Shaadi aur tumse? Hurmph, Kabhi Nahin

okay. enough of moping around, any more moping and my mom will use me to mope the floor. ( I know that was a bad Pj - you dont have to tell me that).

After a week of realising that hitting the window pane in the middle of the night isnt exactly the "Einstein" thing to do; Ive learnt my lesson .... the next time, the doc says, she will stab me in the heart and end it once for all. Ive given her enough sleepless nights already.

As I told my friend's friend over the phone a couple of days back, "im ready for human contact again". The weather man told me Antartica is too cold to visit now; so I guess Im stuck in namma bengaluru with a monster of a cold (again - sleepless nights to my doc).

The bacterial infection relapse I suffered the whole of last to last week and last week dies down today, my PMS is done with, and Im back to being who I am - an infuriating pain in the neck of the humankind.

Im subjected to yet another attempt of throwing me to the lions.
My aunt has some piping hot fresh horoscopes and photographs, the women huddle and discuss them as happily as a gang of teenage girls would fall over for a poster of a nude John Abraham.

My mom shows me the snaps enthusiastically and gives me a voice over as I glance the snap -

"he's a computer engineer, he's in the US, he owns a house there"
and then
"he's a CA, has a nice practise, it seems he's the tax consultant to most of the movie stars here - he has two houses too!"
and then -
"he looks good - see! he's an MBA, you'll like him Im sure you will!"

Im disinterested. I just grunt and shrug and let them be, for their own sake, I pray none of them end up marrying me - and as for the choices, I no longer trust my judgement, so ask them to pick one.
"how" my mom sighs - "its your life, I dont want you running back to me every second day"

"okay" I shrug, pick up the four snaps and do a 'inky-pinky-ponky' , this gets their goat.

The aunt is a leech though, wont let me go - "dont let the past bog you down magu*- you can get anyone you want ... err....he just has to be a fat thats all"

I smile, "anyone I want?" I ask "A-N-Y-O-N-E" accompanied by a smile

Now, everyone's interested, for once I talk about marriage.

"yes, do you err... umm... okay- do you want to marry someone without the horoscopes being matched?"
(the word "love" is taboo - the "without the horoscope" is a euphism, as though love is a nude Mallika Sherawat and needs some clothes and fast)
" well, you said anyone"

the restrictions are doled out -
"no christians, no muslims, no lower castes" they say with their prim and proper brahmin noses wrinkling.
I laugh out loud; I hate their hypocrisy "its like hobson's choice - I'll only be left with who you want"

"no no, whoever you want to marry - as long as you Do get married "
"okay then, Im in love with this guy, but he doesnt love me"
"thats okay, we can talk to his parents"
"well, they are kind of, not of our status and ... err, I dont think they are brahmins as well, you see"
"for you my munchkin, we'll bear him"
"okay, I'll book the tickets to Bombay then."
"Bombay??!!!???!!" (it sounds like a continuous screening of Neal and Nikki while subjected to a background music of nails scratching the blackboard when 4 women scream it out in unison)
"yeah, thats where Abhishek Bachchan lives"

" I hide under the bed before they can hit me with their handbags and belans"

The women are so irritated now, but the aunt wont let go, she thinks the right questions havent been asked yet.
She peeps under the bed, entices me out with a bait of a packet of Lays.
As I sit there happily eating Lays and putting on more and more weight, my aunt drops the bomb - "magu what kind of a man Do you want?"
"I told ya aunty - Abhishek Bachchan, me and Aish will share him, I can be accomodating when I want to be" I giggle,
She threatens to take away my Lays, now, its a Code Red situation.

I shrug and give her the most honest answer - "I dont know"

Honesty, I realise isnt always the best policy, when the Lays is yanked away from me.
Bhabhi, (my fav one BTW) sneaks up another packet from behind, and Im happily munching away on the packet, this time, under the bed again -Im taking no chances.

But seriously. The mess ups in my life due to marriage far outnumber the advantages of marriage.

I wont say its not an enticing proposition, I mean,I can watch all the saas-bahu serials and unleash my learning on my saas, I can snigger behind my sasur's back and call him a budhdha sanki. I can take over the hubby's credit cards and buy myself a nice BMW with an inbuilt library in it. hmmm... not bad.

but who do I want to marry - well, Im straight, so it has to be a man, cant marry Julia Roberts even though she looks like a million dollars ( and probably earns the amount every other day)

Most men my mom thinks Im hopelessly in love with are my friends. She's used to me saying "mamma , he's a friend, once again you say stuff like that, Im gonna make him marry YOU"

Most men Im hopelessly in love with, are married or dont even know of my existence - like Abhishek Bachchan for starters, and even Brad Pitt! *sigh*

Most men who like me, dont excite me - the other day ( a couple of years back that is) the cabbie who drives me home proclaimed his undying love, I got him thrown out of his job - I think his love towards me is dead and long buried, with fireants eating the skeletal remains of the love.

