LOVE & THE ESSENCE OF IT

#TGLife

Envisioning Valentine’s Day is quite easy - roses, chocolates, gifts, cards, couples, romantic music, the list is endless.Today’s world has transitioned its essence into more of a marketing gimmick than a day cherished by loved ones. This. however, is one side of the coin. The other, although not as prevalent in today’s time, is still present. You still find people going out with their loved ones, spending the day together and for some it may even be the day of declaration of their love and handing out cards and small gifts with their confessions. Taking the perspectives of four couples at different stages of their relationship, we try to find what this day means to people in different phases of life.   

For those who are married decades ago, the day serves only to refresh the love between them. 

Ericka Sequira and Mathew Lobo met in the eight standard, although not a couple back then. They began their story forging a friendship that would later grow.   

“I never had a phone during that time so it was hard to stay in touch. So even though we met in class eight, we truly started talking in the tenth standard.”, Ericka states   

“He made the effort of calling me up on my landline and sometimes on my mother’s phone. This was such a headache, because there was always a lot of confusion; when my mom would go out and leave her phone, so that we could talk. By then we were in the eleventh standard.”  

She informs that it had become a routine after that, where she would come from school and talk to him. She had a sim card given by him, and she would use that number, changing it from her mother’s sim card, whenever they would talk, so that she could never suspect anything.   

“I still remember his 21st birthday, where he took me home and introduced me to his parents”, She recalls.   

Speaking on the importance of St Valentine’s Day, Ericka, adds,“Valentine’s Day is not very important to us. We never celebrated it. He believes in doing little random things on random days and I too share this belief. So we spend time with each other, give each other small gifts and but we do celebrate our birthdays together. This, I feel matters more, and I’m more genuinely surprised. It feels more special.”   

For newlyweds on the other hand, the day of love has come to acquire new meaning as years pass. 

“We first met at a play, which we both were a part of, I was acting and he was dancing. After this we somehow, always ended in the same circle of friends.” Say Kalpa Gobre, upon being asked how she met her now husband, Yogi Gobre.  

“He and I also would hang out together, separate from that group. Before we became a couple, I would say he was one of my closest friends. He was someone I trusted and even our parents found our friendship to be very familiar and amicable. His parents would often ask him if he was interested in me. What drew us closer was how secure and comfortable we felt with each other”, She says further.   

“We do not relate Valentine’s day to just one day, we believe in celebrating it everyday. This year though, for valentine’s day, being newly wed, we planned to spend time cleaning and decorating our house, and transforming into a lovely home.”  

Celiyana and Selvin Fernandes, got married, three years back, in their mid twenties and have now been together for three years. Their relationship however, pioneered a long time before that, roughly 10 years back, when she was just around the age of 14. They met during one of her school summer vacations, when she would go and visit her aunt. He lived in the neighborhood. She, apparently, caught his eye and their mutual friends would constantly after that, try to set them up.  

“He was my first love and I got married to him in the year 2017”, She said stating it factually.  At present they have a daughter, almost completing the age one.   

“Valentine’s day was almost like any other day to us till we reached the age of twenty. After that we would celebrate it by going out and having lunch or just doing anything special” she explained, and further claimed showing love everyday was more important than just on a particular day.   

The responsibility following marriage hasn’t meddled into their relationship. She claims they still laugh, love and talk the same, feeling only as though years are just numbers that have been added.  

While modern love stories are cute in their own way, old love stories are also refreshed on this great day. 

Roque Coelho has claimed himself to never fall into the romantic stereotypes. He just happened to fall in love with his present wife, the first time he met her and married her in under a month of that meet.  

He first saw his wife in her village church, in Velim. While his father hailed from the village of Chinchinim, his mother resided in Velim. He in particular was always out of the country for the purpose of work.   One set of holidays however, Rocky had come back with his mother, to visit his native place. They planned on visiting her parent’s village while also going for mass at the village church. It was there he saw Molina for the first time. “I was reading at mass that day, and he saw me. After that, his mother passed on a message, wanting to speak to my mother. Then the rest is history’, says Molina. They have now been married for more than 25 years and have two children.