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Ode to a Stranger

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It was a long Geneva- Rome – Delhi – Bombay flight. I was 12 and bored. Sitting in a completely different part of the airplane, far away from my parents and brother, my ADHD ridden mind was going completely haywire. I remember having finished Anna Karenina and the in-flight magazine and three glasses of juice and being irritated out of my skull. We were stranded in Rome for about an hour and everyone was edgy. People kept telling us that someone’s luggage hadn’t been loaded in and we were being held up because of that. Sitting in the first class of a fancy airline, the very propah crowd kept murmuring about people who had no consideration for other’s feelings. There were plenty of empty seats around, including the one next to mine. I sighed and looked out of the window for some excitement. A heavy sigh made me around. A corpulent Indian old man, sweaty and tired, with a grim face and a bushy mustache had flopped into the seat to my right. He made quite a meal of putting away his luggag...
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Tribulation Of An Arranged Marriage - The Men - 1

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Consider this. For the last three years, my mother would finish all her work by the break of dawn. She would then perch her glasses on her eyes, set a glass of lemonade at the desk and start the grueling task of locating random potential husbands for her first-born daughter. In spite of all the experience and the prep, there is no guarantee to the results. Far from it. Maybe it’s the severe lack of sleep that’s impairing her vision or her intuition but my mother who’s superb with most things in life would manage to locate the worst of men. Of course, I can’t blame her. Look at what the market has to offer in the first place. And what with all the bloody filters (religion, community, profession, age, occupation), the pickings are quite slim. Of course thanks to the great genius of my daddy, I didn’t need to meet most of them. When they did turn up and weren’t exactly marryable, my dad would veto it immediately. Thank god for fathers. This post and a few other posts are going to be dedic...
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Tribulation Of An Arranged Marriage - The Setting

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When I was younger, I had deadlines. Guy friends left at nine promptly; if I was out I needed to be home by ten, tell them where I am every 45 minutes and no car ever. Now if I’m with a PH (Prospective Husband Type) I get the car, no curfew and complete privacy. If I ever make the mistake of calling home, I’m told to hang up immediately as I was offending our esteemed guests. Sometimes I get the distinct impressing, if I was ever kidnapped by one of the PHs, my folks would take solace in the fact that he would get to spend some more time with me. So when they put my profiles online, I was in trauma. I enjoy the occasional glass of wine. I enjoy photography, movies, theatre and museums. All of which was flatly ignored. I was portrayed as a “homely” girl who likes to cook, and doesn’t touch tobacco and alcohol. I should have realized the trouble I was gonna get in, from right there. I didn’t. I know better now. The routine was simple. They look for a guy, they match horoscopes, if that...
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Wonderland, Interrupted

She walks in beauty. I noticed her at the Lakme Fashion Week and wondered how I could have forgotten she was going to be there. She has the characteristic stride of someone who has been doing this a while. I loved the way she held a pose and whipped around to walk back. But something had changed. I loved a lot of things about her. I loved the way she swung her shoulders back confidently and sashayed down. I loved the expression in her light eyes because they were completely open and honest. Most of all, I loved the innocence in her face because I knew it was genuine. I used to know her a long time ago. In a way, she and I kind of grew up together. Our fathers worked in the same place and they were close friends. So it was natural that I meet her at the occasional office party. When we were younger, I would wonder about this light skinned girl who was always lost in her happy little world. A pampered spoilt child slightly older than i was, she was treated well at home even if the world ...
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Arrange Marriage Tribulations. The Beginning

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(This one’s got several parts. Watch this space) Apart from the complete mortification of admitting that you haven’t met someone by yourself and letting your folks find a guy for you, there is so much more to arranged marriages. More mortification. One of the subjects they should teach in school is how to nab someone and hold on to him. I'm sure this will save much trauma and therapy in later years. For the age old tradition of arranged marriage is seriously one of the most humiliating experiences in the world. People you know and love end up making you feel incomplete, like you were born without a nose or half a brain. The family you adore looks at you with pity and compassion. The guys THEY pick out look at you like you’re a side of beef. The boy’s relatives look down laundry lists of dos and don'ts that the girl absolutely must posses. You look in the mirror and seriously wonder if there is something wrong with you that your loved ones have politely overlooked for so many ye...
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Superman's Daughter

I miss my daddy. We live in the same house in the same city. I see him every day, we share a meal together but I miss him terribly. Like I mentioned before I hate growing up. Achchan is Malayalam for father. My father never let us call him anything but that. For the longest time, my achchan was my hero, my Superman. Still is. He’ll probably scoff if he read this but its true. Maybe its because I’ve never ever experienced the crash that happens to children when they realize that their dad isn’t the perfect man. My daddy still holds strong to that one childhood fantasy. He has never let me down in any way. At the grand old age of 26, I’m still sent back to my room to “wear something that covers you up” and still told to eat my vegetables. Last month I bumped my head on the corner of the table while bending down to fetch something (I’m a klutz.). When I came back home that evening, he has taped Styrofoam to all the potential hazard areas in my room. He is a fine man and a brave one. In ...
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Smruthy

It was a friend who triggered the thought, the excited phone crackle of a first time mom talking about her new baby’s first step. Yes, EspritNoir ( www.espritnoir.wordpress.com ) it right. It’s true enough. We do focus on all the firsts. Some may say it’s the inherent nature of being positive. Perhaps. But anyone who knows me will agree that I am far from positive. I am cynical and fatalistic about most things. But even in my confessed negativity, I think there is something to be said for keeping conscious tabs on things that could very possibly be something you will do for the last time. True, you don’t necessarily know. But sometimes you do. More often than not, you do know. It’s funny how the human mind functions. Something so important and steeped in the sub conscious can be triggered off by such mundane things. For me, memories lie curled up within smells. Nearly every memory has a smell or a distinctive fragrance that is attached to it. So strong and so distinctive that I can ne...
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