The game of matrimony: Player profile

Type 1

Simple and modern family:

Recently, I came across a couple who called themselves a “modern” family. Reality check, you don’t have a gay couple with an adopted Asian kid, and neither do you have a 30-year-old Columbian mom with a bod to die for. And second to it, you are South Indians who will hang your son to death if he even looks at a girl who is not a Bramhin.

Type 2

The highly educated boy:

The tag of an international degree is nothing more than a subtle boast of ‘I studied abroad’ and ‘I grew up amongst whiter people, who treated me like shit,’ the latter being the one you won’t say out loud. And once you finished but-load of courses in some fancy country whose name can’t be said aloud in Afghanistan, you decide to take a peek into what’s happening back home; pertinent to “are there eligible girls who will marry me at least now”.

What people fail to understand is that common sense, mannerisms, respect for the opposite sex and a good sense of humour are not subjects taught in your fancy Duke of Bramhinberg University. These you acquire over the years (you probably should have) spent with humans and not scientific experiments in the name of your elder sibling who did her M.A. M.S. P.H.S. S.S.S. in PCMB and ABCD.

Type 3

The ‘Well-to-do’ and ‘progressive’ family:

The fact that you spend your free time (which is every second before and after your 9-5 job) in front of a beautifully sculptured golden ceramic idol, thanking it for letting you believe in the fact that you can actually achieve anything you want in the whole wide world, considering which you haven’t done squat, shows that you roamed on the streets of The Uniteds blindfolded. So how about you type ‘progressive’ on to Google and then change your bio accordingly.

Type 4

Now this takes the cake. The ones looking for a ‘working and independent alliance’:

First of all, who Dafuq says alliance??

(Caution) Girls and folks of the girl, read between the lines here

1. He wants a WIFE who will wake up freakishly early in the morning and pray with him, even though he cribs about having to follow it every night.
2. He wants a WIFE who will keep the house clean and can scream at her when something isn’t in place, even though he pays the house maid a hefty sum.
3. He wants a WIFE who will leave her home for him, and will change her name to take up his ugly as ever surname.
4. He wants a WIFE who will make her job and profession a secondary commitment to ensure that ‘our house’ ‘our parents’ and ‘our children’ get good care and attention.
5. He wants a WIFE who will leave her job to take care of his parents so he can go out on projects and assignments which require him to fill numbers into excel sheets from a specific computer only in that specific hotel room of that country.
6. He wants a WIFE who will give up her likings for him, even though he will continue with everything he has been doing for the past 30 odd years only because his parents will not let her do as she wishes.
7. He wants a WIFE who will make home food for him abroad, so he can tell you this is not how my amma makes it.

What did we see? What do we know? What did we learn?

Think twice before you give in to such baseless demands from characterless people who give more importance to getting their five degrees correct before you pronounce their name.

An Ode to befuddlement; You may leave now

When the head reeks with confusion like never before, and there ain’t nobody to listen, will it help if I cry? Will it help if I scream? It is what I was afraid of since the very beginning. But we still put ourselves through the aching dream.

Here, those baseless “self-help” articles begin to make the slightest sense. How I pity myself, for having to read what you’ve written while you were trying to recover from that ‘earth shattering’ instance.

Here, even retail therapy, seems like a grind.

I know what I do, I don’t have to lie. Funny that the truth, makes you wonder why. If I’m laying low, I don’t have to try. If I let this go, there’s no need to cry. If my feet are sore, maybe I will fly. If I can’t find a door, the window I will pry. I will try I will try, do what I can to get me by. I fly high in the sky, and when I can’t, I do try.

Oh! To let go

Goodbye. It’s got to be the hardest word in the English accord. It means leaving behind something you want, letting go of memories you cherish, giving up on someone you want to hold on to a little longer or moving to a new city and having to bid adieu to the one you’re attached to.

An oxymoron, or just something that makes you feel like a moron; there’s just nothing ‘Good’ about it. ‘But unless you don’t experience it, how do you know what else is in store for you?’ Yep, every time someone says this to me, I want to One Tight Slap them.

Some look at goodbyes with a positive approach (and I’m still in search of these people), and on the other hand there’s me. Very happy and concise in her cocoon, detached from feelings, emotions and everything else that might be a potential needle to her bubble.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve had to deal with more than my share of goodbyes. That mobile you bought with your first salary, that laptop you earned for yourself and spent a bomb on getting it fixed every month, that cute guy you’ve been hovering around like an invisible cuckoo or that beautiful city you’ve been wanting to call home.

How long have you been emotionally linked to those feelings for it to matter so much? There ain’t no substance there. But it’s not the past that’s tormenting you; it’s the fact that you can’t seem to experience that again.

Truth vs optimisim

All my life my parents never really involved themselves in my relationships, and like any other normal South Indian, super cosseted parents, they live in denial about the fact that I have dated guys in the past. And so it would be fair to say that I hadn’t the faintest idea of how they would react to my involvement with someone. But only until recently, when they introduced me to someone as a ‘prospective groom’.

Well, at first I really couldn’t comprehend how I wanted to go about interacting with someone who’s name I only just happened to find out, leave aside speaking to his family. But as the days passed and we got to speaking a lot more, I realised this is nothing more than arranged dating! Well now how convenient is that huh?

