A few years ago, the moral police used to be out in full force making what they hoped would be scary noises just prior to Valentine's Day. They promised to bring serious harm to all those who dared celebrate this well-marketed day. They moved ominously around shops that sold felt hearts, mushy cards and fuzzy-wuzzy teddy bears hoping to strike fear into the organ of the human anatomy Valentine's Day focuses on ufffd the heart.

Today, things seemed to have cooled down a bit, the moral brigade looks like it has lost its party-pooping fangs, glass windows display teddy bears without a qualm and lovers across Mumbai, no more look over shoulders with fear at fire-breathing people who want to preserve that intangible, unfathomable thing called Indian culture.

So today, in the land of the free to flaunt your feelings this columnist is wondering...

Whether a person can lodge a police complaint against another for stealing his heart?

Why lovers insist on sitting on boulders far out at sea and getting washed away in the ardour of the moment?

Whether one rose tells another this thing called Valentine's Day ensures us our rosy roti?

Whether a man called Mr Pyaarelal must feel especially proud this day?

Why do people listen to songs like: money can't buy me love but go and buy diamond rings for their beloved?

Why don't you start reading Gabriela Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera today?

Whether if Shakespeare lived in Mumbai today, he would not have written the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene, as balconies in modern buildings are becoming extinct

Whether Monica Lewinsky would be cast in a Bollywood film one of these days and sing: Bill, Bill, pyaar, vyaar mein kya jaanu re?

Whether all these love gurus have some qualifications (Masters in Love-ology) to be able to spew this love advice?

Whether Egyptians are chanting to Hosni Mubarak: All's Tahrir Square in love and war?

Whether bottles of hair colour have no option but to be dye-hard romantics?

Whether last week's Derby winner Moonlight Romance, the filly, has found her colt this Valentine?

Why those mushy books like Mills & Boon do not change their name to Malls & Boon, considering that mills have been wiped off the city's map?

Why, even on Valentine's Day, you continue reading this tripe, anyway?