How many times have we heard a colleague or a friend go off on a tangent about Valentine’s Day being a marketing gimmick, promoted by companies to arm-twist unsuspecting lovers into parting with their hard-earned money? Sounds familiar? It’s almost like it’s the fashionable thing to say now-a-days.

But, apart from the monotonous moaning that ensues, what really makes me glaze-over is our own hypocrisy. More often than not, these very people who chew your ear off, would have booked a table at Dubai’s Pierchic a month in advance and splashed out a week’s salary on a cheesy ‘surprise’ Tiffany’s bracelet add-on. And if that isn’t quite enough, they’d then post half-hourly accounts of their ‘omg, so fun’ pictures on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Let’s face it, we use Valentine’s Day to score brownie-points — to either fix, boost or rekindle our relationships and marriages, as much as companies around the world use it to rob us of our money. It’s a fair trade-off, really.

Let me tell you a little story that should, hopefully, put things into perspective. Three Valentine’s ago, my significant other and I decided to part ways. You may roll your eyes at the triviality of it all, but it changed me as a person and taught me a couple of life’s hard lessons.

Here’s what happened: We spent Valentine’s Day together doing fun things, spending quality time — restaurants, movies, the works; and all was good in the land of love. Or so I thought.

As we were driving back from a fabulous dinner, and feeling quite happy and content with such a wonderful life and an even more wonderful fiancé, the placid silence was pierced with a half-teasing, half dangerously serious question: “So where’s my gift honey?”

I suddenly felt a bit ill and a feeling of pins and needles all over my body, my hair was on end and I had probably broken into a bit of sweat.

“Gift? Ermm ... what gift? You said you didn’t want anything,” was my swift, albeit shaky, reply.

Two red lights and a near-accident later, I was given half-an-hour of a mental bashing where I was accused of being insensitive, uncaring and a selfish moron. I was even told that this was grounds for a ‘breakup’ in any relationship. “Divorces are had over this,” I was told.

Is Valentine’s about love or is it about gifts? Maybe I confused that with Christmas? Or maybe even Christmas is a mass corporate scam?

As I watched the histrionics unfold in slow-motion, that very moment in time, revealed that my mostly wonderful, intelligent and usually calm better-half seemed to be lacking, severely, in many of the ‘better’ qualities that make for a long-lasting, endlessly loving and mature relationship.

What could have brought about this radical change in personality over something as inconsequential as a material gift? Can we blame the global firms for this? Do they govern our thoughts and our sense of reasoning or should we, as human beings, be in control of the choices we make? The last I checked, it was this ability to logicise that truly makes us human.

We so easily blame a day for making a mockery of love, yet we don’t think twice when we exalt a material gift as a trophy and ultimate proof of the very same emotion. Hypocrisy at its most hypocritical.

So yes, let’s not blame a day on the calendar. Instead, let’s try and love everyday, so that one day in the history of the future world, and through my rose-tinted glasses, Valentine’s Day won’t have a significance.

And on a lighter note, there are two real-life lessons I learned that day. One: Love doesn’t have a day; it’s either there — omnipresent and omnipotent — or it isn’t there at all and nothing can be said or done to bring it — not even the retailers. Two: It’s OK to gift; because it makes you and your partner happy — not so that the companies of the world don’t win.