Stop Gap Arranged Marriage!!

 Every kid in this country grows up listening and trying to live up to Indian values and American dreams, balancing the act of techie engineer and a hot-shot MBA. Aspiring for Ivy League & ending up in ‘Main-Bhi’ league. So, while he might have been competent and scored well enough to have studied in the architecture department of the best institute in the country, the social stigma associated with less than engineering and a love at gun-point/second attempt with physics makes him pursue engineering at a non-descript college. The joke becomes sarcastic when you end up pursuing MBA, right below an architecture department, only seven years too late. But then you can-not make somebody love forcibly and thus the outcome in most cases is a wannabe writer. And this means of becoming a writer does not impress parents and they forcibly make the kids abort the idea before it becomes mature enough. . However, it does not end at that and you land in jobs that are not meaningful or better say you do not understand them at all. If you thought that the ordeal is over, there is this arranged marriage one has to fall in love with. Thus, YLOO (You Live Only Once) and that too with the wrong person. Life becomes a Stop Gap Arrangement rather than the latter being a method of joining the pieces together.

    So, while you always thought that this one is the last stop gap arrangement and after this I’ll do what I love, only to find yourself up against the great wall of ‘Stop Gap Arranged Marriage!’. It stands literally for everything we settle for in life and figuratively for whom we settle with. The literal part is also bitter in taste but can be swallowed with a glass of compromise but its the figurative part that leaves a lifelong bitter taste in mouth. Some of you may differ and somewhere and take sadistic pleasure in the fact that you are in love with somebody and being loved back as well ( the important, less probable and irrational part). To all those of you :Didn’t you go weak in the knees for Ranbir or Katrina/Priety/Anushka.?Or closer in your life, which we foolishly assume to be the only real thing because these plastic perfect people do exist. How about that girl/boy who was three years senior but looked as equally young at heart and body or even lower ?. Or the one you backed off your thoughts from just because they were committed and very loyal at that. No points for having given it a shot and then backing off with flowers for somebody else in hand and a cliche as favorite quote ‘Life is like that so better move on !’.

    The society also glorifies this act of succeeding in a compromise. And thus we live, suffocating the dream of being ‘Prince Charming’ of our respective Princesses. And the argument that GoI did away with the princely states and princes does not count. Hopping from one thing to another in search of that break and break-ups as well. The skewed sex and seats to student ratio makes sure that you wish and pray for break-ups and breaking even in the exam, more than your proposal being accepted. It’s more and less for girls, most of whom are brain-washed about the magical day of marriage and the life thereafter. The day which anoints instant Princess-ness(Also, there are some men who equally look up to getting married and that is being perfectly normal). More, as the disappointment is more and less as the ball is always in their court and they just want to frustrate the opponent or score a self-goal.  And thus fresh batches keep feeding the fire of Stop Gap.

   Thus we become cunning, willing to walk over a fallen man to get out of this mess as soon as we can. Man/Batsman down gives secret pleasure as batting is done in order and for most of us that order is decided democratically based on arguments that defy logic.  More break-ups means more fish in the sea, it might not help you but it will help somebody and that somebody could be you someday and thus you become devil’s /divorce advocate. And why not, let the best man be her man rather than him settling for becoming ‘Best Man’ letting her go by her wish and choose the wrong guy as in ‘Namaste London’ and saying goodbye to your dreams which has her as the permanent & only cast. The dream where she says yes blushingly to your asking her out. Enlightenment strikes and the girl wakes up from her day-dream & decides exactly at the time of the wedding ceremony that the guy she has feelings for is all fake and runs away, and that happens only in movies. In real life, she runs away from the right proposal and towards the Stop Gap Arranged Marriage. Sincere apologies to the fairer sex but you have this tendency to choose the wrong guy while the right one was standing right there, thereby becoming the biggest facilitator of ‘Stop Gap Arranged Marriage’, which I believe is the root of all problems including recession in IT. The guys are to be blamed equally for being the girl when it comes to expressing, forget expressing, even talking to the ones they want to. This wrong of arranged marriage cannot be done right as its meant to be for a lifetime.

