The Proposal

Hello folks! Hope you enjoyed my previous blogs. When I went to Bangalore for my internship, it so happened that during the weekdays I was all by myself most of the time. At work, I was the only intern in my department and the others in my department were all seniors and were loaded with work or were always discussing things about life and this went over my head. And even when I got back to my PG, I was surrounded by a lot of strangers and for the first time in life I didn’t make any good friends there. They all belonged to a totally different planet or maybe I was the odd one. So when I retreated to my shell and remained silent for hours, my brain actually started working after a long time and 'bhavana' attacked me. And thus a few stories were penned down.

So the topic for the day is my wedding!

I do not know if I should write this story, as I am of the "marriageable age" but if you get to see it then it means that my censor board- Amma, has approved and has let me post this ;)

Let me start blabbering! And no arguments from you people, coz I am speaking what’s in my mind and I am not here for a debate. All the crazy things written below are for purely entertainment purposes :D

When debates are held on the topic "Love marriage vs arranged marriage" we see that there are n number of points for and against both of them. I am neutral when it comes to love and arranged marriage as I believe that its all dependent on the participant individuals and the surroundings if their marriage would work or not.

 But when I look at the faces of strangers on my matrimonial page and wonder, "Would he be the father of my kids?" (I know I shouldn’t think so much, but when you have decided to opt for arranged marriage, then what I said is true na? Some stranger who you see through the matrimonial site or through some mutual acquaintance is going to father your child!) I feel, it would be damn convenient if you knew your future husband atleast by face.

For eg: If I was told I was to marry Ranveer Singh next month, I would panic about having to marry a total stranger, but atleast I wouldnt have to waste time trying to remember how this guy looks like!! In the case of arranged marriage, you dont really get to hang out with the guy a lot provided you both are in the same city or there is a lot of time between your engagement and wedding and the biggest factor of all-your parents must be okay with it( or you should be daring enough to sneak out :D ) So thats the biggest advantage of marrying a friend or acquaintance or neighbour or relative or similar. You know his face!

And about knowing the person, I have nothing much to say there as I have heard that all men( & women) wear this PERFECT mask before the wedding happens and once the thing is official would just remove the mask part by part and you get to see a total stranger! I know just the theory, would confirm this once I marry.

So I am currently in this stage where a vast majority of my friends have married and have kids and even the guys have started getting married. I am just 24, and independent working women have 3 more years of time to actually settle down with their job and career and think about marriage to an equal. But the sympathy filled looks of the people around me and the frequent calls Amma gets from my prospective in-laws are all making me bored to death.

If what Pooja believes in Dil to paagal hai is correct, "Kahin na kahin, koi na koi, hamare liye zaroor banaya gaya hai", then "My Guy" is out there somewhere. And I desire to give him one tight slap when we meet! How romantic! I know ;) I have a good reason for this.

In the quest to find him, life has presented me with enough experiences that I feel he is responsible for majority of it. If atleast he gave some assurance that he actually exists, I could have thrown it on the faces of all those people who look at me with sympathy and also those people who tell me, "Enough of enjoyment. Go get married!" “Why are you still single?”Hello people! Do you think that I have a long queue of suitors at my front gate daily and I reject all their proposals as they do not look like Hrithik Roshan? Or do you expect me to approach guys and ask them to marry me. Dont you all feel that, when it is time, my marriage will happen and that it is not in my hands to marry asap? (Not that I want to hitch myself anytime in near future :D ) And not to forget my perfect horoscope which does not match with any of the nice guys out there!!

Amma has put my profile on the matrimonial site and we get requests and calls and messages daily. Thankfully I have not yet met any guy in person or talked to anyone, all thanks to my horoscope which is on strike and would not match with any of the wonderful guys we like! And we have a lot of weird people out there

Some of them are worth mentioning. Here you go:

   1. Mr. Dasettan

            You all know that the talkative and irritating me  is confident about ending up with a man like Das from Bangalore days. One of the first proposals we got were from a similar kinda guy. One look at his foto and I knew he would be damn matured and reserved and would have nothing to say to me except, "Grow up Gayathri" He was the kind of guy who your parents would trust and he looked like someone who invested in shares and ate food with forks and spoons. He looked like he doesn't own one funky colored T-Shirt. Life would have been black and white. And silent! The guy wouldnt argue and might even practice yoga. A photo speaks volumes :P But horoscopes didnt match. End of story.

