St Valentine’s Day: Story Of Love From Platonic To Modern

Valentine’s Day is back and as usual, it is celebrated as festival of love, romance, friendship, fascination, admiration and passion. Today, it has become the trendiest youth event in the modern world but its origin and traditions date back to time immemorial.

India connection of Valentine’s Day

In India, the system of Ghotul is still been practiced in some parts of southern states. Also, Lord Krishna’s playful romance with Radhika and gopikas stands tells more about romantic life. It tells that romantic life was fairly welcome in the ancient time.

Critical significance

Human being needs nutrition and procreation for survival. Nutrition is needed for self-existence and procreation for continuity of species. And human being crossed physical boundaries in search of nutrition and procreation.

An anonymous scribble reads “A woman in love asked her boyfriend who do you love most and he replied you”. She again asked “Who am I to you and he replied you are my other half”.

Missing half

In the Puranas, Lord Shiva is presented as ‘Arthanareeswara’ that is a fusion of male and female. This figure represents power of creation, maintenance and destruction and the power is vested in female half of Shiva. It is called Shakti. Since then everyone looks for his better half to get the power of creation and maintenance.

Romance and Love

Plato defines love as one with desire of sex and another as device devoid of sex. It is for this reason that divine love is described as platonic love. On the other hand, romance is more a technical term used to define actions like holding hands, whispering in ears and jocular behavior.

The history has many stories of lovers either with fulfilment or disappointment. Accepted love helps one realize the beauty of life but rejected love makes a person acutely conscious of life’s value.

Source: https://bit.ly/2OOrZ67