Red Valentine

Over the past week Freetown’s been painted red. Not by yours truly but by store owners and street hawkers trying to make a quick buck on the back of Valentine’s Day. The worst affected are the sidewalks outside schools and colleges where white teddy bears, plastic red roses and mushy cards have taken root. The tuck shop outside my office on the central Wellington Street has a temporary sign out ‘We also sell Valentine’s Day gifts’. The clothes boutique down the road has hung out all its red dresses and accessories. All in all it’s a bit nauseating.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a Valentine Grinch. I still remember my first big Valentine’s Day at age 16 when I bought my boyfriend at the time a giant stuffed heart that squeaked ‘I love you’ when squeezed. Unfortunately my mother discovered it along with the love poem I’d written and it was the end of that teenage romance. My most recent Valentine’s Day was the day I broke up with my boyfriend. Not a very successful Valentine’s track record.

I remember watching an episode of the OC where it was suggested that Valentine’s Day be declared a national holiday. Now that’s something the fundamentalist Hindu political groups in India would definitely object to. As I was growing up, every year the moral police of the Shiv Sena party in Mumbai would vandalise the city’s Hallmark stores and harass young couples holding hands. Valentine’s Day it seemed was eroding moral fibre, not fundamentalism.

A popular Valentine’s Day event in Freetown is the outing. This is basically a bunch of hormone high youngsters let loose on a beach outside Freetown for an all-night party. On the main road downtown, there’s a banner advertising one by a group called Desperate Chicks.

What would be my perfect Valentine’s Day gift? If the power stayed on all night. National Power Authority, will you be my Valentine?