be a patriot, after circulating this SMS, when he doesn't know when this major incident happened? I even so some of my friends posting this on their Facebook walls! They had many documents at their disposal, in the net, and no one cared to look up!

Many a people forwarded this message, that I received it from four or five of my friends. But from where did someone get this knowledge?

Somebody checked the Wikipedia page on Bhagat Singh and told me there are some mismatches in the dates given. When I checked that page I saw three different dates. And the dates given were 23 March 1931, 14 February 1931 and in the side pane it was given as 23 March 1987! I tried editing the Wiki page and later when I checked the editing history of the page, I could see that many a number of vandals were trying to give false information and an admin had to change the protection level of the page from week to semi! Anyways, I couldn’t edit it properly and an admin did that task. I was thinking, how anybody could give false information and try to mislead people. Also, I understood, for the whole fact to be gained from Wikipedia one has to check the whole history of the page!

So, was there any need for this SMS to be circulated? Are we not Indians, like the last sentence in that SMS asks us to be? And what makes that guy who sent this SMS to ask us to be Indian. I have some opinion of my own about this SMS and the brain behind this SMS.

There are people who think we have forgotten the values of our nation and we are working against it by celebrating such days. They come publicly to work against such festivals or days and try to make others go away from these. And there are some others who think of themselves as the ultimate patriot and think only they care for our history. Again there are some people who have some grudge towards this particular day, due to some reasons [ROFL], that they don’t want to celebrate this. But do they stop at that? No. They try to make others to stop celebrating the day! And I totally believe that this message was the brain child of such a disgruntled young man/woman.

What am I trying to say here? Nothing much, but please be sure about the facts when you decide to forward a mail or an SMS.

I accept that there are many examples of misguided youth who celebrate these festivals or days, like one of my friends said, with messages which are “taught by Archies greeting cards and Stephanie Meyer about the "meaning" of love”. I hope this situation will change in the future, where man and women won’t spend their time in pubs and discotheques to celebrate their love, but spend some quality time with each other to express their love for each other.