Oh thou beautiful, perfect bride!

"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.