We kinda hit it off pretty well and shared the same wavelength. Mind you certain late night conversations can be a real spiller! Well, for I know I keep an arm’s length from new faces. This was something new, refreshingly insightful. Opening up to someone you don’t know, not something I’ve done before.

Won’t set my hopes too high, cause every ‘hello’ ends with a ‘goodbye’

Well, then why did I do it? I don’t know.

They say go with the flow.. but what if you want to hold back a little? Re-live those late night conversations where you spill the beans about your past?

Here’s where a dear friend of mine would say, don’t get your hopes onto something you don’t know exists. But what if I want to? Is that bad? You really never know now, do you?

Some wise man once said, ‘ Our biggest quest is the Truth, yet we fear those who show it to us.’

Why men should change their last name when they get married

More than 50% of Americans think the woman should be legally required to take her husband’s name in heterosexual marriages. The reason typically given is that having the same name increases a sense of family identity.

Making it into a legal requirement would be bizarre, but I agree such identity is important and sharing a name helps in its creation. Even on its own, marriage is, among other things, a way of tying yourself to the mast: deliberately making public declarations, taking vows, and arduously organizing an unnecessarily expensive party, all in order to increase your investment in each other, and make it more difficult to end the relationship during future difficult phases. Having the same name is one more way of making public and concrete your intention to stay together for the long haul.

But why should that mean that the woman takes the man’s name in heterosexual marriages?  Why should the man not take the woman’s name or, as my fiancée and I have chosen to do, both choose a new name? (We’ve gone with “MacAskill”, her maternal grandmother’s maiden name. When I tell people I’m changing my name, I’ve met raised eyebrows, confusion, or aggressive questioning. No one’s batted an eyelid when she’s told others the same.)

As with so many gender-biased traditions, this one has pretty disturbing roots. The legal concept of coverture came from England and caught on in 19^th century America: the idea was that a woman, upon marriage, becomes the property of her husband. She had no right to vote or take out a bank account because she could rely on her owner to do that for her. And, of course, she couldn’t be raped by her husband—because she was essentially her husband’s property, and he was free to do with her what he wished.

We’ve made progress on these issues (though some remarkably late). But the tradition of taking the man’s name remains and, given its background, it seems to me it’s simply bad taste to carry on with it, in the same way that it would be bad taste to put on a minstrel show, no matter how pure the intentions.

You might say that we need some rule, and that taking the man’s name is as good as any other. But is this true? Why not go with whichever name sounds better? Or which name is associated with the coolest people? (MacAskill clearly beats my birth surname “Crouch” on both counts, having a better ring and being the name of both Giant MacAskill—a forebear of my fiancée’s who has a claim to be the world’s strongest ever man—and Danny MacAskill, a trial-biking legend who, also being descended from Giant MacAskill, must be a very distant cousin.)  Or any other choice made by both parties.

In general, we are happy with the idea of molding our self-image in a whole number of ways, including how we dress, look, and talk. And having the right name is a big deal—affecting expected grades, likeability, success at job applications, and likelihood of having your Facebook friend request accepted. So why the double standard when it comes to marriage?

 

via qz.com

All these months, I’ve patiently heard and watched my friends rant nonstop about how awesome Starbucks is. “The coffee is so damn good dude, it explodes in my mouth.” Yup. That’s exactly what he said. I kinda threw up a little in my mouth when I heard that.

Well.. I don’t blame him or the others who queued up outside the store and stood there for hours together just to taste this mind numbingly disgusting coffee-like something. I mean, seriously, for a person in who’s house filter-coffee is made three times a day, this is like drinking sewage.

Come home, my amma will make filter kappi for you, and won’t even give you an exorbitant bill, which when you look at go like *Oh My God! I didn’t even like the stupid coffee* but succumb to peer pressure and don’t say anything.

Neighbours. I wish they came with a *Conditions Apply

I’ve lived in my apartment for over ten years now, and getting my neighbours to say “Hi” back to me is still like pulling teeth. I’m clean, I’m upstanding, I tiptoe around like a ballerina, I’m genuinely (not fakey over-the-top) friendly, and I recently gave around boxes of seasonal-festive greetings. So, what’s going on?

Do you say “Hi” back to your neighbours? If not, I’m intrigued and would love to hear why. Perhaps you’ve been burned by overzealous neighbours in the past, trapped in 20-minute conversations when you’re already late for work? Or is it too weird to talk to people when you know the intimate details of their TV-watching/sex/snoring habits? Or do you wish people would just leave you alone since you’ve always lived in neighbourhoods where people were overtly linked to each other.

I have no intentions of ceasing to say “Hi” or “Good morning” when I pass my neighbours in the hallway. I am polite, dammit, and stubborn as well. I’ve been trying to get one of my immediate neighbours to smile at me for like half a decade (only because we share the same main gate) and I’m hoping to succeed (I don’t know why, I’m always hoping.) I did make her smile once when I brought her Diwali sweets, but the smile wasn’t directed at me so it doesn’t count.

Still, every time one of my neighbours just stares blankly back at me, I have a mini- crisis. Why this weirdness? Are they psychopaths? Should I be concerned?

I realised the weirdness doesn’t really end here when I heard her screaming at the top of her lungs right up- from the third floor down at a bunch of guys playing badminton, only because apparently they are “too noisy” and are “too old” to be playing anything.

So I figured, it’s really nothing to drive myself crazy about — I guess I was just waiting for a ‘realisation moment’. How do your interactions with your neighbours go? How do you wish they would go?