Pointless posts
The groom-hunting saga – Epilogue
There are some things in life that happen in spite of all the effort you take to avoid it. My meeting THE boy was one of them. Yeah…you guessed it right. This is about what would rightly be called “The Epilogue” of the now-famous groom-hunting saga.
I came back a happy girl from Paris after enjoying my last few days of singlehood, although I did not know it then. The groom-hunting efforts were on quietly in the background during my absence. That I was indifferent to it would be more appropriate than claiming to be ignorant of it. Just before my departure to Paris, mom had mentioned S, adding for good measure that he was drop-dead gorgeous, very soft-spoken, and had every quality that I would expect in a man. Of course, she did mention the minor fact that she hadn’t even seen him at that point, although I wasn’t supposed to worry about that. Having met the parents, my parents were convinced that he was the one. Now, how they came to that conclusion after seeing the parents is anybody’s guess. Anyway, I dismissed it without a second thought at that point, focused as I was in getting to Paris and having a good time. My mother, to her credit, conceded that I had a point and let me be.
It is on my return from Paris that I met S. I was dragged along kicking and screaming to meet him would be a more appropriate statement. The day I returned from Paris, I was spared the hard talk due to deserving the basic human right to food and sleep. By the time I woke up the next morning, the mater had decided that her right to discuss potential grooms was more important and broached the topic. She asked when I would meet him and I said, “Whenever!” In hindsight, that was probably the gravest mistake of my life. She left me alone the next day and led me on to believe that S was off her list of potential grooms. Just as I was secretly rejoicing the temporary reprieve I had received, she called one busy Wednesday afternoon. “You’re meeting S today. At the temple at 7 PM.” To say that I was reluctant would be an understatement. In the middle of a conversation with a colleague, I ranted and raved at the unfairness of it all, at being made to get away from work at 6 PM barely 2 days after I had returned from a business trip abroad, and at being forced to meet S at a temple. I also ranted about meetings in temples being so unbelievably 17th century and claiming I would have much preferred Park Sheraton. At that point, the colleague, fed up of being captive audience told me to go and meet him and come back and say no. It all seemed so simple then. To meet S and say no.
How complicated things become just when you’re beginning to think it’s all so simple. On my first meeting with him in the said temple, I found him easy to talk to. Actually, I just found it easy to talk because I kept talking and he kept nodding. As dad observed later to my comment on his reserved nature, he probably didn’t have the time to slip a word in sideways because I was jabbering so constantly. I did notice at the time that he was rather reluctant to smile. I came away feeling okay-ish about the whole deal, but not very sure about being able to live with someone who couldn’t smile.
In the subsequent phone conversation, he came across as so completely different from the man I had met the previous day. Conversation flowed. I came back to work and told the colleague that the guy was ok. At this point, she was ready to kill me because she had spent the better part for her day two days previously convincing me to go meet him and here I was, telling her he was actually quite nice. Two days later, I published the final episode of the groom-hunting saga. At that point, I had not even decided that it was going to be S. Maybe it was gut feeling. Two days later, I was ready to say the final yes.
Now…there are two ways of looking at this. I could get all mushy and say he is the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. But that, knowing him, would just embarrass the hell out of him. Or, I could be the nice girl and stick to feeling sorry for him. After all, he needs to be captive audience for my jabbering for the rest of his life. And I did say that nice people do not make interesting protagonists. Only weird characters do. To his credit, S is as normal a person as you can find! So, I will just register my utmost happiness at having found the person I want to annoy for the rest of my life!!
The groom-hunting saga – Final edition
Ah…so…where were we? PG4 right? This one deserves to be put in a museum and showcased for posterity. It all started with some random maami calling mom about matrimonial alliance. After talking a few times on phone with the mater, they decided to come home. The mother of PG4 walked in two days later, with husband, daughter and son-in-law in tow. After talking about all and sundry, and refusing Mom’s offer of coffee, the potential MIL turned around to me and asked me to make coffee! Resisting the temptation to throw something at her face, I played the gracious host and offered her coffee. She did not exactly endear herself to me when she wasted all the coffee I had served. If there is one thing I absolutely detest, that’s wasting food. And here she was, doing precisely that! To make matters worse, she and her darling daughter scrutinized me from top to toe like they were purchasing a doll or something. Boy! Was I relieved that they left. Actually, all of us were because my parents are grandparents were getting equally uncomfortable with their attitude.
