And the hunt begins…

I knew turning 28 would bring about its own set of challenges, but I did not expect it to come so soon. If you've not guessed it already, the challenges I refer to are the challenges with regard to marriage proposals coming my way and me ensuring I do not get desperate enough to say yes without thinking it through. While some of you might think it is not fully up to me, I do have the parental unit acting as a firewall and are barring all requests that come my way, for now. While my mother figures that I’m still fairly immature to be given the responsibilities of another human being, my father is just worried that I might come to him asking for money to set up a house and what not considering current wage situation.

However, the firewall cannot be present at all times. Take the recent wedding of my cousin (the first one in our line, thanks to which we will all start to fall like dominos), the aunts (blood-related and otherwise) were jumping out of dark corners and ambushing me with proposals. All refusals were met with the standard Tamil equivalent of ‘Beta, mil toh lo…’ Clearly, all these match-makers were coming without either the knowledge or the permission of the brides to be. Let’s face it, I’m an acquired taste and I don’t think women would go for a fluffy marketing manager in an IT company on their own. And I’m sure if word got out regarding my non-veg eating, scotch drinking, tattoo obsessed, rock music, anti-curd rice self, I don’t see very many of the aunties approaching me.

Even then, nothing seems to stop these people with proposals. The quality of the proposals received so far wasn’t particularly grand. Most seem to be very very young with almost a 6-7 year difference in age. “She’s just finished engineering…. Meet her at least”. Imagine that, me marrying a 22 year old something who has no clue of the world or any idea of the concept of ‘maturity’. I know I am being unfair to judge without having met the girl, but since that isn’t going to happen and she’s probably not going to read this blog, let me say that I know what it is like to be 22 and fresh out of college. While all men desire younger women, I’d rather marry someone more my age and with more maturity.

If it’s not proposals, the aunts were busy on some sort of fact finding mission. One of mum’s childhood friends smartly ambushed me at lunch and asked ‘ Sooooo beta, what are your qualifications?’,’ So where do you work and what is your designation?’,’ How do you go to work? Ooooh….you have your own car?’,’ Do you have a house of your own?’,’ Are you looking to go abroad any time soon?’….and so on.  These feel exactly like those telephonic interviews from the HR departments of companies where they ask all the questions and finally either don’t come back to you with a call for the next round of interviews or they deem you as ‘ not a strategic fit with their organization’.  And imagine, all this is just my side of the story. Assuming I say yes, there is that whole nervous period where one goes through of having the girl to agree to the marriage as well. And patience is not exactly a virtue I have.

I say yes to a meeting, matchmaker sets up a meeting; girl puts on charade of nice south Indian tam bahu and serves coffee and vada, parents ask us to go to the balcony and talk. I being nervous would probably say something very unpleasant to the occasion or ask something stupid like, “what are your hobbies?” Girl gives general cold response because she does not want to get married. I profusely keep on sweating while thinking and re-thinking everything I say. Girl happens to mention she likes music and I go off on an infinite rant about Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Metallica and the others. Girl was referring to Carnatic music and wonders what the hell I smoked before coming to meet her. Parents call us in. Girl’s parents say they’ll get in touch. Girl calls up friends to tell about chubby boy who came with mummy-daddy and spoke of some person called Pink Floyd. Girlfriends have a good laugh at my expense while I’m nervously waiting for the verdict and resort to listening to more Pink Floyd at higher decibels. Girl says no because I clearly have no high financial ambitions and speak of going around the world and playing with a band, also I am chubby. Girls parents skirt the real reason by stating that girl wants to marry green card holder or something. I spend a day or two listening to Pink Floyd songs like ‘Sorrow’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’. After coming to terms with it, I listen to more Pink Floyd songs like ‘Coming Back to Life’ and ‘Shine on you crazy diamond’. Life goes one until next proposal. Cycle repeats.

Well, I’m pretty certain a lot of what I mentioned above will happen. So I don’t want to put myself through that ordeal unless I am really sure that I want to. I’m not overly annoyed at having to say no, but let’s say that one of the proposals caught my fancy. And apparently those who have seen the girl say she’s really pretty, and is one of twins (yes boys….you read right….twins) and is a practicing physiotherapist also. You know what that means…..Free massages! (And a broken neck in case I tick her off). We did however say that yours truly is not looking at marriage at the moment. (PS: I somehow see myself kicking myself in the rear for saying no to this, some time in the future) All said and done, the next few months are going to be very interesting. My only prayer is that 28 years of being single shouldn’t get to me and I do something dire like say ‘yes’ to whatever prospect comes along without understanding if both of us can have a future together, as a couple and as individual people too.

PS: This seems to be an optimistic far cry from the last post of how I am going to die single. I guess the recent pilgrimages have had some sort of adverse effect on my fortunes. I prayed for the band to do well…. Don’t know what the fellow above heard.