   2. Mr. Pamban

            I am not sure if I am right, but if you observe the pics of a person in the matrimonial sites, you get a small idea about the kind of person he is. Generally people make it a point to keep their best photos in the matrimonial site- atleast I did :P

So one particular proposal came, the profile was perfect. NIT and IIM and well paid job. In the first pic, he looked like he doesnt give a damn about the world- pacha malayalathil paranjal oru puchcham poleyulla expression. The next foto- He had a snake around his neck. Wow! Kollalo! Daring aadmi hai ;) But I smelt a show off somewhere. Then came another pic, with a tiger cub. I was reminded of the movie Om Shanti Om, where SRK plays with a tiger and says, "Ohh..tiger cat! Naughty cat, naughty cat.Yenna rascala mind it!" Satyam paranjal chiri vannu. Why all these pics in  his matrimonial profile? Luckily or unluckily, our horoscopes didnt match and so all my dreams of going abroad and posing with snakes and lions were shattered there! Nammakk pattideyum poochedeyum koode foto edukkana vidhi.

   3. Mr. Perfect

            Being an MBA student, many matrimonial profiles remind me of marketing lessons I have learnt. Our son is the best in the world/ He is a very smart, handsome, brilliant......,etc etc

Come on- marry my son! He is the best in market. Additional features : My son is a trained classical singer, he has done MBA in the best colleges of US. He works for a Fortune 500 company. Hurry Hurry! Offer till my son's single status lasts!

I really get scared seeing such profiles. The guys are portrayed as being soooo perfect that it scares me. The crazy mind of mine starts thinking- What could be wrong with him? He is soo damn perfect! Womanizer? Gay? Underworld? Drug addict? Which one of this would he be?

So now this guy had a tick mark in all the entries of my Mom's checklist of “My perfect son-in-law”! I was not very keen on this guy coz his profile was damn perfect! I just hoped that my horoscope saves me. But alas! Even his horoscope was perfect and our horoscope match score was 8/10!! That was the beginning of an era! His Dad called and I was hoping he was rude or behaved so badly that Amma would hate him. But No! He had the best behaviour. He spoke for about 10 minutes about his son, who was the youngest to hold his current position and blah blah smart blah blah ambitious! B-A-D-A-Y-I!!!

 So both families checked horoscopes and they said that the guy was on a tour and so he hasn’t seen my profile yet and that they would inform us as soon as he comes back.( I guess he went to Antarctica or maybe some deep sea to explore oil reserves where you don’t get internet connectivity!)

We waited for more than a month. I doubted if the guy got caught in the Bermuda triangle and he never came back L And Amma messaged to enquire. The Mom talked this time and she was like this ideal Mom-in-law. “We loved your daughter, but our son hasn’t come back yet. We will be coming to India in Feb. So we will come over then. The wedding can be held after June.”Which part of the above conversation means that they are not interested? But that was it! They never called!! :P My Amma was devastated :P We all cornered her and she became the target of all our jokes! 

And then last month, the element of my Mom’s tears was in his FB profile- HE WAS ENGAGED! And the girl was a Chemical Engineer like him. I smelt a love marriage somewhere.

So one request to all the committed people- Oru nivarthiyillathe matrimonialil profile kodukkunna daridravaasikale oru mathiri Sasiyakkaruth. If you plan to marry ur respective bf/gf please don’t create matrimonial profiles and if you create please don’t respond to any requests! Kaalu pidikkam! :P

   4. Mr. IES

Proposals came in every now and then, but the whole while, Achan made no comments. But then came in a proposal from Palakkad. B.Tech from one of the best colleges of Kerala and then IES- Yes Indian Engineering Services. Achan was really very happy. Central govt. Sneham!

His Mom was really very keen on this proposal. She kept on calling saying that they checked horoscopes and asked us to check the same.

And his house was near one of my most favourite temples of Palakkad. My stupid mind started its imagination- Maybe he is the one and maybe that’s why I liked the temple so much. I was destined to visit it every now and then :P

Then I saw his profile. He was one serious guy. 2 pics- No smile! Slim guy!!! And he worked in KERALA!

