"I just saw the most beautiful, perfect girl!" she announced as she waddled into our house. "She" being one of our neighbour aunties. See I am in Ranchi now and here they still have the concept of community living so aunties of the neighbourhood who- in Dehradun- are obsolete, extinct species, get together every evening and mostly gossip. I am usually against stereotyping but in this I am afraid all they really DO is gossip.
This particular aunty is now on the look out for a suitable bride for her precious engineering-degree-onto-corporate-job son. You know, the usual story. It was in this context that she was talking about the beautiful, perfect girl. I thought I'd clarify just so you do not start getting fancy ideas in your head. We are too conservative a people to even think of homosexuality.
So back to the point, the aunty continued talking about that girl, who she would have liked very much to be the girl of her son's dreams. Her eyes had that faraway look as she talked about the girl's hair and skin and eyes and teeth and mole on her cheek and I was just about to shout "By Holy God, STOP!!!" when by Holy God, she did! "But there is one problem with her", she said softly eyes looking despairingly into my mother's who was then forced to put down her precious piece of Sunrise rusk that I had carried several-a-kilo from Dehradun.
What is the problem you will ask me? I am ashamed to say it. But give me a moment and I will get over it.
So the weather's been really great, eh?
...........
...........
...........
Yep I've gotten over it. So, as we were. The reason that the waddling aunty deemed this beautiful girl unfit to be her son's wife is motion sickness. You read me. Let me say it again so you know you read correctly, though I realize you can just go back to the previous line again to confirm. But here it is: M-O-T-I-O-N S-I-C-K-N-E-S-S
Turns out our aunty met the beautiful girl at a park here. A large number of men and women had gathered at the park that day to visit a temple that is located on the outskirts of the town. So they were to pile into buses from this park and head to the temple and our aunty, spotting this beautiful girl thought it to be God's will that she sits next to the girl. So what if she had to push a few considerably older women in her quest? Maybe that was God's will too.
Alas, as the journey started, our aunty looked on with much concern as the pretty girl turned several and rather unflattering shades of green and purple. She lay, slumped across the window, mumbling 'motion sickness' when our aunty asked her what was wrong.
Now the wise thing to do would have been to let the poor girl be. But not our aunty. No sir, this was FAR TOO IMPORTANT A MATTER TO GIVE UP ON THE GROUNDS OF NAUSEA. So throughout the short-ish bus ride as the girl continued to moan and clutch sometimes her heart and sometimes her stomach, our aunty asked her if she had the same problem in a car? Affirmative.
In all buses? More moaning.
In the train? Affirmative.
On scooter? Faint nodding.
In an airplane? Here the girl mumbled something that our aunty understood to mean she had not yet travelled by air but given things as they were, she would not be surprised if she did indeed throw up on board an airplane.
So the end of this conversation also ended- and yet again- the dream of our aunty seeing her son finally wed. Back to present. As she moped and began munching on these nice ginger biscuits that I have recently discovered and hate to share, I looked at her incredulously and shrieked, complete with finger-pointing and other exaggerated gestures, "You rejected a girl because SHE HAS MOTION SICKESS? HOW ABOUT KEEPING SOME HAJMOLA HANDY?????" Of course, in my rage I forgot that our aunty has not yet asked her son if he wants to marry at all or if he has a girlfriend and to ask if the girl she had set her sights on wanted to marry at all, was engaged to somebody else or had a boyfriend.
Now the episode reminded me of another similar conversation that I had heard many years back when a young man turned down the proposal from the girl's family because he thought her body proportions suggested that down the line, she would put on weight. That's right! He predicted she would bloat in the coming years after birthing his spawn and so he turned her down! The nerve!
Now I am no fool. I know that while most of you nodded your heads and said "that's right" when you read my case against marriage, most of you are still secretly planning your wedding and eyeing that guy or girl you think will be your partner in breaking all of the bleak realities you see around you and instead, building the illusion of perfect marriage with you. You useless, brainless bunch of dreamers, you.
[Composes self]
I am, of course, always happy for whatever decision you make with your life. Just thought I would share that you must add "not complain of motion sickness" to your list of DON'Ts when you are being weighed as a prospective bride/groom.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
My case against marriage
I have never been a believer in marriage and even less so in the grand wedding that happens before the onslaught of your life-long torture. But everytime somebody would ask me why is it that I do not believe in the great institution, I would fumble and say "well it does not make sense", which obviously did NOT make sense to the other person who then thought I was just trying to be cool in rejecting marriage.