Just when I thought I had heard the end of this story, they called and managed to persuade my mother to let me meet PG4. Honestly, just then, I would have gladly opted for staying single all my life rather than getting hitched to someone like that! Every sentence he uttered contained some reference to mom or sister. He proclaimed, rather proudly I must add, that he gave away all his salary to daddy dearest because his father knew how to spend it! He even hinted I would have to do the same. I endured roughly 15 minutes of conversation and bid the happiest goodbye of my life! I certainly don’t need to specify that I said no. My parents looked almost worried I would say yes! It was that unbearable!
I was getting better at this. The time I spent with each potential groom was getting lesser and I was becoming an expert at this stuff! PG5 turned out to be rather nice. I liked the way he looked, liked his family and everything else. After several conversations with him, I really thought this was going to be the one. Until one day, he started talking of his expectations. He asked me, out of the blue, if I would learn to sing. I thought he was kidding. And then it turned out that not only did he harbour the commendable ambition of doing kacheri in Music Academy in December, he also wanted me to do the same. Not to mention that he seemed to be “settling” for a Kannada girl because his own Tambrahm coterie would not consider him a potential groom for his brother’s crime of having married a woman of his choice! I wasn’t planning to be a compromise candidate, nor did I fancy foregoing ice-cream and cold water to become a future Sudha Raghunathan! So…the saga of PG5 came to an end!
Now…the final PG! The most bizarre of them all! I am beginning to think I attract weirdos all the time! He came home one day, much against my wishes. I was preparing to go to Bombay the next day and simply didn’t have the time for such nonsense. After landing up around dinner-time and taking his own sweet time to talk to me (after munching on snacks and drinking tea of course), he finally got around to talking. The first sentence he uttered was such a big turn-off that I didn’t listen to the rest. After asking me if I would like to continue working after marriage he said, “You see. I am 33. I don’t have much time. I want children immediately.” Now…what the eff am I supposed to say? I was almost tempted to tell him to order them off E-Bay! Before you ask me, my dear readers, of course I said no. I have no intentions of being a baby-making machine for anyone ever!
And with that, we come to the end of the groom-hunting saga. If, after all this trouble, I do manage to meet someone really worth my effort, I will be most happy. And of course, I’ll keep you all posted! But remember, nice is normal. No fun in blogging about the good things in people! Only weird characters like PG6 make interesting protagonists…No?
The groom-hunting saga – Episodes 2/3
Following up from where we left off, I was left alone for almost 10 months after the PG1 debacle. Not that my parents slowed down, or gave up on their search. It was because finding an intelligent, decent-looking, educated man over 5 feet and 9 inches of height was getting a tad difficult. So difficult that my hypothesis that all good-looking and intelligent men were married, taken or gay, was turning out to be a truism. Finally, after some persuasion by a good Samaritan who called himself my friend, I did the unthinkable. I joined one of those zillion matrimonial websites that promise to get you an ideal partner before you can say Czechoslovakia. I should have been wary of such claims especially since the country doesn’t exist anymore, but I fell for the gimmick and signed up. Maybe it was the friend’s influence or maybe someone had spiked my drink.
To cut a long story short, I “expressed interest” at one of the profiles I found, and strangely enough, the guy accepted! After a few short conversations over phone, we decided to meet. It was almost as if God had decided that my over-indulgence in five-star hotels needed to be punished and our first meeting was at the beach, over some sundal and kadalai. What better way to meet a potential fiancé than to put…er…I mean eat…some kadalai, huh? The meeting lasted 3 hours, during which we both had a good measure of fun talking, eating sundal and discussing life. It almost seemed like this was the man! And then…poooooof! The guy simply disappeared! No signs of acknowledging my existence, or even bothering with a rejection slip! He just vanished. Fed up of the dilly-dallying, I called him one day and asked him where things where things were going. He apologized profusely for being distracted and asked to meet again…ok! Now, I thought I would at least KNOW what the hell was happening. During our second meeting at some random coffee shop, he was equally sweet and charming and yet seemed to hesitate about taking a decision. Baffled, I asked him what was wrong. And bingo…that was it!! The…physics…no no…the chemistry was missing. And here I was thinking marriage was all about sociology and biology! And with that ended the saga of the one potential groom I actually liked!! Sigh…tough luck!