Look! Its not that working in Kerala is a bad thing. But my understanding is that, as distance from home increases, you will be missed more.

Lets look at this scenario. I get married to an NRI. Most probably, I would visit home only once a year. At max twice a year. And when I visit, I would get VIP treatment. All my favourite dishes on the table. When someone asks Achan about me, he would say, ”Chinnu is coming from Antarctica for a month’s vacation.” Wow!! Then he would have to take a day’s leave to come to the airport and receive me! We would Skype daily. And everyone might even cry on seeing me (Not coz I will pester them till the end of my vacation! ;)

Now let us look at the scenario on hand. My husband works in Kochi which is just 4 hours away from Calicut. If I want I can come home on Tuesday evening after work and then go back on Wednesday morning and still go for work. Boring! I can come home whenever I want( which is a good thing) but where is the glamour? I would come by train and no one would even come to receive me! I come home in an auto rickshaw and then enter and people would not even look up from their work. No one would miss me, coz hey you are never really gone. You come home every other weekend Chinnu!! We don’t get a chance to miss you girl! B-O-R-I-N-G!

And so I was disappointed about this Kerala working guy. Achan was happy about that too ( Railway station is closer to my house than airport! And he needn’t take leave too!!) Another reason why I disliked him was because he was thin. I am fat and I had taken this oath that I would marry only someone who weighed atleast 10 kgs more than me! This guy looked so damn slim! And I had no proof if he had teeth. He did not smile in both the photos given in his profile. I started hyperventilating! I hoped that our astrologer would say that the horoscopes would not match. But both the days Achan went to meet him, he was not there. I thought I would die of high blood pressure.

The guy worked for the Railways. Day and night Mummy talked about the advantages of marrying him.

   1.       You get to travel all over India free of cost in the first class compartment (The guy who doesn’t even smile would not be interested in petty things like travelling, right? )

   2.      You would have your own quarters! ( And I thought I would be staying in my Burj Khalifa apartment :P )

   3.      He would have a good pension (Wait!! Don’t go that far!!)

And my friends had other things to say:

  1.       You will have to get my tickets confirmed and book emergency quota for me

  2.      Gayathri, he might even help you to get a job in the railway ticket counter

  3.      Your kids can study in the Railway school ( Eh :O )

My friends started teasing me. When we have team lunches in Mainland China and Barbeque Nation and wear formal suits to work, you would wear a cotton saree and go to Indian Coffee House for team lunch!

They made me look like someone who worked day and night, did household chores and went vegetable shopping while my boring husband did a 9-5 job, travelled in 1^st class, came back and shouted at me and even snored at night :P

It was like I was one of those 70s heroine in whose house nothing good happened and she stayed married and put up with all the torture just so that her kids would have a father.

Tooooo much right? But if you know me, you know how my over-imaginative brain works. I mentally burnt all my jeans and sleeveless tops in those two days as I would never need them :P We would be staying in Kerala right?( I am just joking. No offense meant. Even I belong to a middle class family and this kind of normal life is really a blessing in disguise according to me )

Then came the verdict from our astrologer.. the horoscopes matched perfectly!! TADA TADA!! Goodbye pub dreams! Goodbye blue jeans! Goodbye Goa!

The Mom was informed and she called immediately. The questions begin.

His Mom: How tall is Gayathri? (PLEASE REFER PROFILE)

His Mom: Is she fair? She looks fair in her pics. Then why did you write wheatish?

My Mom: She is not very fair and is not dark too.

His Mom: Is she brown?

My Mom: *speechless*.

His Mom: Please send more pics. I have a doubt about her colour.

Brown? Racist Madame. How dare you? You son looks starved. What would you call him then? I felt like Nagavalli. Unakku evalo dairyamiruntha ippove enkan munnadi vanthu nippen? Unne njan konne un rakthathe kudiche omkaranadanamiduven!!

But this could be a good idea for a Fair and Lovely advertisement right? 

She never called after that! I have absolutely no idea why. Maybe because I was brown!!

     4.      Mr.Uncle

He was 57. Older than my Dad. He sent us this message and it said that he was really rich and he was looking for a soulmate. The message was something like this. “If you can suggest anyone you know. I don’t mind if she is divorced or has kids. I am ready to provide for them as well. Age is also not an issue I am a very rich person” Blah blah blah! Basically he wanted to marry a woman. That’s not much to ask for. But why tell me?