    Thus, we settle for a compromise tantamount to locking the bull by its horns and it might prove fatal to control the bull called destiny. The practitioner of bull taming would tell you that its not an animal to be easily tamed and should have been better restricted to being the work-friendly ox. But the optimist in you does not want to starve an enemy and then defeat it. You want to take things head on as they come but then be ready to bleed if your miss to register the detail of their strong, pointed and long horns. 

    In our mechanized life, destiny has ceased to have meaning except for feelings and feelings are drying up to the extent for family and close friends and certainly the one with whom we end up. A stop gap is something which was not meant to be and owes its existence to the unavailability of suitable options. It’s a stage beyond which lies our destiny and before which lays our search. But then complacence fills in and  you start liking  what you are holding and the promised and promising person keeps waiting till we come.  The shorter its span the better it is. And thus there has to be too many stop gaps to reach where you want to be.

    A strange comfort is accorded in this arrangement and the world needs to be shaken out of its slumber .How about being a firm believer in love and that it happens and not done, step by step, beginning friendship,  and doing things you feel like/love . How about looking at things upside down?. We need to think more about what we want to be doing and take straight line paths than circuitous routes to reach there. Having said that, its always advisable to have a stop gap planned but do not jump to take it and should be the choice of last resort. It will save the day for you and you get some more time, more time to prepare even harder and take that jump out of the Stop Gap Arrangement.
 

    Going by the dictum of what is socially and has parental acceptance, is not always a recipe for misery nor is it always right. We are here to commit our fair share of more than 3 mistakes. Some of the times we should live in the moment and not in an arrangement. Also, when its not meant to be, Stop Gap Arranged Marriage becomes your savior/companion who/which will stand by you when nobody and that certain somebody does not. This piece in itself is a Stop Gap Arrangement and I am not very proud of it but then it’s a desperate attempt to get out of it. Good thing that the government has banned Child Marriage, waiting for the day when the stop the childish Stop Gap Arranged Marriage. Do what you feel like, screw the Stop Gap Arrangement !!

The Predicament of More than Friendship!!

Remember, that awkward (read all weather) friendship that you had with the girl/boy in high school, which became a fuel for gossip. Make no ‘Miss-take’, I am not talking about the guys became ‘Bro’s’ & girls became ‘Sis’ with. The predicament of more than friendship is that it happens and leaves you between the rock and a hard place. However, a few rebels find the experience comparable to the weekend trip to the Hard Rock café, flirting with the idea of more than friendship with a blessed minority everybody wants to be more than friends with and they, not interested.

  More than Friendship is believed to be a feasible solution only when certain criterion is met i.e. an equality where the girl is equally interested in the boy and invalid for all other situations. However, since more than friendship function is basically a summation, the equation should remain necessarily valid for all inequality cases. So, the result of the function should be friendship in these cases rather than a slow and gradual death of friendship which unfortunately is the case most of the times.

  More than Friendship is also misunderstood as an unexplained phenomenon where the sum of parts when tried to strengthen even more, leads to the collapse of the whole building. Structurally speaking, the likelihood of that happening is an impossible event. The only explanation to its occurrence could be weak foundations. The argument in defense of this irrational approach is gaining ground and has lead to confrontation between the residents of the Friends-land and their ability to coexist. In the name of ‘space’, we keep looking for mental cramp/camp. However, what underlie this human behavior are its insecurity and thus the urge to grab more land in the name of personal/breathing space, ending up encroaching on others. Widening our mental horizons is pushed to a corner by this imperialist expanse and as historic unplanned development stands witness to, prefer separate buildings each for club, gym etc. But then things began becoming complex with time, the more they were separated, the more they got entangled. 

  

   A constant fear of being left alone in the maze of the world makes us keep things separate so that in case of untoward events, we have people to fall back upon. And thus mushrooms, multiple small units of dwelling in blatant disregard of safety norms awaiting an emotional shake that will raze all of them to ground. Dwelling units, dotting the landscape all over, eating up the green space and slowly suffocating to death its residents.  In admiration of the enigma associated with a pack of cards standing in triangle formation,  we overlook the fact that someday it will suffer a setback, that will collapse it to the ground, and that too like a pack of cards.