There are a few obvious reasons- living with another person for the rest of the days and thereby subjecting self to the unexciting ways of not just one's own family but that of the spouse's too. Take for example the sibling I cannot write about. I see this sibling's partner struggle with numerous phone calls from my family and everybody only ever wants to know if my sibling has talked to the partner about the relative on the other end of the phone. Of course the sibling has (not)! With a family of 20,000-odd members and growing, what else does the poor bloke have to talk about? But somehow these very valid reasons fail to strike a chord with the listener(s), who will quote the marriages of everybody around and make them appear (much like the women on beauty-cream advertisements) flawless and happy. When we all know the truth , right!! Another argument that I do not understand is one where the older folks insist on marriage so that one has a companion in the old age. Clearly, there are a few rather prominent flaws in this argument, which I shall list for you here:
1. The spouse does not come with the guarantee that s/he will linger for all that time
2. The spouse does not come with the guarantee that her/his company will be entertaining and especially entertaining right up to the point of the proverbial kicking the bucket
3. Companionship in the old age will obviously mean companionship throughout one's adult years, which seems quite a hefty price to pay just so you have somebody to grumble about arthritis and the rotten younger generations with
4. Dogs are good company too. Or cats for that matter. And you don't have to get them when you are a young adult in order for them to stick around when you are old and feeble. In fact, even if you did get them when you are a young adult, they won't stick around until you are old and feeble.
But try as I may, I cannot bring the other person to see reason in my points. So I have come up with the most stunning, flawless ACE in my case against marriage.
I call it THE REASON to not marry.
Tiffin boxes. Yep! Remember those wretched 12+ years of school when you would wake up at unholy morning hours to get ready for school, including BATHE? Dear God the horror! Now push the soul-numbing torture of your daily, early morning odysseys in the background and focus instead on the person, who in your memory was the harbinger of the daily disaster- Mom! So you now know that the poor woman (or man if you are from one of those really fantastic equal-opportunity families you see on TV) got up about half an hour before you did to pack lunch (tiffin), and simultaneously wake you and other children she may have had the misfortune of bearing/raising, shove them into bathrooms in turns and later get them to gulp down milk and a piece of toast and then stuff the tiffins in their respective bags and race them to the bus stop.
Now the one thing I know is that when most people think of marriage, they think of the wedding- those deceptive few days of bling and kaching and dressing up and dancing. But what then? Skip a few years down the road... yeah just right there when your child (good heavens!) is old enough to go to school. Can you see yourself waking up to the alarm ringing not-so-gently at 5 or 6 a.m. and then going to the kitchen to cook and then pack lunch for your offspring? Dear reader, this is exactly what you are getting yourself into.
And you know you will have to do this for more than twelve years unless you choose to have your kid drop out of school and become a hippie. Now if you see your present life of partying late into the night, drinking without a care, getting up only when you know you cannot absolutely snooze another minute on your damn alarm clock and living the way one should live- i.e. in the most selfish manner- and compare this with the life you will end up having in a few years from now when all traces of selfish will be drowned in the incessant bawling of your little one, I do believe we have arrived at a moot point.
Fancy a marriage, anyone?
I rest my case.
There are a few obvious reasons- living with another person for the rest of the days and thereby subjecting self to the unexciting ways of not just one's own family but that of the spouse's too. Take for example the sibling I cannot write about. I see this sibling's partner struggle with numerous phone calls from my family and everybody only ever wants to know if my sibling has talked to the partner about the relative on the other end of the phone. Of course the sibling has (not)! With a family of 20,000-odd members and growing, what else does the poor bloke have to talk about? But somehow these very valid reasons fail to strike a chord with the listener(s), who will quote the marriages of everybody around and make them appear (much like the women on beauty-cream advertisements) flawless and happy. When we all know the truth , right!! Another argument that I do not understand is one where the older folks insist on marriage so that one has a companion in the old age. Clearly, there are a few rather prominent flaws in this argument, which I shall list for you here:
1. The spouse does not come with the guarantee that s/he will linger for all that time
2. The spouse does not come with the guarantee that her/his company will be entertaining and especially entertaining right up to the point of the proverbial kicking the bucket
3. Companionship in the old age will obviously mean companionship throughout one's adult years, which seems quite a hefty price to pay just so you have somebody to grumble about arthritis and the rotten younger generations with
4. Dogs are good company too. Or cats for that matter. And you don't have to get them when you are a young adult in order for them to stick around when you are old and feeble. In fact, even if you did get them when you are a young adult, they won't stick around until you are old and feeble.
