No matter what countdown you keep to Valentine’s Day — kiss day, hug day, rose day, his day, her day — truth is there is very little love in the air. So little that lately there have been complaints of unloving leading to suffocation. Veteran politician Dinesh Trivedi said as much last week on the floor of the Rajya Sabha as he announced his resignation. And yes, he also said, reportedly, that he had had enough of his erstwhile party’s unloving towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “There is so much of gali galoch,” he lamented.

Humba Humba

It is not just Trivedi who felt unloved. In the same august house, on a different day, when the PM expressed his disaffection for a new species that has come to be, the andolanjeevi parjeevi, the protesting farmers took it upon themselves. Others who might have felt unloved, un-embraced and spurned recently would be cricketer Wasim Jaffer, the Matuas of Bengal, human rights activist Rona Wilson. For others such as lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj and activist and priest Stan Swamy, unloving has become a way of life. Sons might have felt unloved and nephews too. Cows too, reportedly.

A lot like love

Too little loving or too much too late, can be worse than the unloving. Even worse is when you are overlooked for a greater love. Misplaced affection is problematic. Affection without action won’t sustain. And feigned affection is an insult. Congress’s Rahul Gandhi assured the farmers that he was with them, supported them. He hailed them as annadata. Priyanka Gandhi took a dip in the Sangam on Mauni Amavasya day. The PM shed a tear for Congress’s Ghulam Nabi Azad. Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee distributed financial aid worth Rs 83 crore to 8,000 clubs across Bengal. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had thrice the amount deposited in bank accounts of tea-garden workers of poll-bound Assam.

Happy, happy Valentine's Day.