[Long Post]
Scene: A red heart shaped statue. A tourist guide with a bunch of tourists stand at its base
Guide to tourists: And this over here is the monument, the beautiful Broken Heart, constructed to commemorate all those marytrs for love who fell, many of them nameless, on that fateful Valentine’s Day. In the greatest non-violent mass movement since the Non-Cooperation andolan, young men and woman stood together and took a stance against repression. They took blows and punches and had their hair pulled so that successive generations have the freedom to get drunk, pass out, buy overpriced long-stemmed roses and splurge on “My heart will go on” -playing musical cards.
It was a time of great political ferment in the country. Scared that women in low-rider jeans drinking, dancing and cavorting with the Rocky Khannas of the world will wipe out Indian civilization as it was known then, a mass movement of cultural fundamentalists united under organizations with names like “Banar Sena” , “Dushashana Fan Club”. They then announced plans to forcibly prevent Valentine Day celebrations across the country and to marry off any girl and boy who were walking together, unless the boy tied a Rakhi around the girl’s hand and made her a behena.
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