    Man’s fantasy with basics of chemistry has him fixated and turns a blind eye to the civil engineering that lies beyond. One of the many ways to define love is in terms of chemical reactions and that’s the reason why chemistry tuition have always been a mystery for parents and had catalyst like properties for kindling love. The tricky part being, there is always a displacement reaction or environmental conditions that will break the bond of love you thought was unbreakable. And that happens due to a highly attractive Mr./Ms. ‘Awesome/Amazing’,  either on exposure or under impression of fictional novels. Thus there is a need to take ‘love’ ahead of the +2 standards to a Civil Engineers lab. Even though I am not entitled to or qualified  in that area, I assure you that it won’t be a blunder if I traverse into this unknown territory. It cannot move far beyond chemistry as the largest of structures owe their strength to the properties of elements they are composed of.   

      As in building any structure, we need to clear the ground first and then lay the foundations, the foundations of faith and trust.  Then we let the wall of friendship take shape over it. You build it putting one brick a day, and it’s a possibility with all the explanations, to sometimes fall in love with the structure. You start liking the structure, though its only a wall, but to you it becomes the finest work of architecture. To save it from the evil forces of nature, like any sane man or women would do, you try to cement it with the plaster of love. And roaring come the bulldozers of moral municipality, trespassing your property, razing it to the ground and it does not stop at that. You can't even complain. Their act is legitimized by the universal penal code of morality, society and all those words ending in 'ity'. The worst part is that the friend is always a party to this razing down of the playing field.

     Thus, more than friendship is like the goodies that comes along free, in festive season. The marketer may be hopelessly optimistic and keep the offer running for certain regions which do not fall for a higher end, upgraded product or in the promises it makes .The general line of thinking is that everybody who gives goodies is cheating or the product being offered is of cheap quality. If one does not want the goodies  fine !, someday some honey will find it a value for their money . But the complete refusal to buy shatters the imagination of the advertiser into tiny little pieces which can’t be pasted together by even Fevi-stick. No doubt, the marketer wants to sell but ignoring all his promotion and advertisement shall someday make him exit the market or worse shut shop altogether and its not a good thing for the overall market. The promotion will always say ‘Take me Home’ and it up to the buyer to decide whether they have space in their heart/house for it. The advertiser can’t and should not be brought to the book for having tried.

    When I look back from where and how it began, ‘The predicament of More than Friendship’ has run its course and has taken a very long and arduous course. It survived many checks and dams, fell from falls and still survived and its time now to say goodbye. Oh no !!, don’t you think that this river is going to die by calling it a day in some bay. This river was meant to join the purest and holiest of them all, with or without her permission, today or tomorrow or the day after. No matter how long it takes and where it takes it, its destined for it and shall wait for the terrain/moment that encourages/allows its merger or acquisition. Selfish as it may sound and as I am, my intentions are loud and clear, to be associated and bond with the sacred of them all and achieve instant God-ness.

    By no means, The Predicament of More than Friendship’ is a testament on the burning issue which had my fingers burnt more than once, but it certainly is my testimony and I stand by it !!

Complimenting .. a la Fast Bowling !!

   It’s been whiling away since long and thus I thought I revive my writing. Writing, my way of paying a tribute to things I love e.g. Cricket and being liked in return, what better can I ask for ?   

   And one of the ways of being liked is Complimenting. Complimenting, the way of praising someone leads to admiration in return not only because it’s the way ‘Complimentee’ pays back. This is how the human mind works, you praise a person and they think good and nice about you. It also helps that in our shy/conservative society, not many come out in the open and compliment, more so if it’s the opposite sex. Stories would be cooked up as fast as in a Roadside Restaurant and thus you camouflage the ones you mean by putting too many of them for too many of them.

  Its interesting how things which exhibit common traits are strikingly similar in this country(more so when you have both on offer and not many takers). Complimenting /Asking Out is very much like fast bowling, an endangered species in this country. The more you like the Batsman/Girl, the more you want to clean bowl them and in this urge & you try bowling from as closer distance as you can and hence likely to over-step. This over-stepping meets with a ‘NO’ to your expectation of ‘Yes, I do !!’ . The changed rules of the game means the batsman gets a as free hit, thereby resulting in one more opportunity to bowl them out and hence a silly yet desirable proposition for the bowler. Shocking as it may sound, free hit is a desirable proposition in Complimenting, and you thank heavens for being hit. You hit me or I hit on you, it’s a win-win situation either way. God bless the one who innovated ‘free hit’ !!

