The internet is a storm chamber. One wrong gust and a petty quarrel becomes a cyclone. The recent dating refund controversy is one such micro-storm: a man treats the cost of a shared meal as an investment that ought to yield a return, and the court of public opinion quickly divides into camps. Some argue for splitting the bill; others condemn the attitude as a red flag or a violation of consent. These are necessary, defensive arguments. They tell us what not to do. They do not tell us how to rise.
To understand the poverty of this encounter, we must move beyond the mechanics of modern dating and recover a neglected civilisational dimension. Śṛṅgāra is the classical Indian aesthetic of cultivated desire, revered in Bharata Muni's Nāṭyaśāstra as the Rasarāja, the sovereign among rasas. Viewed through this lens, the controversy is not merely a matter of poor manners or questionable etiquette. It reveals a deeper aesthetic failure: the reduction of the unpredictable mystery of human relationship to the rigid arithmetic of a ledger.
Please type your name along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments are likely to be removed.
No comments:
Post a Comment