But try as I may, I cannot bring the other person to see reason in my points. So I have come up with the most stunning, flawless ACE in my case against marriage.
I call it THE REASON to not marry.
Tiffin boxes. Yep! Remember those wretched 12+ years of school when you would wake up at unholy morning hours to get ready for school, including BATHE? Dear God the horror! Now push the soul-numbing torture of your daily, early morning odysseys in the background and focus instead on the person, who in your memory was the harbinger of the daily disaster- Mom! So you now know that the poor woman (or man if you are from one of those really fantastic equal-opportunity families you see on TV) got up about half an hour before you did to pack lunch (tiffin), and simultaneously wake you and other children she may have had the misfortune of bearing/raising, shove them into bathrooms in turns and later get them to gulp down milk and a piece of toast and then stuff the tiffins in their respective bags and race them to the bus stop.
Now the one thing I know is that when most people think of marriage, they think of the wedding- those deceptive few days of bling and kaching and dressing up and dancing. But what then? Skip a few years down the road... yeah just right there when your child (good heavens!) is old enough to go to school. Can you see yourself waking up to the alarm ringing not-so-gently at 5 or 6 a.m. and then going to the kitchen to cook and then pack lunch for your offspring? Dear reader, this is exactly what you are getting yourself into.
And you know you will have to do this for more than twelve years unless you choose to have your kid drop out of school and become a hippie. Now if you see your present life of partying late into the night, drinking without a care, getting up only when you know you cannot absolutely snooze another minute on your damn alarm clock and living the way one should live- i.e. in the most selfish manner- and compare this with the life you will end up having in a few years from now when all traces of selfish will be drowned in the incessant bawling of your little one, I do believe we have arrived at a moot point.
Fancy a marriage, anyone?
I rest my case.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Whoa! All the attention!
In our family hierarchy, I am the go-to person for all communication between, and information about the older members of the family and my siblings. I think this has happened because the siblings are all away from home, settled in jobs and lives while I am still at home seemingly doing nothing (has anybody read this blog!?!?). So the siblings are able to know what is up at home and the parents are able to extract information about their kids, through yours truly.
Now this is not a role you would be happy to play. And the reason why you would not be happy to play this role is coz it stems from the belief of others that you have nothing worthwhile to do. I think that is the reason why Chacha and I bond so well- we are- in a way and in his words- 'the Bangladeshis of the family'- no offence intended to the country. But like Bangladesh, we are the people in our family who are not expected to do anything great and are left alone to carry on with whatever it is we do. Back in the day, Dadi would sit out under the sun during winters. She had a चारपाई placed in the verandah where she would sit with her ball of cotton and a tiny कटोरी of milk and make जोत all day. From her vantage point, she could see the front gate and anybody who came to visit her. I remember this one morning when she was expecting her oldest child, Rads' and SP's dad. A little while later, Chacha came back from the temple on his Kinetic Honda. Dadi squinted her eyes and said animatedly "मेरा पुत्तर आ गया", thinking it was Rads' dad. But a moment later she saw Chacha walking in and said "ना ऐ ते जगमोहन है" dismissively and went back to her जोत! Poor bloke followed dadi all day exclaiming "मैं वी ते त्वाडा पुत्तर आं"! See what I mean?
My folks and other family members usually leave me alone except the standard morning-call where we exchange pleasantries and hang up in a matter of a few seconds. However ever since I left from Doon to visit the siblings in Delhi and in Mumbai, I have been flooded with highly uncharacteristic lengthy phone calls from immediate and extended family. They want to know what the siblings have been up to, what their respective spouses have been up to, what did he say, what did she say in response, when did they come back from work, what did they say about the relative who is calling, did the spouse like the gift sent from Doon and on and on and on... you get the idea.
In the usual course, the older Kakkars call their kids and the kids' spouses directly. Now, I have been entrusted the responsibility of calling the parents when I am with my brother/sister and his/her better/worse half to facilitate a conversation. This puts me, as you can imagine in a very awkward position because nobody wants to talk to the oldies, let alone after slogging at work for more hours than is humanly possible. So I am quite between the devil and the deep sea because making that call would put me in the line of fire from one end and NOT making the call will put me in the same line from the other end. And as if this was not enough, I am now being flooded with calls from the mausis and the buas asking me to talk about them with the people who have magnanimously agreed to marry my demented siblings.
