The revival

In the battle between the wedders (i.e. pestering family) and the weddees (i.e. us, the victims who are deemed marriageable solely by virtue of age), the wedders won the First Battle of Gurgaon and have taken away Rads on their side. I say that for two reasons- one, she has been married for over a year now and two, she has lately taken to asking the rest of us about our marriage plans, thereby showing tendencies alarmingly similar to the wedders.

Anyhoo, the battle won, the wedders returned to their forts while us, the remaining five cousins crawled back into our tattered barracks. Here, we licked our wounds and then got up to strengthen our defences and devise impressively innovative means to resist future attacks by our beloved family, whose usually moderately-tolerable voices on such occasions transform into something akin to the sound of nails screeching against blackboards to our ears.

Ramu, for example contemplated lying about his sexual preferences and we were all quite impressed by that idea. After all, I don’t really think the family would have nagged him quite so much to find a suitable boy! But with fears of being disowned from the family’s considerable debts, Ramu thought of another brilliant plan. He quit his cushiony, corporate job, turned his back from his 9.something package which, in a couple of months would become 10.6 or so (how much is 80k times 12?) and decided to actually practice law as a junior to an advocate, who when extremely pleased with Ramu, gives him something to the tune of 7.5.
No, no, before you say that is not so bad, let me tell you, by '7.5', I mean 7.5k (7500) in a month.
This brilliant move will go down in this blog in black letters as the rest of the text since we don’t have the golden lettering option yet (I think and I don’t care if I am wrong about the font colours so please take your gyaan about blogs elsewhere).

Susu has very conveniently found himself a girl who is studying medicine so he is in no immediate danger and needs no reinforcements or added defences because really, what can you do? The family also realizes that with the extreme pressure of studying human anatomy, the burden of marriage really cannot be expected to be borne by the poor girl. Now had she been studying anything else, it would have been a no-issue.

Similarly, Sonu being the youngest of us all is in no real danger but has still created a defence for herself by using reverse psychology on her parents. She watches for any group of three or more family members who may be sitting and chatting or working and when she finds such a group, she walks up to them and starts talking about her marriage in that way, which is very deliberately indiscreet but makes the listener feel the speaker is trying unsuccessfully to be subtle. The family thinks they would not want her to think about marriage so early so they start talking about her education and career and thereby never bring up the topic of her marriage.

I am not sure what Monu's defense is but I am afraid my sister is in the line of fire. In a Suraj Bharjatya movie, I would have thrown myself in front of her and said "No, marry me. Leave her, let her live. She is still so young." In the real life, however, I have written I am afraid about her defenses and that, I feel is sufficient as far as sibling-concern goes.

I have devised a simple, three-step routine, which is fool-proof: Agree, Distract, Exit.

Here is how it works:

Step 1- Agree: When sat down by the family for “the talk” (now I wish it was about the birds and bees, really!), plaster a melancholy, ironic expression on your face and start nodding solemnly, as if you totally agree with what is being said about age and life partner and support and blah blah blah.

Step 2- Distract: Such conversations will inevitably lead you to the opening themselves. Wait until the gyaan is over and they say “What do you think?” or a string of words that betrays the same sentiment. Here you know it is time for step 2. You laugh softly and briefly- almost a cross between a sigh and laugh really- to betray irony and a hint of bitterness. Then you start talking about your diabetes and how that scares you and how you feel you will not live long enough (insert sobs here) and you don’t want to burden somebody with this heavy weight of what is almost a sword hanging on your head (insert a steady trickle of tears here) and you so want to work and be independent but you are so scared about your eyes being damaged (insert hysterical theatrics here) or your legs being amputated.

Step 3- Exit: Somewhere during this torrent, the family members will get up and come to you to console you about your tragedies and assure you that there will be so many nice boys in your “community” (by which they mean diabetic boys) and that you should not lose hope about your life, which is going to be long and happy. You do not let them finish their consolation and get up in the middle of their honeyed words to say you are too upset to talk about this and walk off.

PS- If you are not diabetic or blessed with a chronic condition that puts you off the conventional marriage market, I can only say: tough luck!