Friday, May 9, 2014

The Marriage Advocate

Last night I met the very person who invented marriages. My two pence, "he had to be the most insecure and low esteemed SOB I've ever met". Now who takes the most beautiful thing in this world - Romance, and attaches the clause of 'Commitment' in the most austere and legal manner and scares the hell out of people. We got into a discussion and I said to him, "a true blue romantic (like me) would have stuck to a person  forever, simply by the virtue of the fact that he/she was in love. But you scare the life out of the person with the whole deal of 'making a life time commitment'...."

In the most annoying drawl he says, "Well! you would have stuck with him anyway, all we are saying is that you have to say it aloud and sign a legal document".

I fought back, "You got to be completely out of your mind. Do you know the whole premise of Romance is to pine for the person of your dreams? There is a whole body of literature in a million languages around the world about wooing the love of your life, singing their praises and expressing the yearnings of aching hearts? The moment you take that away, you've stripped away the very essence of love. Why do you think Shakespeare wrote the story of two lovers struggling to be with each and not about they living happily together and making a perfect family portrait?"

"Well! Not everyone thinks like you, we got to protect our people who are vulnerable and can be taken advantage of. Someone can play with their mind, body and souls and decide not to stay on forever."

"You DO NOT WANT to stay with such a person forever!!!"

"There are other things too. Some people (and with a smirk at me, he says), "especially girls" like to know where they stand in a relationship."

"You are right, but those people need to learn something about accepting reality. If there is a doubt in one's mind about a relationship, you know which way its going. You are taking away the most important lesson in a person's life - Letting Go!"

"Whatever! Why do you care anyway? I see that you dont have to do any wifey like things in spite of being married. You don't wear your ring or mangalsutra. You still have your last name. You are free in your mind as you claim, so what is the fuss all about?"

"Don't you see? I miss being 'coveted'.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Whats so funny!

Sorry this is not even a full blown blog, but thats not the point. Here is the thing. So one has been working non stop, with no breaks, no weekends and sleeping for probably 5 hours at night. (I feel almost guilty for sharing this, because there are colleagues who are sleeping less than this). Add to the misery a harsh winter, where you are ploughing a foot of snow every other day; add to that your husband and your one year old are a million miles away and gone for months; add to that your apartment building catches fire and you are camping at your friend's place for two nights; and this is after they assure you that it will be just one night before you can get in, so you rush from office the second day to the nearest mall before everything shuts down, to buy some clothes to make it to work the next day and just when you are relieved and catching a breath that you got back into your house for your birthday and at least your loving friends didn't leave you alone and took you out to your favorite place... your husband calls you up to tell you that the kid had a bad fall and had to be taken to a hospital because the nose won't stop bleeding.

2 - 2.5 months later you are still looking up at this huge mountain of work and now you are trying to cram everything into 3 days before you can catch that flight to India for 2 weeks just to see your son. You also have to take care of the shopping list of life saving material from the US of A sent by near and dear ones; arrange a stock pile of documents I need to carry for a visa interview on my way back and pack one week of office clothes, because I fly straight into a week of out-of-town training.

In times like this you start having these moments when you are looking at the screen for hours and trying to accomplish something, you haven't blinked in days, but lo and behold, nothing happened! You see this divine light in the form of facebook beckoning you to indulge. You open your profile and browse through random links and there you see this picture!!! You transform from an atheist to a believer as you realize there is a genius of galactic proportions gracing this earth who came up with such a mind blowing cartoon (judge for yourself)

You jump in joy as if you hit a jackpot and post it. You think the world (ok I am lying, just my friends on facebook) will think the same way and you are staring at the 'like'o'meter' in anticipation to see it start buzzing like a mad bee!!!! And NOTHING happens. 2 hours nothing happens. After 4 hours there are 2 likes. One from a person who likes every link that anyone posts, he may even like a post that may deserve a condolence. The second comes from a person who I see and say 'Ahh! he got it'.. until he messages me about it and I realize he has missed the point!

So now I dare you to explain what you make of this. Do you understand the joke? I want you to explain it and kill the effing joke here! Pelt your interpretations at it and stone it to death!!

PS: Do not be taken aback by the contents of the first two passages. I have survived. My life has always been this way. I have taken an auto rickshaw ride from a Lakme salon in Whitefield to Indiranagar in Bangalore (about what feels like 15 miles) with mehendi on my hair, covered with aluminium foil, with no duppata/scarf as I wore a shirt and trouser to work that day. That disaster and many like that could make up a book!