Let me tell you, this is the last time I am holidaying in a place that houses any relative of mine. :/
Now this is not a role you would be happy to play. And the reason why you would not be happy to play this role is coz it stems from the belief of others that you have nothing worthwhile to do. I think that is the reason why Chacha and I bond so well- we are- in a way and in his words- 'the Bangladeshis of the family'- no offence intended to the country. But like Bangladesh, we are the people in our family who are not expected to do anything great and are left alone to carry on with whatever it is we do. Back in the day, Dadi would sit out under the sun during winters. She had a चारपाई placed in the verandah where she would sit with her ball of cotton and a tiny कटोरी of milk and make जोत all day. From her vantage point, she could see the front gate and anybody who came to visit her. I remember this one morning when she was expecting her oldest child, Rads' and SP's dad. A little while later, Chacha came back from the temple on his Kinetic Honda. Dadi squinted her eyes and said animatedly "मेरा पुत्तर आ गया", thinking it was Rads' dad. But a moment later she saw Chacha walking in and said "ना ऐ ते जगमोहन है" dismissively and went back to her जोत! Poor bloke followed dadi all day exclaiming "मैं वी ते त्वाडा पुत्तर आं"! See what I mean?
My folks and other family members usually leave me alone except the standard morning-call where we exchange pleasantries and hang up in a matter of a few seconds. However ever since I left from Doon to visit the siblings in Delhi and in Mumbai, I have been flooded with highly uncharacteristic lengthy phone calls from immediate and extended family. They want to know what the siblings have been up to, what their respective spouses have been up to, what did he say, what did she say in response, when did they come back from work, what did they say about the relative who is calling, did the spouse like the gift sent from Doon and on and on and on... you get the idea.
In the usual course, the older Kakkars call their kids and the kids' spouses directly. Now, I have been entrusted the responsibility of calling the parents when I am with my brother/sister and his/her better/worse half to facilitate a conversation. This puts me, as you can imagine in a very awkward position because nobody wants to talk to the oldies, let alone after slogging at work for more hours than is humanly possible. So I am quite between the devil and the deep sea because making that call would put me in the line of fire from one end and NOT making the call will put me in the same line from the other end. And as if this was not enough, I am now being flooded with calls from the mausis and the buas asking me to talk about them with the people who have magnanimously agreed to marry my demented siblings.
Let me tell you, this is the last time I am holidaying in a place that houses any relative of mine. :/
Friday, August 5, 2011
By popular demand: Some More Chacha
Now it seems to me that the faint trickle of readers I had managed to bring to my excellent blog shut up if I write about anything and anybody else. And though I am not very happy about it, I will treat you, reader as the king/queen and dive back to the topic that you all seem to enjoy so much: Chacha. But you should know this is at the expense of my Chachi and I. See by the time Friday arrives and I still don't have anything to write about, I start tailing Chacha around, everywhere he goes. He is such a भंडार of weird that by the end of the day I have a nice juicy story to upload here. But tailing Chacha is not a task for the faint-hearted my friends. So anybody who reads this and laughs, I will say to you Marlon Brando style "Some day, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me".
So there is this side to Chacha that almost everybody knows about- he is a bit of borderline paranoid. Did I say a bit? Na-ah. Make that a lot of borderline paranoid. Like he heard of a case of robbery in a house far far away from where we live one time many years back and the next day, we had all these cool CCTV cameras around the house. The only things we ever caught on camera was a limelight-hungry cat who would sit on our wall and mew at the lens for hours and a couple of couples trying to take advantage of the dark and of the private space that the dead-end outside our house provides. So instead of warding off thieves as he imagined he would do, the man of our house would spend his evenings shooing away cats and hormone-driven teens.
And you should really see him driving a two-wheeler. It is all the entertainment you will ever need in this life. At turns, he will not only blink the indicator about 15 minutes in advance so that the traffic behind him keeps guessing if it is this turn or the next or the one after that until they assume it has been left blinking by error, but he also keeps flailing his arm much like a drunk bird flapping its wing. Ironically, he also refuses to wear a helmet even after being in an accident or two but there his obsession with his hair takes precedence over his paranoia.
So when Chacha began to read of dairy farmers adding urea to milk, he could not just sit and do nothing. He hunted the neighbourhood for a dairy, found one and ever since then he personally goes to get milk from this establishment everyday. Now over the years- and a lot of our relative and friends will tell you this- this pure, creamy, beautiful buffalo milk has become a source of pride for Chacha. We don't get any milk product from any shop. Paneer, curd, ghee everything is made from the precious milk that he gets.
