The city once known for its resplendent culture of mushairas and poets would be reduced to one strewn with bodies of the dead. From a royal capital, its status was relegated to that of a provincial town. The city recovered itself only after 1911 and more so after Independence.
Amid the deluge of nostalgia and romance that February invokes, and the calls for resistance to this “epidemic” of love brought about by the market forces, the story of Valentine’s Day perhaps lies somewhere in between long, complex and deserving to be told.
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