The things we do for love!

In my experience, most people in relationships are confused, to a greater or lesser extent. We're brought up for 20 odd years with the idea that we must develop our personalities, be independent, free-thinking individuals, and then somehow we find ourselves in this mess of hormones and expectations of other people and obligations and everything else. If you work your way out, you end up crying over your break-up, single and miserable while everyone around is in happily-ever-after land.
The alternative, of course, is to be brave (or foolish) enough to fight your way through the mess, emerging on the other side with the tag of 'committed/ married'.

Working the kinks out of relationships, dealing with relatives and familial obligations, figuring out how this person you live with can manage to unfailingly forget at least one out of every four items on the grocery list (Feel free to substitute personal annoyance here- I'm sure each of us, man or woman, has our own)
- As if all this weren't crazy enough, we now step into the month of February, with grocery stores covered in pink and red balloons and everywhere you look you see hearts and doves and all the rest of it. When did picking up salad and potatoes begin to necessitate such festivity? I can understand card stores and gift shops, but the produce section?

This year promises to be especially amusing in India- with pink underwear and pink saris battling it out, and the grand proclamation that "India is the land of Lord Krishna and nobody should compete with him in terms of love and relationship."
(I'm already wondering how this man arrived on the planet, or is he claiming to be a direct descendant of the Lord?) To add to the confusion, there is the Pub bharo andolan- which leads to the rather interesting image of the streets of Bombay and Delhi teeming with women of all shapes and sizes, clad in pink saris, clutching images of Lord Krishna to prove that their love is unsurpassed by anyone. I'm waiting for all the pictures to be uploaded as promised here.

Considering that all of this is for a 'festival' that has nothing to do with Indian culture in the first place, I get the feeling poor St. Valentine is probably feeling a little left out right now.