A Touching Valentine's Day Story

Valentine's Day is the second most marketed event after Christmas. It shows. It has become a celebration of consumerism rather than romance or love. The economic meltdown has dented spending on this Valentine's day. The New York Times reported on couples that had to forgo thousands of dollars worth of gifts and dining out. Only in the New York Times would one find a story describing one couple's choice of store bought foie gras as a sacrifice. I can't help but imagine that once upon a time Valentine's Day was more genuine, sincere, and heartfelt. That it was about true displays of love and commitment and not about contrived or artificial romance.

Where can I find a touching Valentine's Day story?

On the other side of the world, there are men in India who are beating up women celebrating Valentine's Day and destroying Valentine's Day cards. As one of my friends pointed out, if they really wanted to be "efficient" they could beat up the men who purchase the cards in the first place, but I sense that there's something deeper going on. It's gratifying to see how some Indian women are responding. But it is within neighboring Pakistan that I find inspiration. Not that Pakistan is faring any better with women's rights.

ABC News ran a story today about acid attack victims in Pakistan. Apparently, 80% of women in Pakistan are victims of domestic violence. A young woman who married told her husband that she would not move into his family's house. He decided that an appropriate response was throwing acid on her face. Most women who are victims of this reprehensible abuse end up being ostracized or outcast. There is at least some movement in Pakistan to deal with this horrific problem. ABC described a "beauty salon" (for lack of a better term) that offers beauty treatments, medical care, and job training for acid attack victims.

The young woman in the story is part of this beauty salon. Her father is supportive of her involvement, but his support goes well beyond this. When asked about how he feels about his daughter, he said the following:

"My daughter is very beautiful...I'm even MORE proud of her than I am of my sons..."

I think only South Asians might be able to appreciate the true power of this statement--one that challenges too many of 1.3 billion people to stop acting like jerks when it comes to gender relations. When this young woman was asked about her experience and the beauty salon, she said, "When I look in the mirror, I still ask myself 'why me?'...now that I'm here I feel courage...I have hope." I get the impression that with her father's love and support, she'll never remain a victim for long.

Public displays of affection, especially between men and women of any age or relationship, remain rare in South Asia. At the end of the news story, the father walks through a gate. His daughter sees him, smiles beautifully--some things even acid can't destroy--and hugs him. He warmly hugs her back.

Now that is a touching Valentine's Day story.

A Taste of India

There are so many western influences in Japan, it's possible to forget at moments that I'm in Asia. I have heard from fellow Asians some resentment about Japan's alignment with the West, rather than the rest of Asia. The current G-8 Summit is a reminder of this tension. Perhaps hosting the conference in Japan will allow for greater emphasis on China and India. It's strange to imagine an economic consortium without explicit representation from China and India, or Brazil for that matter.

At one point during a trip between hotels, my taxi stopped in front of an Indian restaurant. Almost anyone of South Asian descent will know the moment. No matter our origins, no matter our self-perceptions, South Asians in these circumstances will often look at each other and smile. As if to acknowledge a bond that transcends national or cultural boundaries. Even the vast differences between Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis seem to disappear when we leave South Asia. I suppose we finally focus more on what is common, rather than what is different.

In this case, each of the people in the restaurant smiled and bowed slightly. One of them came up to the taxi and handed me a menu from the restaurant. I can't deny a certain comfort when I saw curry, naan, and mango lassi on the menu. He spoke to me in Japanese. When I said "thank you" in English, he must have realized I do not live in Tokyo. He made the leap to Hindi, which I also do not understand. I'm embarrassed enough not understanding Japanese, but I'm even more embarrassed not understanding Hindi (after all, my wife speaks it fairly fluently). I miss out on so much because of my poor language skills.

One language that does seem to transcend boundaries is business. I'm struck by the Asian business shows, with men in suits and ties, using the same jargon as the Wall Street pundits. It's a 24 hour a day obsession, spoken in the language of currency. It's difficult to translate English into Japanese, but it's easy to find out the latest conversion rate between the British pound and the Japanese yen. BBC Asian Business Report featured a story on malnutrition in India. The story focused on a young woman who mentioned that her four children are starving. They certainly looked that way. The report mentioned that malnutrition causes $29 billion of lost productivity in India, or nearly 4% of its GDP. India's long-term productivity might be adversely affected if "they can not tap properly into these human resources". We should feed these people only because they can contribute to the economy?

When did human misery and suffering become measured as an adverse impact on GDP?