By Eric Wamanji
The seismic plates of relationships are getting active once again in a cyclic ritual common with urban societies. This is the season of love. And in the next two weeks, you can be certain of radical shifts on the social landscape.
In fact, though I’m not Dr Love, for the guy who is searching, using your intelligence, just find out the lass who has not received a flower by 2 pm. Dial the nearest florist for delivery. I’ve known chaps who won their future halves this way. Easy like pap!
But, perhaps that is where the adventure ends. You can bet that while new friendships will be formed, many others will be shattered to smithereens. Regrettably, the emotional turmoil we will experience is born more out of naivety than substance.
Choreographed
Valentine’s Day is well choreographed. And the scriptwriter is none other than Wall Street (read capitalism), riding on the whims of societal inadequacies of insecurities or esteem. Let’s see: red wine will flow, red roses will be cut and Swiss chocolate munched… This is perhaps the busiest day for the scooter rider in town because, folks, Valentine Day is a multibillion-dollar commercial monster.
This juggernaut is responsible for the restlessness most are experiencing. It has generated a consumerism machine that gobbles down anything and everything – including your heart, liver, intestines and mind. And the more you fret, the more you yearn, and the happier the businessman is.
And that is whence my little discomfiture stemmeth from. The spirit of Valentine you wallow in is a latter day product manufactured and propagated by the commercial world where we, especially the “educated” and urbanite, surrender concessions not to love but to the pressures of the marketing glitz. There is nothing like true romance where the unit of measure is expenditure.
I find it to be the most unromantic enterprise for love to be conditioned by sheer marketing tricks that simply stimulate consumption. Valentine is so predictable robbing romance of a prerequisite adventure. The best Valentine, so goes the script, is the one that spends on luxury. Woe and unto you if you do not strut to the tune.
Cloud nine
Valentine has made the love sphere an orgy of material bounty. The escapist aura so sought by this kind of lifestyle has never been sated. So our desire keeps rising. Is this not the worship of the ancient golden calf as papa Franco bemoans?
When I was a journalist, I got an assignment on Valentine. And this is what I gathered: when that bouquet arrives, so are several receiving the same. The “caring man,” has a Valentine breakfast in Westlands, lunch in Upper Hill, late lunch across Thika Road, early dinner Karen, and finally dinner with the official wife or girl. Yet, every single person in this chain floats in cloud nine.
We shouldn’t mourn this anomie. We have allowed our emotions to be converted into objects of commerce. Since we demand certain materials not instinctively but akin to an oriental bazaar, the giver doesn’t feel the emotional obligation of guilt. To him, there is a product in the market (emotion) and he has the cash. Simple economics. There is nothing sentimental.
Now you know that Valentine Day is simply a construct of capitalism and a pawn in the chess board of the market place. It’s the confluence of cupidity and stupidity at Wall Street.
I can’t stop marvelling at this irony. That even those active on Valentine’s Day, mainly the middle-class, are the ones reported to be having the highest cases of promiscuity and divorce. Just go to the family court at Milimani – all the glitz, glamour and gifts notwithstanding.
On the contrary, take Nyagothie and Joram in the village. To them Feb 14 is just like July third. The young couple on that Friday will work the fields as usual. Come the following day, they will just be happy perhaps going to church. At the same time, folks in the city will be in lamentations and sounding alarm bells of betrayal.
There is something seriously foul with a society that commoditises such stuff like religion or love. While primitive societies thronged to the heroic man, of Okonkwo’s stature, who worked the fields and who hunted, it was not for the vanity of it but for a sense of protection.
We have been held captive in this conundrum and I highly doubt we are going to unshackle ourselves from it. Love, like religion to the gimmicks of the market system. A system that has engineered our souls fit for the highest bidder and chastity a rhyme to be sung to the birds.
Meanwhile, well, it’s fine. Go with the flow. Pour thy heart and pocked out. Blaze the town red. It’s Valentines Day after all.