Most men who are marriage material are already taken ... I wont mention names (for the sake of their own safety - or, hmm, wait) - Ranny for one is :P

Most men my family thinks is "right" for me are men who are everything that a man 'should' be- somehow its that perfection that puts me off.

Ohh, look at X (lets name all the Mr right guys that) - he's so responsible! He's been taking care of not only his own pets, but also the family and the extended clan of the entire race of related animals on the planet and the next solar system too

Ohh, Mr X earns a whopping 23441234123 rupees / Dollars / watever currency every day?/month?/year?/watever time period - you WILL never find a better guy than him
Mr X is a brahmin to the core - he knows every word of the vedas and the upanishads and he even knows how to perform a yagna standing upside down!

Mr X is an alumini of the IIM/IIT/ some amreeki university - CANNOT find a better guy I swear.

Mr X's family is the most orthodox kannada smartha brahmin you can find, his great-great-great grandfather was the guy who used to recite the mantras that relieved the kings of their constipation.

Wow! Mr X looks like a model husband, doesnt he?

As he sits there woodenly, positively embarassed squirming in his seat and eyeing those sweets on the table, he is being paraded as the best, needless to say similar nonsensical stuff is being doled out about me.

I sit there, looking at him, barely suppressing a giggle as my mind conjures up a PJ- I think is he the man I want to spend my life with? Is it him I want to grow old with? Is it to him that I want to tell my dreams?

Honestly - I dont know.

It all seems complicated, the family seems to have worked it all out - Family, education, money, status,looks - in that order - everything is like a piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

I though, am more of a random person. I dont seek perfection. I know Im imperfect; I know me - very well too, to want any perfection. All I seek is someone who will tolerate me the rest of my life without committing suicide with a suicide note that implicates the pandit who got us married.

Responsibility means two hoots to me. I live in today. I enjoy this moment, I do things now, I dont plan, I dont alter anything, everything just is. So what if he forgot to get vegetables home? So what if he skipped a payment of the electricity bill a month? Its not as though the heavens will open up and swallow us, or will they? As long as he doesnt forget to get condoms, Im okay with his irresponsibility.

Money I accept makes many things, but ask money to get my dad back for me. Fuck it man! Money is next to nothing. Money cannot reimburse the evening I spend missing the man, money cannot give me back the smile I wanted on his face instead of the perpetual frown in the pursuit of earning money, money cannot replace those moments I spend with our family, money is essential, and it should be kept that at - being an essential - it should not be transformed into an obession, a fix without which one cannot do.

To marry me, its important that he's a man, not a brahmin. Its important that he loves me, not that he knows the vedas by heart, its important he holds me when I need him, not that he can perform N yagnas and sacrifical oblations. It is important that he knows my mood swings, my stupider than stupid jokes, my total lack of direction, my lack of social etiquette, my teddy bear and my doll, my friends and the relation I share with them, the fact that I will never let him go , no matter what and he needs to know that Ive had my share of boyfriends and crushes which have been crushed (yeah - Abhishek married Aishwarya)

I wont marry a man for the long tag of degrees he has after his name on the name plate - I will marry him for who he is, I will not care if he's the Sultan of Brunei or a Ramen eating Stanford nerd, I will love him for who he is, a human being, with all his imperfections and faults, I will want him to be mine.Chuck false pretensions outside the door, I will marry him so that I can live with him, sleep with him, wake up with him, make him his tea and kick his ass when he burns my dress while ironing, and when we are old - to fight with him, when he steals my dentures to eat Lays - not because he's a stuck up scientist in NASA. NASA can go to the andromeda galaxy for all I care.

Somethings arent done for "perfection", some decisions arent taken because they are "right", some actions need not be judged, justified or analysed ... marriage is that to me, which sadly is a paradoxical opposite to the family.

In short I will a man whom my dad would have approved of, a man who reminds me of my dad and who can be my dad when I want him to. For my dad was all that and much more.

Well, though I guess they are all a school girl's pipe dreams, the romantic side of me taking grip on the grey cells;
Time to do a reality check, and back to planning Aishwarya's murder, second hand hua to kya hua, hain to abhishek bachchan naa :)