In 2006, while shooting a film about an incident of moral policing in a Meerut park, a young woman said to us, “If you have to love, it should not be in a place like parks, jiski image down ho chuki hai.” One should never do something like this which can bring disgrace to your parents. Well, that doesn’t leave much. In India almost anything you like to do is apparently a sure-fire disgrace-to-parents bijness. Or rather, anything you do publicly. Therein lies a long history of covert romance and a not-so-delicious secrecy and shame about love and desire. Violently hidden romances with girlfriend not of your caste, or boyfriend of your gender, making the love feel a little dirty, a little unwanted, a lot painful because no question of going against family, yaniki jaat-paat-bank account, that toh hardly needs to be said, na. Intense extra-marital affair, full of declarations and confidences can be ended with unceremonious callousness, because shaadi is obviously the “real” thing and deserves respect. 

Even where there is no honour killing and violent persecution, the emotional landscape of love is encased in doubt and illegitimacies, made deeper by efforts to make love respectable via marriage or progressive cred. We can shudder that V-day is for fools—but in such a context, being a love-fool is no walk in the park. V-day is saved from virtuousness by its terrible aesthetics, the teddy bear kitsch that has no name, nor claim, yet somehow, no one can fully resist. It allows many things to become public, that have a shadowy existence in our culture. It even allows some who secretly yearn for romance, but are told it’s un-cool to give and receive roses and bright pink candy under cover of irony.

Poll

Who will win the Punjab Elections?

BJP 32.81%

AAP 42.19%

INC 25.00%

Submit

View All In Poll

The sight of lovers canoodling in parks and promenades evokes condescension in some, but for me, it has always evoked tenderness. How far we must go from home to find privacy in a public place. How telling that it is in those in-between places—the edge of land and sea, a park enclosed with see-through fences—that people must go to fulfil that deep human need:  holding each other close. 

Parks ki image is down not because of lovers, but because they went from places of amorous frolic to war zones of harassment by right-wing vigilantes and bribe-seeking cops, and the separation of older lovers by single-seater benches in nana-nani parks, as if older people don’t yearn to touch, or, strike up a thrilling conversations with paraya persons, leading to a late-life pink teddy bear.

And yet. This year, the government, led by the Shiv Sena government, that once led anti-Valentine activities, announced that police should patrol parks to ensure young people aren’t harassed this Valentine’s Day. Yaniki parks ki image is going up! It must be true then—love makes the world come full circle. 

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at  paromita.vohra@mid-day.com