  As a fast bowler, one is entrusted with the responsibility of making the first strike into the enemy territory. But that duty which many would like to fancy comes with risks to the tune of Black Hawk Down. Same is the case with complimenting, you just go and bowl, mindfully forgetting the reputation of the batsman because it’s the delivery that claims the wicket not the bowler and it’s the wicket that goes down not the batsman. Having said that you would always like to question that why is there is there a bowling limit or the whole hoopla of T-20. I mean, there is a seductive pleasure to be derived from slowly making inroads into enemy territory and all of a sudden catching them by surprise than the game of Suicide-Suicide and see who blows themselves first.

  Fast bowling takes a toll over your body as excessive complimenting takes on your reputation. Thus, train so hard, so that you can bowl every next over and that too only because you don’t want too much of you and still be noticed. In line with the way our minds work, the things that are consistently in front of us go un-noticed and the ones whose frequency is the least is covered in General Knowledge/Current Events like Haley’s Comet, which comes every 76 years.

  It’s not only that you bowl well and its done, the wing-man/fielder has to do his bit. Messing up with the batsman’s mind by sledging (read commenting beyond approval) has been a successful trick since times immemorial. Thus, more than anything else, keep on doing stuff which would make the batsman throw his wicket in disgust like showing the middle finger in place of the index after claiming the victim or making an L which could mean ‘Love’ on this sticky wicket that Complimenting is. It might cost you dear or a dear someone if you take this approach but who wants the match fee or that someone who can’t handle the beamer which was meant to be a bouncer !!

 
Another mantra of becoming a good fast bowler is to pick your batsman.Don’t get fascinated by very tall ones who may look even better in high heels, they are the tail-enders by habit. The good batsman can be established by their looks, they are not very tall and of medium build, plays by the book and every shot in the book thereby making it tough to bowl. So are some women, easy to find (you can spot them in a crowd equally pretty friends) but hard to get.

  The big shots or the big shot hitter aka master blasters of this game, a 10 on 10 if we round off. 10 to the perfection of their jersey number. What makes these perfect 10’s what they are that they take they take 7’s after multiple rounding up as seriously as a 10, with due respect and this is what gives you the motivation to bend your back, beyond the spine can and reciprocate the gesture.

   Practice makes a man perfect & thus what is expected of batting maestro’s is to gracefully block the delivery/ dialogue with a ‘Not Good Enough’ rather than taking offence of the endeavour to go past their defence. ‘Block’ as in cricketing shot and not its literal meaning, by closing all channels of communication.

   When you get them, they will act disgusted, throw their bat in frustration and might even hate you but you know they will question themselves once in admiration about how did you go past that wall of defence.

   Too much in making a case of legitimising this abnormal complimenting. The million dollar IPL contract question is “Why should a legend pay heed to your compliment/request for net practice & why not prefer playing the taller, muscular looking friend for a knock?”. This predicament complicates itself with hordes lining up in Compliment-ary !! I mean why on earth would anyone compliment a girl with a cliché like ‘Beautiful’. Given the liberty and luxury, every woman would prefer being associated with things unique, ironically they shed their trait when it comes to ‘Compli’  .  Like in fast bowling, its never about how fast, all that matters is a lot of things like rhythm, pace, bounce, swing etc. Thus, it should not matter who wrote the cliché/compli first but sadly it does.  

  One of theory that has always been quoted in self-defence of even flirts is that it boosts up the confidence of the subject and thus is a noble thing and should be done on purpose, frequently. Thus , right to equality upholds that the poor cousin of flirting i.e. Complimenting be also seen in the same light and the convict be allowed a free run as its not even a crime, even if it is, consider the culprit as Juvenile.

  The thought that playing along with just about any bowler/admirer will ruin your game is misplaced. If this is how the big shots keep thinking, how would the promising ones, willing to keep their word, even the unsaid ones, ever get a chance ??