Not long after, there materialized another guy (PG3), this time through the parents, who seemed perfect by all standards. Several phone calls, conversations, parents coming home on a bride-seeing visit later, he promised to come to Chennai from Bangalore and meet me. And true to his word, he did. It was only that he had missed telling me a minor detail about himself, so minor that it could scarcely be noticed; that he had an incurable problem with his leg that prevented him from walking properly. You see, amidst the conversations about career, house, car, family and grandchildren, he figured it wasn’t so important to tell me what to expect when seeing him. Ah…the minor details!
PG4 is a specimen that deserves a much longer and more details than the others…I will save that for another post, another day. Until then, sayonara!
The groom-hunting saga – Episode 1
So, I am finally overcoming inertia to write this much-in-demand (ok ok…can’t you let a girl flatter herself?) post on my groom-hunting saga. So…where do I start? Ah…I know just the way to do it!
Circa July 2009
After extensive discussions on the whys and the wherefores of their darling daughter having so much fun, the parents decided it was time to find an appropriate scapegoat for me to get hitched to. Of course, they were delighted to have been afforded the opportunity to indulge in this exercise, like all other Indian parents. Had they known then that this exercise would turn out to be unending, they might have been a little less excited about the whole affair. Then, one day, mummy dearest sat me down to ask me what kind of man I wanted. She might as well have asked me to calculate the distance between the earth and Alpha Centauri to the 16th decimal. That might have been easier than to explain what kind of man I really wanted. How on earth a girl is supposed to answer THAT question without sounding superficial, materialistic, indifferent or plain inappropriate is anybody’s guess. Add to the fact that men don’t really come pre-configured to specifications, and you have a rather difficult situation. Come to think of it, it would be rather convenient if we were able to configure men to specifications, like buying a laptop on the DELL site. Tall, dark, handsome, knows to cook, doesn’t mind earning less than wife, will do the dishes…but anyway, I digress.
Barely a month after I agreed to an arranged marriage (yes, I did protest, if you must know), the mater came to me with the profile and photo of a potential groom. I was hitting the panic button at the idea of being married, and yet desperately wanted to like him. The guy in question, let’s call him Potential Groom No.1 (PG1) for convenience’s sake, was quite good-looking. He had an impressive enough profile for me to agree to meet him. I took his phone number and he already had mine. I can’t remember now if it was he who called or me, but over a telephonic conversation, we determined (electronically) that electronic means of communication could prove to be dicey and decided to meet.
Owing perhaps to my upper middle-class upbringing, which taught me that food is five-star hotels is strictly restricted to conferences and parties for which others would pay I was surprised when he suggested we meet at one that was barely 5 minutes from my office. I agreed, for want of a better reason to say no. Those who know me also know I am a punctuality-Nazi. Keeping to my usual habit of arriving anywhere 5 minutes ahead of time, I was not very happy at realizing that PG1 was with clients, having chosen to squeeze in some last-minute meeting between the previous meeting with clients and the meeting with me. I ended up waiting a good 10 minutes, each minute grating on my nerves more than the previous. I would probably have been happier knowing he was stuck in traffic or something. In hindsight, the fact that he put his stupid client meeting (at 7.00 PM, if I may add) ahead of meeting me, should have given me a heads-up. But, let’s just say I can be dense when it comes to such things. In hindsight again, I suspect that he probably scheduled that client meeting just to make sure he billed the coffee off to the office; middle-class upbringing and all that, you know?
