Yesterday was like any other day and I looked myself in the
shaving mirror that men on the move or mis-managed guys have. Everything looked
perfect, all pimple marks were right in place as if settled permanently like
dark spots on the landscape as slums in our cities. Self-appointed boosters of
others morale will blame me of discriminating against myself and no social
activist would give a damn as nobody takes a short and poor man seriously. OK!
Not that poor, yet I can assure you that I do not matter in their scheme of
things. Nobody listens to me and every time I have to say something I write
posts and blogs which nobody understands. The reason could be because I do not
talk to people except when its’ unavoidable or makes for an interesting
conversation but that does not count as speaking!
But then I am a guy and its’ OK to have a few marks on faces and
yet get arranged married to someone who watches ‘Balika Vadhu’ as long as I had
hair over my head. Of course I have hair, only yesterday did I get a haircut
and the barber who claims to be a stylist charged me a full fee. Had I not had
a healthy bunch of hair why would have the barber claiming to be stylist charge
a full fee. So, I have hair. The proof of work ethics was right at the top of
my scalp, strands of hair diminishing in number, lifeless and without a stand.
Like leaves that are about to fall, only stuck with glue to avoid falling. A
little deeper digging into the sparse hairline provided evidence of the
R******’s work. In his attempt to be just, he had cut some hair strands (read
all that was left) too short that the scalp was visible. It was still OK! There
was no reason to freak out even if god had given me departing hairline over
pimple marks. The almighty had also given me good hair days when they long,
thick and abundant.
This was me, 26, with receding hairline and pimple marks of the
kind which ‘No Marks’ can do nothing about. If you thought that god works in
mysterious ways, here is the proof of him being mathematical like everybody
else in the world. Nobody cares for the meaning; there is a formula for looking
at everything. Derivations for every new situation but invariably selfish
number who speak only about themselves govern the affairs of the world. God had
compensated for all the low marks that I got all my life. The no of marks on my
face put together with my average scores in exams would give me enough to have
beaten all those lifeless nerds and geeks. I still wonder how they never felt
anything, lifelessly solved their arithmetic problems without stopping for
anything as there was no time to do that. There were enough problems in all the
books put together which they could not humanely solve and a constant guilt was
weighing their soul. And it was heavy enough to be seen on their faces.
But something seemed characteristic about this new found hair
falling reality that had uncanny sense to it. And then I thought about things
in my life. I had a room which I used only when I wanted to clean. Apart from
the house, I could call the job mine as I always reported before my peers,
juniors, seniors and left after everybody. I virtually lived in office. It is
another thing that I did not work all the time. Also, I was coming back home
only to sleep and get ready for another day. And how could I not think about
the fact that I ate out all the time not because I did not knew how to cook and
did not feel like cooking for myself.
The troubling fact file of my life made me seek answers and I
logged into FB for deeper introspection. My worst fears were coming true as my
friend list had more men than women, in fact women had become an endangered
species in my friend list. I had been blocked alike by the girl who mattered
and the one who did not. The only sunshine that illuminated the friend list
stayed probably because she was having pity on me. May be I was wrong but this
is how I would like to think. I had become so irrelevant that girls were even
unfriending me by mistake. Something was wrong with me or everything was wrong
as I thinking all this at 10AM on 31st January. 10AM, time to go office no
matter what day!
The fabulous February was right there and I was thinking about
these things. February, the month with the day of love, Valentine’s Day. So
what if I had remained single. The first half of February had always filled me
with hopes and an equal disappointment for the remaining. But something was not
right this time and I wrote about my life’s situation on a piece of paper. It
was already burdened with the too many updates that I make and was crying for
help. How inconsiderate of it! After all it had managed to put up with all I
was to post. Why couldn’t it happily solve something which looked like another
opportunity of deriving insight from data. An opportunity to do some Analytics,
which everybody claimed to do and some like me made a lot of noise about but
never understood what the hell it was! Anyways I wrote on that piece of
paper and put an effort to find where I had written. But then as always I found
what I wrote. And my heart sank to see what was written not only on that piece
of verbally abused paper but the wall. No, not the facebook wall! I mean the
proverbial wall.
I can forget my name but I remember my updates. Almost all of
them. Everything started coming back to me, the extra room, the eating out, the
extra hours at office all lead to where no guy wants to go. Marriage! But then
it was me, a guy whose childhood dream was to marry. While other boys of
standard 9 chose funky clothes in the fashion show, I chose to dress like the
groom. The receding hairline meant I was the SRK of Kal Ho Naa Ho. Like the
protagonist in the movie, my life was figuratively going to be over. OK! I have
more years if I start using medication but then life was on a death row.
I gave it a little thought and it made full sense. Marriage made
sense! Now when I read what I just wrote, I can’t believe myself. The extra
room could be used. It would take almost the same time to cook for two as for
one and I would start cooking again. The rest of the problems also started
solving themselves and the only one which gave me ‘No Solution’ was the
original problem of hair loss. But then a mind messed up with the thoughts of
marriage does not think rationally. And thus I headed for the place where
marriages are made, the internet, Shaadi.com and Bharat Matrimony. These were
highly recommended sources and one of them was endorsed by Chetan Bhagat,
writer of the fictions which would sound like your real life.
Thus, I filled the necessary details which promised to bring me closer
to meeting the right partner. In the process I came across ‘My Partner
Preferences’ and I wrote with all the sincerity and heart I wrote my poetries.
Like a teenage romantic who felt that his Partner Preferences would have the
appeal which would attract his soul mate and other attractive women from the
crowd. I wrote my Marriage Proposal aka My Partner Preference
My Partner Preference
‘I am a dead tree who would end up becoming only coal, not even
those with high calorific values. I am one ogwho produce more smoke than
heat. I look for a woman who would foolishly believe there is diamond inside
and push me hard to be a diamond and yet never demand diamonds!
I look for a woman who would complete me. I look for a woman who
would be different from the crowd, someone who is not exactly what I seek and
yet so me, different enough to make opposites attract. I look for someone who
short circuits my brain, from a predominantly left brained Engineering – MBA
type to the guy who wants to write and express including a lot of poetries
about her.
I look for someone who wins the hearts of my family and makes me
love hers as much as I love mine. I look for someone who makes me feel like an
innocent kid again, and KiD-ish as it may be, bear the kids of the man who is
kid again. Kids who have almost all of her looks and a few of mine. I look for
someone who makes my childhood dream of marrying come true and instill the
dream of marrying someday in all the kids that attend my marriage ceremony.
I look for someone who not only does make all the girls who
rejected me curse their luck but also give them a sense of security that the
poor guy finally met someone who ended his search. I look for someone who is so
different from all of them yet so much of them. I look for someone whom I want
to spend the rest of my life with, settle down yet want to elope with every
day. I look for someone who not there but still I look for you.'
But then real life is so different from blog and I saved my
feelings for the blog. Someday it will make up a romantic sequence in some book
or movie but as far as bride search is concerned I filled the template ‘Hi,
this is Kuldip Jayaswal. I am a marketing professional who lives life to the
fullest.. hope you would like to know more about me, if you do please
leave a message’.