I mentioned at the beginning that you enjoy the posts on Chacha at the expense of Chachi and I. See while boiling the milk every morning, Chacha stands guard to ensure that it does not boil over. Oh yes, he will waste electricity, he will waste water and with almost no effort he wastes and incredible amount of time but he will NEVER waste any milk. There are days, however when he is compelled to leave his dearest task to go to office for something or the other and expects his way-better half Chachi to obsess over the milk in his absence. Now Chachi is not one to obsess so as she goes about her daily chores, the milk obviously boils over and then the poor woman has to clean every bit of the stove to ensure that no traces of her heinous crime remain.
Such is the old man's obsession that guests are told and re-told about the marvellous discovery of Chacha's and a thousand other residents in the vicinity and here I can call in Rads' husband Vicky to vouch. About one year back I was coming back to Dehradun with Rads and Vicky and told my brother-in-law that he must praise the dairy products if he wanted to get into Chacha's good books. And sure enough, halfway through dinner Chacha started his all-too familiar conversation with the words "Vicky आपको पनीर कैसा लगा?" Then before my eyes he began to literally swell with pride as a prepared Vicky began to sing his well-rehearsed praises. Later that night, when everybody returned home and we were cleaning up, Chacha smiled with a faraway look and said "सोणा मुंडा है विवेक".
So though these observations of mine may seem fruitless and you may think that they serve only as writing material for a crap blog, the above episode will show they actually help bond the family stronger!
So there is this side to Chacha that almost everybody knows about- he is a bit of borderline paranoid. Did I say a bit? Na-ah. Make that a lot of borderline paranoid. Like he heard of a case of robbery in a house far far away from where we live one time many years back and the next day, we had all these cool CCTV cameras around the house. The only things we ever caught on camera was a limelight-hungry cat who would sit on our wall and mew at the lens for hours and a couple of couples trying to take advantage of the dark and of the private space that the dead-end outside our house provides. So instead of warding off thieves as he imagined he would do, the man of our house would spend his evenings shooing away cats and hormone-driven teens.
And you should really see him driving a two-wheeler. It is all the entertainment you will ever need in this life. At turns, he will not only blink the indicator about 15 minutes in advance so that the traffic behind him keeps guessing if it is this turn or the next or the one after that until they assume it has been left blinking by error, but he also keeps flailing his arm much like a drunk bird flapping its wing. Ironically, he also refuses to wear a helmet even after being in an accident or two but there his obsession with his hair takes precedence over his paranoia.
So when Chacha began to read of dairy farmers adding urea to milk, he could not just sit and do nothing. He hunted the neighbourhood for a dairy, found one and ever since then he personally goes to get milk from this establishment everyday. Now over the years- and a lot of our relative and friends will tell you this- this pure, creamy, beautiful buffalo milk has become a source of pride for Chacha. We don't get any milk product from any shop. Paneer, curd, ghee everything is made from the precious milk that he gets.
I mentioned at the beginning that you enjoy the posts on Chacha at the expense of Chachi and I. See while boiling the milk every morning, Chacha stands guard to ensure that it does not boil over. Oh yes, he will waste electricity, he will waste water and with almost no effort he wastes and incredible amount of time but he will NEVER waste any milk. There are days, however when he is compelled to leave his dearest task to go to office for something or the other and expects his way-better half Chachi to obsess over the milk in his absence. Now Chachi is not one to obsess so as she goes about her daily chores, the milk obviously boils over and then the poor woman has to clean every bit of the stove to ensure that no traces of her heinous crime remain.
Such is the old man's obsession that guests are told and re-told about the marvellous discovery of Chacha's and a thousand other residents in the vicinity and here I can call in Rads' husband Vicky to vouch. About one year back I was coming back to Dehradun with Rads and Vicky and told my brother-in-law that he must praise the dairy products if he wanted to get into Chacha's good books. And sure enough, halfway through dinner Chacha started his all-too familiar conversation with the words "Vicky आपको पनीर कैसा लगा?" Then before my eyes he began to literally swell with pride as a prepared Vicky began to sing his well-rehearsed praises. Later that night, when everybody returned home and we were cleaning up, Chacha smiled with a faraway look and said "सोणा मुंडा है विवेक".
So though these observations of mine may seem fruitless and you may think that they serve only as writing material for a crap blog, the above episode will show they actually help bond the family stronger!
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