The meeting got off to a pleasant start, despite by slight annoyance at being made to wait. After the mandatory disclaimers that this was not something we were comfortable with, we got down to the nitty-gritty of discussing likes and dislikes. He asked me about my interests, and true to my nature, I spoke for about 3 minutes (yes…I am sure it was only 3 minutes) about my blog. He listened with an intelligent and interested look in his eyes. When I finished, I asked him about his. And this was when I realized that he could out-talk me in any talkathon! And he ONLY talked about work. About how his multi-billion dollar bank gave out multi-billion dollar loans to multi-billion dollar companies and about how loans were sometimes syndicated and so on. At this juncture, it becomes necessary to point out that seven years of university education, along with several hours of 8 AM classes on Macroeconomics and Economics of Defense (in peak winter with sub-zero temperatures) have helped me master the art of sleeping with my eyes wide open, and with an interested and intelligent look on my face. And yes, I do realize that this is probably exactly was HE was doing during my three-minute talk on my blog as well! And I admit that this is exactly what I did the fifth time he mentioned his multi-billion dollar bank with multi-billion dollar clients!
Now, this should give you a fair idea about where this was headed. After about an hour and 15 minutes, an hour and 12 minutes of which he monopolized talking about his damned bank, we decided to end the meeting. I might still have subjected myself to one more round of negotiations had he not said anything beyond good night that evening. But, he chose to damn himself and said, “Nice to have met you. And to be honest, I like you. And am ok with you as well. You can tell your parents. But, I am not sure I want to get MARRIED to you.”
Erm…what he was suggesting is anybody’s guess. But I decided I couldn’t live with a lifetime of discussing loans, syndicated loans, corporate financing, mergers, joint ventures and acquisitions. I have enough of that at work, me thinks! So adieu to PG1! Now, I realize that we’re through with just one potential groom and many more to come. So, will sign-off here and continue this saga with episode 2! Until then, ciao!
Some totally unconnected thoughts…
I have been meaning to put something down in words for a week now. But, every time I put my fingers to keyboard, I realize I don’t have enough material for a blogpost. You know? It’s one of those times when you have too much to say to fit into a tweet of 140 characters, but not enough to make a blogpost of! So, I decided to put all my random thoughts down into one single blogpost, instead of waiting forever to elaborate on them and basically kill the expression!
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The census guy was at aunt’s place last week. With apparent boredom he quizzes aunt about the names, ages, dates of birth of the members of the family. Getting to language, he asks what the mother-tongue was. My aunt says Kannada. He noted it down and asked, “Vera baashai?” Aunt said, Hindi, English, Tamil, and Sanskrit. The lady accompanying the man tells him, “Just write Tamil and English. Others are irrelevant.” Aunt insists for a moment, then gives up because the milk boiling on the gas is more important and the man taking the information down is refusing to relent. Then comes religion. He asks, “Hindu, Christian or Muslim?” And my aunt says Hindu. And that’s that! After a few more questions, he thanks us and leaves. This incident left a bitter taste in my mouth. First things first, you cannot and must not restrict the number of languages recorded in the census. For me, there would be at least 4 apart from my mother tongue, in which, incidentally, I am not fluent. Secondly, the issue of religion. Religion is a personal affair. People must not be forced to select their religion from a drop-down list, figuratively speaking. As an adult, I must ideally be allowed to declare myself as atheist, agnostic or Bah’ai if I please! Also, the religion of my parents must not automatically become mine! What about inter-faith marriages? The children should be allowed to remain sans religion until they are old enough to decide what they want to be. I don’t know if the census take into account such special cases, but I do know that the officials coming to collect information are very often quite rigid in their approach.
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On a different note, I finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Gut-wrenching, yet hopeful. Some scenes describing the Taliban era are scary, intense and hit you like a ton of bricks. What it must take for a man to write so sensitively about two female characters! For a minute, I was transported into a world where being a woman is the biggest curse of them all. I was so emotionally affected at times that I had to put the book down and do something else. But, the book is so gripping that you can never stay away for too long. I would like to read it again, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach that again.
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Finally, now that the euphoria of President Mobarak’s exit has died down, can we please get a bit more practical? Egypt has a long way to go before it becomes a fully-functional democracy. Gloating over successes even before the success is total is not only premature, but also carries with it the risk of people losing focus on the task at hand. Let’s not forget that it is still the military that is ruling. And a military in power is never a good thing. For now, the only thing we can do is wait and watch. And hope that for their own sake, the Egyptian people manage to set up a functional democracy.