It was like I am the wedding broker! Uncleji.. I myself am looking for a soulmate and now I need to look for a bride for you too? Spare me sir!

          5.       Mr. Expectations

This guy sent us a message. And I checked his profile and was shocked. More than he wrote about himself, he has written about his future bride. It was scary. Basically she had to be perfect. His ideas and concepts about the girl were all made clear. He was a control freak and he liked things in place and everything should be clean and so on. He needed a housekeeper and not a wife. And her height should be atleast 5’6. So that she can clean the fans and ceiling?

Sadly I did not match any item on his checklist. And the last sentence he added was: Even if she is not all this, I am ready to accept her. She just has to have a heart ready to love. C-H-E-E-S-Y!!

His description made me feel so damn inferior and the message looked like he was being kind enough to accept someone like me who did not match any of his expectations. People!

     6.      Mr. Lover Boy

Something which happened a few years back. A friend of mine. It seems I was his idea of an ideal life partner( Nice selection :P But a moment of silence for his idea! ;) ) The guy did not have the guts to talk to me about it directly. Text messages were perfectly fine! :P And as far as I am concerned, if you love me, you should have the guts to atleast come up to me and say it on my face. Maybe Im old fashioned, but all other proposals are just KKPP-Kittiya kitti poyal poi ;) according to me. So this guy failed to impress me.

 Then finally, he went as far as asking his parents to get our horoscopes matched. God bless him! And when they didn’t match, his so called love flew out of the window. I found it very funny because as soon as he got to know about this horoscope mismatch then he started behaving all funny. It was like he was scared that I will stalk him and ask him to marry me :P Or maybe the horoscope talked about death if we got married. Whatever it was Mr.Lover boy was scared to death. Itre ullu!!

And the parents too were really worried and they went as far as asking my Mom to ask their son to forget me. Wow! I felt blessed! :P  But little did they know that the son ran away like I had plague as soon as he knew about the horoscope mismatch!! :P Our generation has not lost its values! :P

And then within a week he announces his engagement to a girl! I guess the guy thought that I would end up at his doorstep with his text messages and ask him to marry me and thereby he jumped at the next best suited horoscope which came his way!! ;)  

Paavam! Jeevanil kothi ullathondalle? Horoscope mismatch is injurious to health :P I still wonder where the love he kept professing for a year went all of a sudden! Feeling Sasified :P Oh my horoscope! Y do u do this to me!

These are some of the specimens I met. And the good ones, the normal ones(the lucky ones) had horoscopes which clearly shooed away someone like me who could eat their head with my non-stop chatter.

 Trust me, there are a lot of sensible, nice and normal guys who don’t go on marketing themselves. Like a good advertisement, they speak less but that speaks volumes. The photos they post speak for themselves. No weird selfies with pouts ( I hate men who pout!! Its soo girlish) I doubt if few of the guys have eyes. Coz like Mammootty in Rajamanikyam, they have goggles in each and every foto they post. Some write they are teetotallers but have pics posted with drinks in hand :P Some cannot live without jackets! And some have a thing for posting pics which have a foreign country as background, even though they work in the rural areas of Tamil Nadu.

Then then the latest joke is that many of the guys I see on the matrimonial site get married to girls I know ;) Just yesterday, I saw the wedding pic of one of the girls I know and the guy looked very familiar. Yes! I know him! I have seen him on the matrimonial site. :P It’s like my own private joke. Hey! I know your husband before you even met him!!Hahahaha(Villain style) :P

A wide variety of people out there! And after all arranged marriage might not be a bad idea. You get to choose from a lot of options which you filter and filter and filter and then do background check and so on. But whatever you do, it’s all about time. When it has to happen, it will.

Till then let’s crush on the handsome film stars or random strangers or even your friends’ bfs and look at the matrimonial profiles and attend the phone calls of all those wonderful men out there. Who knows? One of them would father your child :P

Irritating, right? That’s me :P

I am like this only :D

Reminder: The above post is just for entertainment sake. No hard feelings! And shoo shoo please no irritating comments!! I am already overloaded ;)