Dawning another day, to celebrate the Valentine's Day. It is time to think over whether the customs and traditions wood and followed by lovers on this day of personal joy and social sentiments be carried into the future years as well in the same spirit, and one would wonder whether it is necessary to celebrate it in a form and manner where love is lowered to a level of a commodity to be bought sold. It surprises one to note that love is for sale. Love, a tender element full of sentimental feelings kindled in one's heart and is communicated to another in the same tender spirit of his origination, but it looks as it is concretised and commercialised by Valentine posters and fiestas seen today leaving the true lovers whose exchanges are deeply emotional and spiritual, to look against as how every trader has begun to market love as a commodity.

Unlike religious festivals which take the followers or the believes to a holy destination that inspires everyone in the community to a spiritual elevation, love is a direct emotional contact with similar feelings mutually exchanged with a will to share intimately between two individuals. It does not embrace a universal feelings where it knows no hatred jealousy or enmity. It is so selfish beyond which nothing exists within that sphere. And that is how love is identified from the days of Abel to this day.

It irritates and hurts to see how Valentine's Day roses made of tissue papers and other synthetic material being carried and offered to one's lover as a token of love. Love is full of life and is with ecstatic and delightful feelings radiating from one to another for whom the rose is intended. The natural rose the symbol of love, is fresh and carried a live sweetness. Rose plucked from a plant is the ideal symbolic gift to express love Its natural softness, scent and the harmonious poetic from not only carried a wealth of emotions but also reminds of impermanence the eternal truth of all life. Love is no exception. A refreshing sweet flower induces one to think of life afresh leading to reality in life without which understanding one is doomed to die in nonexistent permanency. Artificial flowers represent vanity and feigned love when we take note of what lively love is.

The traders have made love more expensive and artificial by keeping it packed and packeted in parcels of varying shapes and sizes to suit the weight of the pockets of lovers. Sentiments of love is thus marginalised by vendors by price-marking them. On the other hand, for lovers everyday is a special day because each day stars afresh for heart full of love.

Love is so obsessive and possessive that it could easily turn itself into hatred and revenge. When love is selfish without compassion, it becomes more submissive and compulsive. Otherwise, how can one kill someone whom he or she loves so dearly and deeply unless jealousy and hatred creep in. The world love is derived from the original Sanskrit word 'lobha'. It developed as followed over a period, lobha>luba> (German)>love. Lobha means intense desire for sensual and material possession. That is greed which propels man to a position of hatred which does see no bounds. "All is fir in love and war", they say which confirms it. So love is like war where killing, looting and destruction is justified. That tells us even in love mercy, compassion or tolerance holds no place. Amor vincit omina (Love conquers everything), too confirms it. Compassion on the other hand, can never make one to kill or cause harm. It only makes one to conquer oneself. Prema means love and it brings sorrow (pemathi jayathi soko) and adaraya means respectful affection which never brings sorrow or hatred to who acts 50.

Why should a battalion of loves decide to make love and exchange its awareness only on a single day of the year? If love is something that lasts until life lasts, why express it on mass on a predetermined day? Pur culture does not promote love on one day and to forget it till the following year. This type of commercialised mass love makes the lovers to forget the loved ones during the rest of the year being quite satisfied that there is a day reserved to convey and express love. It makes a mockery of love with the life enlivened without love being inspirited.

Celebrations on Valentine's Day incidentally makes love an easy thing with responsibilities dismissed and diminished, and the other days being reserved for all other activities. When love grows in heart the lovers should not wait until next year to express it.

Incidentally, one advertisement that once appeared in a newspaper on a Valentine's Day made love a joke. It read as follows "Let those who have never made love before, make it now, and those who are already in love make more and more love". Is there any greater insult to love than this? Is love something to be given in instalments like that? Is it love or lust? Can anyone make a differentiation? Thus Valentine's Day has taken the spirit of love away from its very root leaving it an item to be sold in the open market.

Valentine's Day has increasingly become fun, frolics and drinks for 'lovers' and others. The degree to which this day had been deteriorated could be gauged from how it was celebrated two years back once in the United States. There every zoological garden had offered a sex tour on Valentine's Day to the zoo for the lovers to watch how the animals make love and mate. So a day which is supposed to be sacred to love and lovers was being prostituted to show how animals perform and how the authorities could make money. Where are we leading for, emotionally and sentimentally? Love is the loser while lust is the winner.

Several centuries back, St. Valentine stressed the point of importance of marriage. He was martyred for holding the families together. Are the celebrations today are marked reference to such noble principles? In the East where an ancient culture exists, values in family life hold a significant position which everyone respects upon which the flower of love blossoms. That is why the concept of Valentine's Day is not only alien to us, but also has no status within the context of our existing family environment which we cherish most.