  This might qualify as foul play/pleading you case to the extent of drawing sympathy. Drawing parallels & pushing it off a work of geometry, but aren’t rules meant to be mended(too many of em) ??

   Its not an individual’s petition and probably a PIL. Thus, the writer should not be held accountable for things said in general/gender-neutral for the people. But, can assure of changing the game or the way he plays it. It’s the game that matters, no matter even if you have to be the wingman !!

Happy Complimenting: D 

Run-Up to d Valentine..Starting Pongal !!

You know its festival time when CoolDeep Thought comes across your notification and may be your mind, while it might be reducing the fun for a lot many of you, ‘life is like that, deal with it !’. 14th January is among the very few festivals in India, celebrated on a fixed date of English calendar. The serendipity of all these festivals falling on this day are actually double twins with many half brothers and sisters. Today and the night before celebrate the harvest of Kharif crop and thus prosperity in the form of different festivals across the country celebrating the harvest . Differing in their ways with the only common thing being that unfailingly they celebrate. Celebration in the name of name of Lohri, Makar-Sankranti, Guddi-Parva (Gujrat) or the very Tamilian ‘Pongal’. But my food has been coming from the kitchen/mess and thus I need not celebrate the sickle, slitting the throat of a paddy crop somewhere on the right or left of a highway. And thus I try to discover what can it mean to people like us. People who observe the only ritual on every festival of visiting Shopping Malls or just ‘Hanging Out’. 

           

  Other than slitting the throat of a plant which I am sure by the books of some ‘Oh..so Eco-Freindly, Nature Lover !’, somebody or the other is born on this day and thus can be the birthday of someone, you might have known. You got it right ! but i’ll deny that fact and camouflage it wait another that its the birthday of Hindu Calendar and not the daughter of someone who shared the name of an Ex-PM. But you cannot have so many new years and thus the importance of this day is to mark of the arrival of warmer days and not having to wear sweaters and body warmer (applies if you are from colder north). For studious types it signifies the arrival of the finest days when they would slog even harder and not only reap the dividends but root out the whole syllabus sapling from the proverbial pool of knowledge and restoring its life in the flower pot of examination sheet.

   But I am not one of those who ever lost sleep over syllabus. One ‘jhapki’ and that’s it! (the occasions when I broke my vow simply don’t count, my Blog-my Bragg !). For lovers most of whom end up being losers as they never strive for things everybody else does and wrongly branded loners, the day signifies the last lap in the run up to St Valentine’s Day. I cannot agree more with myself when I said in my FB update that ‘Lohri can be as much about celebrating the crop harvest as about proverbial celebration of harvesting your Love Crop, which you hope will be laden with fruits on St. Valentine’s Day. Having put Pampering Fertilizers (read Flirt) & Showering Compliments all year long. May be you could not say, may be you never will and are likely to remain silent even on V Day but your silence would speak loud n clear !’. Or even worse she has been somebody else’s valentine for years or adding insult to the injury, says ‘Yes !! (y) :D  <3 ;)’ to somebody else, and you start hating all the imaginary emoticons that across your mind with that thought. After all they are no Unclaimed Territory that u reach first and plant your flag & by planting I meant only literally ;) (so rest that dirty thought) . If anything, they are like the ports with vast international waters around them called socialization. Everyone should be allowed to sail, irrespective of TSD( Time Speed or Distance/Direction) without branding their course illicit-ous because which ship will call port is totally their discretion .But who cares !, while some may, I do not. One cannot like or have a crush only if the other person meets the critical criterion of being single. And thus there was another update and I agree even more to this ‘Its romantic to dance with a girl in dim light & its Lohri when you dance with a lot many, going round in a circle, throwing Puffed Rice, Popcorn n Munchies into d bonfire which flirt-ily illuminates and hides their faces in turns as if acting like a scarf to save from your harmful X-ray vision eyes, putting the spot light on different ‘Show Stoppers’ and making your heart skip a beat & pick a glass’. Thus we see how the Up-Date-errrr.. tries to bring out the romantic side of otherwise boring and mundane activity like a festival dedicated to harvesting. I mean as long as its not served on my plate, how it matters if it was harvested or is still standing. This will land me in a lot of disagreement with a lot many and probably thats what I want, being at the centre of controversy. It gets you the eyeballs.

