'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'

The concept of Valentine's Day has changed over the years.

I was barely a child of 11 years old, but the wintry Monday morning of February 14, my first Valentine's Day, is vivid in my memory. One of my older cousins had already enlightened me about the significance of the day. I was quite excited to go to school and eager to pour my heart out to my lady love, who was my classmate in class 5. From a worldly point of view, this was certainly not my time to fall in amorous love with a classmate that too in a puritan school at the age of eleven. But there I was on that fateful day, battling the premature salvo of Cupid’s arrows. 

Stealthly, I had also procured a token of love to make the occasion fully ceremonious. A day before, when my mother coaxed me to go to a nearby shop and fetch a shampoo sachet for her, I delightfully grabbed the heaven-sent opportunity. I had the information from the idiot box (TV) that 'Get a hair clip free with a Sun Silk sachet.' I pocketed the hair clip to cater to my own Valentine Day needs and dutifully handed the sachet to my mother. 

With bated breath and a racing pulse, I pranced to school.

After the unusually 'long' Monday morning assembly concluded, I galloped towards her. She came in with a bunch of other girls. Without any inhibitions, I barged into the giggling bevy and gesticulated my moon to disperse the mob around her. She smartly sauntered out and chose to wait for me in a distant, vacant corner. Approaching her, I elegantly unfolded my fist, containing the hard-earned token of my love, and proclaimed in Hindi, “Jab main bada ho jaunga, tumsey shaadi karunga” (When I grow up, I will marry you). Not bothering to get her consent, I had also declared that she was my Valentine. Making no commitments for the future, she accepted my gift and, to my delight, wore it right in front of me in her long, silky tresses. 

In the next few hours, the news of my Valentine gift and marriage proposal spread like the proverbial wildfire to everyone in my class and beyond! As soon as it reached the hot ears of our pugnacious principal, I was summoned to his office. By now, I knew that some big disaster was in the offing. The moment I gingerly stepped into his office, I heard his grumpy voice say, "Ajao tum meray valentine bano (Come and be my valentine). Main tera bertha benenata hu” (I'll give you sound thrashing). Unlike today's teachers, he did not bother to spare the rod and left my body bruised and my heart broken.

My lady love had turned into Keat's La Belle Dame Sans Merci (the beautiful girl without mercy). And thus ended my first Valentine with my first love in a fiasco.