The bride-hunt gossip!

OK – this was a post long in coming, and I am pretty sure all the people who were very much interested in latest gossip about my marriage, would, at this point must be completely disappointed and might have turned away from this blog. Nonetheless, the post has arrived – it took a little long (you know, work-shurk and all that), and I was trying to be “in-the-mood” for this post. So here it is, the bare truth, and nothing but the truth about my trip back home, of which a good section was devoted to Bride-hunt.

Now I also intend to make this as a one-stop guide to all prospective brides and their family to read through before they think about meeting me. Yes.

Rule #1: Do NOT visit me the day I land in India.

I know it sounds weird, but what do I know anyways? So I reach India on a fine Friday night (Sat morning) at 1.30 in the night – here was I, sleepy groggy and in middle of a cataclysmic jetlag, and completely drained out. I figure – home sweet home – it will be nice to sleep through next day itself, when I am reminded the moment I reach home – “Remember, they are coming to see you tomorrow at 11.00 am!” God – jeez! – The first feeling I get here at this point is – “I hate you if-you-will-ever-be-my-in-laws already!” What’s the hurry? Where was I running to? Am I in much demand? That had pretty much sealed up my initial impressions about them.

The worse part was next morning when I was all mentally prepared and all that, when we are informed that “they” will now arrive at 4.00 pm. How lovely. Now if only the meet could have been on a Sunday instead when I was a little bit fresher? Can’t do – this train had derailed even before it got on the tracks.

Rule #2: If a guy and a girl have talked before, umm, what is there to talk about?

So now, its 4.00 pm in the evening; I am waiting, morose and still tired of my journey. Now its not as if I had not talked to the girl in question before – I had – and there were enough predomination that things were unlikely to go forward – there were way too many differences, no common matching interests, and a huge language problem between us; however the meet was organized “just in case”.

Now, this was the very first “muh-dikhai” held for me; the result? A baraat of 25 people from my side were crowded in the room, when the girl’s family of 5 arrived. 30 people sitting in a room, all giggling at each other, giving smiling looks, generally feeling uncomfortable, having no idea about what to talk to each other about, waited breathlessly for one of me or the girl to break the ice. While they waited for ice to be broken, banal topics as “What do you do for living?”, “Where do you live?”, “Oh I also used to live there – do you know XYZ?”, “Yes I do, in fact they stayed next door!”, “Really! We were great friends with them”, silence, silence, “Are you a housewife?”, “Yes how about you?”, “I am also housewife”, “Today generation ladies like to work you know – time has changed”, “Yes, my daughter also insists that she work, what to do? Tell me”, “Oh, yes, today’s people, how many children you have?”, “Two, one boy, one girl, how about you”, “One brother to her”, Silence, Silence, Silence.

So while others waited in vain for ice to be broken, the girl smiled coyly, looked out the door, admired the ceiling, looked out the door, smiled at my sister standing in corner (hardly visible to rest of us), looked at a bored sparrow chirping nearby, and repeated the circle – all the while, not glancing at me. For unfathomable reasons, I did not want to speak up unless the girl looked at me; I was dead tired anyways, and my brain was definitely not in a mood for some “What do you do?” talks (dumbhead, you already talked to her on phone, remember!).

So the ice thawed and melted into water, and ultimately evaporated into vapor, without me and the girl exchanging more than 2 words, of which “hi” was one of them. The meet ended, and pretty much all 30 people in the room knew where this was headed.

Rule #3: Be interesting please!

While I had so imagined that this would be the end of my troubles, I was in for a shock that night itself – there was yet another family coming over to meet me, on Sunday. What a way to ruin my holiday, I thought. I was not averse to meeting people; it just felt it was too sudden at that point.

Next day, having undergone my previous experience, I had made it clear to everyone around that a 30 person band was not going to welcome another family – it was just ridiculous. And this time, I wanted to talk to the girl, alone, without any family interference. So the family comes, and again the same old circle of pleasantries follow; however I notice this time that the girl is just looking down and very shy. I had to break ice this time, and I told my folks that I had to talk to her, and sitting around a tea party was not my idea of seeing someone.

After much hullabaloo, we were left alone for a while. Now, I didn’t want this to be an interview – but I wanted it to be a conversation between two mature individuals; of course, it didn’t happen that way, and ended up being an interview, where in I asked the questions, and I was provided answers. Question-answer, Question-answer; At some point I felt for the girl “Will you ask me something!” to which all I got was “Nothing really…” – I reminded her again that this was meant to be a frank discussion, and not a one way communication to which I was smiled at. Important issues like “What are you looking for in your man”, “Do you want to live here or US?”, “What are your plans to work after marriage?”, “How do you view marriage” were answered with “I don’t know”, “I don’t know”, “I don’t know”, and finally “I don’t really know!” – “Do you have any hobbies” was responded by “Umm.. nothing really”, “What do you like to do in free time?” “I am not sure…I do something”, “Do you like cooking”, “I can cook…but…” at which point I ran out of topics or questions to ask; since she didn’t have anything to ask either, our “private” conversation which took 10 minutes to be approved lasted all of 6 minutes. “Are you done so soon?!” was the reaction – “Well hell, yeah!”

Again, this was a case where priorities and preferences didn’t match up at all. I want to be with an interesting person who has an opinion about life, even if it may not match mine – I want a girl to have some hobbies, even if it is watching TV! Its not difficult to cultivate hobbies and being interesting; and marriage does not have to be a one way communication. If we had managed a conversation instead of one way traffic, it would have been much easier to go on.

Sigh! – this post is getting much longer I thought it would – here is what I am going to do – I will break here and make a part 2 out of this – that way the post wont get infinitely long and boring.

So there, await part 2.