Opinion Why, at 36, I’m celebrating Valentine’s Day like I’m 16 again

“Yeah. Tacky but cute”

“Just like me. Works,” I said and proceeded to send it over to my unsuspecting partner.

Typical teenagers, right? Except, we are not. I am 36, my partner is 35. I would like to believe we are mature lovers: Gingerly stepping into our middle age, a bunch of relationships (good, bad and extremely ugly [in my case]) behind us; independent, career-oriented, no longer believing in the idea that there is some great love that is going to save us, that “God made us in pairs” or some such.

But around Valentine’s Day this year, I find myself acting completely, well, not my age.

I ask him to get me a ring, a beautiful, intricately carved silver piece. It arrives, incidentally, on “Propose Day”. But I don’t read too much into it because neither of us wants to get married, not to each other, not to anyone else — one of the things that make us compatible. But I still can’t stop blushing at the coincidence. Getting a ring on Propose Day? What are the odds!

Nothing logical explains my impractical behaviour. But then, my mind races back to this same time exactly 20 years ago: When I, a 16-year-old teenager, desperately believed in the idea of “love”. That I am going to find someone, only if I stopped eating and lost weight; had smaller nostrils and better marks on my report card; became fair using the skin-lightening soap that had just hit the market. None of this happened, and my teenage years, in the era of Archies cards and Valentine’s Day music videos, were spent eventless.

I wish someone had told me that things were going to turn around for me, convince me that love does exist, that I need not give up on the idea at all, that it will find its way to me. That the bulky, unwieldy mobile phone, which had just arrived at our house only to make “very important calls”, is going to become a sleek, smart device with my entire world in it. That it will have “apps” that will be dedicated to dating only, and that the tech-challenged me is going to take to them like a fish to water. And then one day, on a boring summer evening, in the middle of “not looking for anything serious”, I would find someone who would just click (pun intended), and make me realise that maybe love does exist.

Maybe he would not sweep me right off my feet, but he would steadily grow on me: With his kindness, and his complete acceptance of my quirks. With the way he would look out for my cats or teach my mother how to take better food pictures for her Instagram page; with the way he would listen to all my past trauma and assure me that they will stay where they belonged — in the past.

He may not call me daily but he would pick up my call anytime I needed him, even if it was in the middle of a busy work day. He would lovingly make tea for me each time and enthusiastically meet my friends, not because he, the classic introvert, really wanted to, but because he knows it would mean something to me. And that he won’t promise to be with me till the end of time, but promptly drive from one end of the city to another in the biting cold because I am feeling down after a family tragedy. And that I would not need to be thinner, or fairer or have a sharper nose for that to happen. That he would accept me just as I am, with my excess body weight, my big nostrils, and my past baggage.

And that, I will finally have a Valentine. At a time when I would have given up on love, when I would have summarily stopped looking for it. But also at a time when I would never have been more prepared to accept it, to value it. When I would still be convinced that the day is a “capitalist construct”, a “conspiracy by greeting card companies” but at the same time, I would celebrate it with a vengeance.

Because I would owe it to the 16-year-old me. She has waited for 20 long years, she deserves it.

deepika.singh@expressindia.com