Tribulation Of An Arranged Marriage - The Men - 1


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 dedicated to those men who made sure my life was just a bit worse. Mind you, all of them are super qualified degree-wise. But after meeting several of these types, I’ve come to one conclusion. B-schools and medical schools need to introduce mandatory courses in Manners, Gender sensitivity and PE. I don’t think school was enough.



Bachelor No 1 aka The Miser-y of Glutton

This one was a hidden one. He’s a double I type from another city. Seemed erudite and well read and all the bells and whistles. After random chatting and emails, he decided to come to Bombay for a weekend to actually meet each other. That’s when the trouble began.

Once the flight had landed, the dude calls me up to ask me directions to the hotel. At 2am. That’s when I should have figured it out

Me: What’s the name of the hotel.
PH1: Hotel something-or-the-other.
Me: Where’s the area?
PH1: (Impatiently) I don’t know.
Me: Do you have a number?
PH1: Should I?
Me: Do you remember anything of the address?
PH1: (beginning to snap) Why would I? Don’t you know your own city?

At this point, I’m starting to feel more than a bit miffed. Since I don’t fit the primary requisite of carrying Google Maps in my head, maybe this is a sad deal. Then a bulb lights my sleep-fogged brain and I suddenly ask him if there is a guy with a placard with his name on it standing around. There was. Thankfully the hotel had the foresight to send a valet I go back to bed thanking all the valets in the world for being the beacon of direction for the morons in the world.

After a decent nights sleep, I was more than willing to get over the attitude and incompetence of previous night. Just as I was beatifically beaming about my good intentions, I get a call. The man is up and has demanded I go pick him up. Fine, he’s new to the city. I drive over and pick him up and I bring him back to my house. Did I mention he burped three times in 25 minutes? He comes home, burped some more, looked sullenly at the newspaper, finished EVERYTHING that my mom made (making her beam like the setting sun), barked in gruff monosyllables to everything asked. The eating didn’t put me off, like it should have. My mom’s fantastic in the kitchen and I’m a BIG eater myself. But this constant gruff tone and burping was worrying. But then we shouldn’t judge at first sight, should we?

So we set off to watch a movie. A Hindi shitty horrible movie. I got the tickets as I had the exact change. Okay, fine. Come interval, he disappears. Comes back with a bucket of popcorn, 3 Mars bars, samosas, nachos, and a Coke. And proceeds to eat the whole production by himself. After finishing EVERYTHING, he shoves the empty wrappers to the floor, looks at my expression, starts and says, “Shit, Was I supposed to offer you some?” I shake my head no; he looks relieved and continues watching the movie, burping loudly till the end.

After the movie, I was more than willing to go back home. When I said as much to the dude, he looks amazed and asks about lunch. Okay. Seemed fair. It was lunchtime anyway. So we go to Trishna, one of my favourite seafood places. Our man took the menu, ordered from the left side of three pages, orders three vodka tonics, and then looks at me expectantly for my order. The waiter took my Khichdi order and all of our man’s and went away. Three hours and several empty dishes later, I was disgusted, nauseated and dying to get home. As if the day wasn’t bad enough, our man leans back in his chair, burps loud enough for all of Trishna to hear and tosses the bill back at me saying, “Its your city, you’re getting this right?” For a lunch, where I ate half a plate of rice, I paid INR 4363.

After paying the bill, I put the man in a cab and send him to his house. He protested and grumbled. Accused me of being a mood kill and bad host (this AFTER I paid 4363 plus tickets). I stood my ground feigning a headache; afraid I might stick a pair of scissors into his head.

After meeting a few of my friends en route, I got home just as dusk had fallen. Life was gloomy out there too. There was a power outage and there were flickering candles everywhere. The minute I get home, my mom’s clamouring to know what happened. I show the bill to my mother, tell her the whole story and demand the money back from her. My mom paled visibly (she usually does at the mere mention of any money spent) and then looks at me sadly.

Mom: I’m sorry
Me: For what? He’s a jerk.
Mom: I didn’t realize this was the protocol now. I should have given the money before.
Me: Ma, you don’t understand. In one day I spent nearly 5000 rupees on a guy I don’t even like. He’s rude and crude, more importantly, I can’t afford him.

She shook her head. In the flickering candlelight, I saw something I didn’t expect. I saw real sorrow etched on my mom’s face. She was actually apologizing for some shit’s immature manners. Worried about the behaviour of a man that might be a future husband to her daughter, despising him and yet not willing to let him go as he is a potential son-in-law and might one day take care of her daughter. That’s when I realized that she probably had got it just as bad as well. She was willing to let a disgusting slob into the family and treat him well as long as he took care of me. Whether or not I realized it, that was a sacrifice too.

