By: Sikander Kushwaha
FEW CELEBRATIONS are popular in the most of countries of the world. Valentine Day is one of them. This day has become synonymous with expressing love. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery and sharing gifts and greeting cards.
This holiday is named after one of the early Christian martyrs named Valentine and was established by Pope Gelasius-I in 496 AD. In 1990’s Valentine Day came to India with liberalisation. It is heartily welcomed by the young generation, however, strongly opposed by the fundamentalist groups of our nation. This is because one party got the chance to get out of taboo and other parties fear to lose the control over society which in turn decreases their value in society.
However, it is a fact that although the fundamentalists oppose this Western festival of love, our radical society is accepting it rapidly. We can easily understand its popularity by the demand of greeting cards, flowers, gift and the rush to buy them.
There are various ways of looking at love, for instance, some people look at it as an emotional tie-up, some people look at it as fulfillment of physical need, some people look at it as spiritual satisfaction and many more. But according to me, love is a balance of emotional and physical needs and love is not complete without either aspects.
Valentine’s Day gives us as an opportunity to express love and talk about sex as well as associated components like safe sex, sexual transmitted disease, HIV/AIDS. There is an estimate 2.5 million people infected with HIV in India and the number is increasing every year.
I would like to suggest to the fundamentalist groups like Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Shiva Sena etc to grab this opportunity to spread the awareness about STD, HIV/AIDS and at the same time I would appeal and recommend to the government to observe National Condom Day also on Valentine’s day because awareness of this day’s relevance is spreading rapidly to every corner of our nation.
The promotion of use of condoms can hinder the spread STD and HIV/AIDS and save the lives of people who are dying due to lack of awareness about the dangers of these diseases.
Valentine’s Day has reached most parts of India, people might be not aware about AIDS Day celebrated on December 1, but they are aware about the Valentine’s Day, hence observation of National Condom Day on Valentine’s day would be give great impact to reduce the deaths due to unprotected sex.
1 comment:
what a disgusting thought. Do you equate love with only sex? And that too unsafe sex? What a pervert.
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