Saint Valentine vrs Lord Kama

Sound's funny but this valentine day I'm going to play Cupid.Well it's not a deliberate decision on my part to play angel but part of my job.

Now some may feel it's a wonderful role to play but the sad part is that you end up having no valentine for own.....

Anyways the fact that some people are dead against the whole concept of celebrating a day for love and that it's against the so called Indian tradition has really made me curious about Lord Kamdeva.Here's what the I found about him.

Kama is the god of love in Hindu myth. He is a son of Lakshmi. Kama is represented as a winged youth bearing bow and arrows (similar to Cupid). Kama uses the cane of sugarcane as the shaft of his bow and a line of buzzing bees as his bowstring. He rides a parrot across the three worlds shooting his five flower-tipped arrows that arouse the five senses and enchants the mind with visions of beauty.

In the Rig Veda, Kama (desire) is described as the first movement that arose in the one after it had come into life through the power of fervour or abstraction.

In the Atharva-Veda Kama does not mean sexual desire, but rather the yearning after the good of all created things.

Later Kama is simply the Hindu Cupid. While attempting to lure Siva to sin, he was destroyed by a fiery glance of the goddess' third eye.

Thus in Hindu poetry Kama is known as Ananga, the " bodiless god." Kama's wife Rati (voluptuousness) mourned him so greatly that Siva relented, and he was reborn as the child of Krishna and Rukmini. The babe was called Pradyumna (Cupid).

He is represented armed with a bow of sugar-cane; it is strung with bees, and its five arrows are tipped with flowers which overcome the five senses. A fish adorns his flag, and he rides a parrot or sparrow, emblematic of lubricity. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911)

But Kama is not worshipped. He has been identified with the principle of desire that entraps the soul in samsara. In fact, in Buddhism, he is called Mara, the demon, and enemy of all enlightened beings.

I guess after reading about Lord kama one can draw his own conclusion.