  If that is the scenario in North, the Hindi heartland calls it Makar-Sankranti and celebrates by eating Til-Kut . Til(sesame seeds),black and white when binded together with fevicol by Kareena Kapoor becomes Tilkut. That is not true at all and jiggery is used in the edible version by the womenfolk of the family or ‘Panditji Mithaiwale’ but yes Kareena binds men together like fevicol,the little, black and white. Forget Kareena, she is not gettable and does not even have a mole. Mole, a ‘til’ is what beats even ‘tilkut’ this season. It occupies your imagination, even if its not where it suits the best, to the right or left of upperlip. These are not the things that go into any recipe prepared on this day or a blog written for it and its  hormones which are to blame for this predicament and are getting hyper, decide what keys you punch or the course hereafter which would follow the Ganges. A little eastward and you reach PaschimBanga or the earstwhile West Bengal, the innovator of Misti-Dohi (Sweet Curd). While my place has a tradition of eating flattened rice with not so Misti-Dohi as it would involve getting in IPR infringement issues with the Mamata Di herself and who wants that !. So we make it stealthily. Heard a lot about their sweet dishes but don’t know exactly how the bongs celebrate it. To our rescue there is always Google so please DIY !.

  Sorry about the slip of tongue which keeps wagering out of control in the direction of good food unfailingly. So our (me) lover in this part of the country keeps his faith in controlled fermentation (controlled flirtation) and waits for the the V day. To make good all the loss of dairy delicacy, he names her ‘Misty’ if not Shona (dairy analogy better be put to rest right there! ) to keep reminding himself how much is riding on the next 31 days to come, and the hurdles along the way. 

  East or West, the same storyline is fitted into a different plot. The tried and tested ‘peench ladana’(enatanglement) on Guddi-Parv in Gujrat goes hand in hand along with ‘Nain Ladana’ ,and many a Kite goes down while doing this, literally and figuratively. But then everything that fly’s in sky is not meant to land successfully, a living-dead example of this is Kingfisher & the movie Kites. Not many of you might be knowing that Kingfisher went down because they were being consistently cursed for employing boyfriends of peoples crush and girls thought that it was Nana Patekar in Kites, the movie. So what did kids like me did? I was a kid back then and there, and not very good at either ‘Nain’ or ‘Pench’ and thus did what any enterprising Gujrati would do, collect the Kites which have fallen and might have sold them as well. The better part was that these Kites came with ‘Strings Attached’ and thus adding cherry to the cake. Before you judge me, let me say this in my defence ‘I was young and Candy’s were too good to resist !’. Somebody elses ‘Kai Po Che’(gujrati meaning ‘I have cut’) became so awaited and a music to the ears as the movie with the same name and based on Chetan’s 3 Mistakes of My Life is. The sky should always be open safe as well, why should a fighter patangbaaz or for that matter Kinfisher Pilot should take down an innocent cycle-rider : )

  Down south, its celebrated over 4 days with the most prominent one being Pongal. Beginning with Bhogi when you burn very old stuff which may refer to relationships turned awry and thus looking up to the future which is here and now in only 31 days. The second day is dedicated to worshipping the Sun god, so that things remain bright and sunny and no gloomy dark cloud hover your endeavour. But then the thought of ZNMD( Zindagi Naa Mileegi Dobaara) strikes chord and our lover tries to observe life from close proximity of death by taming the bull of bearish thoughts on Jallikattu. And last but not the least, he goes on an outing to live life having understood the value of life. Having said and written that, I’ll end it here as even I have figured out what I am not going to do and its only 31 days to go. Goodbye :)   

  

Claimer : The blogger expresses personal feelings for the reader, who should give try to understand what he is trying to say as he can’t make it more obvious. It’s on purpose and meant to impress and all characters are portrayals are real him, somebody or the other(living and lovely).

Apology : Sorry about the blog in which I said, 007 din’t make out in Skyfall, in a way he did but you will agree that he is getting older and has cut down on his habits :P