The season of love, writes Priyanka Chaturvedi

It is the season of love, or so the marketing departments of various brands would like you to believe. It is the season to stay in the news for some political parties and their affiliates. For some it is the season of Matru-Pitru Prem Diwas and for some, it is the ugly western culture influencing young innocent minds to celebrate an emotion that is not sanskaari. Yes it is February, it is the Valentine season, bring out your favourite outrage!

Since it is the season of love, my love for all things newsy continues. Not noisy or nosy if I may add. In the age of breaking news story it is really an effort to stay up to speed, I am not complaining one bit though. Sometimes these news stories are plain bizarre if not funny. If it were not for the news channels how would I know that a goat was arrested by Chhattisgarh police? Why arrested you ask? It was arrested for grazing in the gardens of a bureaucrat’s home. Shudder to think if it were a politician’s home, our primetime debates would have been so, ahem, engrossing. Anyway, better still, a news report says that the Haryana government is planning a fashion show. So what’s the big deal about a fashion show? The difference though is that the fashion show will have cows walking the ramp. A catwalk with a twist surely makes up for the interesting times we live in. 

How can one forget the very famous and controversial police hunt for buffaloes that went missing in Uttar Pradesh? There was an incident of a labrador being involved in an FIR in Delhi. The news story also made headlines because Don, the labrador, was taken into police custody followed by the city court giving him a clean chit. A verdict of innocence, take that you humans, who look at every one with so much suspicion. Both these incidents involved some news discussions, of which I shall not say much.

That reminds me of how the battle rages at home whether or not to own a pet. The camps are divided equally between the two sides. The kids on one side of wanting a pet and the heavy weight (literally) parents on the other side denying them that. Why are we being the cruel parent that we are, that calls for another column! However they both amongst themselves are first to settle the debate if the pet should be a pup or a kitten. The son has some solid reason to believe dogs have more love to share than cats can ever do, he cites some BBC study to make that claim while daughter wants cat because they are  oh-so-cutest and oh so cat-tiest. 

As parents we are delaying a decision on this thanks to this indecisiveness between the two in this cat vs dog debate. What if they find a compromise solution soon that would also mean taking a decision? That will be the next battle, a battle that I hope the lightweights will win. As I strongly believe one only doggedly pursues something that one is truly passionate about, also known as love.