Thank god for fathers. I told my dad about him. The next day, I pretended to be sick but our man insisted that I go the airport with him. Not to be outdone, my dad insisted on coming along. At the airport, I said bye. My dad gave the standard HR answer, “We’ll be in touch”

Monday morning, my mom ends things with his mom.

Of course, over the next few day, the only topic of discussion was how I let a prize catch go. Relatives and neighbours came over to try and “set” me right. They spoke to me privately, they spoke to me in public. Some even thought I had a kind of a problem and thought I should see a psychologist. All of this continued until my mom zeroed in on the next one I was to meet. But that is an another post.

Comments

Surinder said…
i'm still wondering how big was his lunch , 4500 for two ! and you had just one rice plate !

didnt you see his photo ? dont tell me he looked thin :P

and yeah thank god for fathers
Anonymous said…
Truly hilarious. I just hope this is not exactly how it went - Josh
Aaaha!
You blogged.
Waiting for more in the series.

Nice read.

-Nikhil
Nithya said…
wow, what an experience...i must say...how did you even go through with paying for this jerk...?
The Avenger !!! said…
hahaha, welcome back, I was waiting for the update, glad i caught it !!!

HILARIOUS !!!
The Avenger !!! said…
which reminds me, i am curious, what was part - 2 like?
Usha said…
'Thank god for fathers.' - I echo that!

'More importantly, I cant afford him' - totally ROTFL

jokes apart, I do realise how much of a pain that would have been to be through that!

n hey, welcome back to blogsville! I just realised it's been an year already! now, be good and be around! :)
Anonymous said…
LOL... Mebbe that was his Lame-O way of trying to can this whole deal. I had a friend who pulled off something similar because she didn't want to go through with the whole thing(and for some god forsaken reason wasn't ready to be candid about it)

Cheers
M
I wish that was the case.. he called for about ten months after that..
Unknown said…
Well hats off you madam...if i would had been in your place, would had surely bashed him up for burping so much.

seriously..that guys surely had some appetite..will put a sumo wrestler to shame.. :D
synapse said…
fact is stranger than fiction!
Anonymous said…
looks like you got married to him ;p hence no part II....

~love n peace
Abisurd said…
I landed on this blog from Facebook - Google - LinkedIn - back to Gooogle - Modelhunt - back to Google - This blog.

I must say the post is hilarious and written in a style I like to read (I love Billy Bryson for the style). Waiting impatiently for the rest of the lot :)
Unknown said…
Sruthy :-)) That was good fun!! U write well... Cheers
Hillarious!.. :).. Loved evey bit..
Stumbled on your blog.. made my sun :):)

-Meena
Sreejit said…
Hey landed here from Raghu's blog, very hilarious and very nice presentation, too bad that you had to actually go through it.

Sreejit
devi shivdas said…
wonderful smruthy!we all went thro many ordeals like yrs.
hi, i came across vivek quite by chance in 2007....and in 2010 i found him on fb...two days ago your blog popped up quite randomly, and I tracked you back out to fb, to see if you*d like to shake the hand of friendship and find that ur married to him! Iv been trying to write a book, for the past two years now, and on the best days I get about a few lines done!hah!! I can relate to you in so many ways since i spent 2 years in Italy after my wedding, beautiful country, but I went quite loony with the isolation of a small town life...now I-m back in Bangalore, and breathing easy. Im a film student from NID, and a publication graphic designer by profession. I read your blogs about arranged marriages, HILARIOUS!! The guy I fell in love with and eventually married from college is a tam brahm from mumbai, and his family was giving him terrible pressure to find a more suitable wife, in the "normal way" which is by seeing her once and lassoing a mangal sutra around her neck. Thankfully we stuck to our guns, through several tearful and dramatic breakups....!! I-d love to write more about myself but the punctuation keys on my Italian keyboard are acting up with the new windows 7 i installed...hence the mistakes...excuse me! thankfully my exclamation mark is in the same place!! I thought about sending you a friend request but decided you might find that creepy so writing to you first..{as if this isn*t creepy enough} I have a blog too, am irredescent with it, and totally uncommitted, but it seems to stick by me still...i rant and ramble there, and don-t know full well what to do with the thing..!
If you like I-d like to know u better...TC
Thomson said…
I accidently visited your blog.An entertaining piece of article. I am on the other side of the spectrum - a fresh entry into the world of matrimonial websites afcouse the intiator the good mom.

That guy had a condition called glutonny, no wonder he ate for 4k. If you are not exaggerating the amount then its true glutonny else its a writers imagination. Either way loved your details & write up.

Best wishes.


Thomson
www.togglefree.blogspot.com

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