A girl can’t have peace of mind after she is 20. Wolves in the shape of “dearest and nearest” start springing at your throat the moment one’s age has crossed the two-decade mark. You go to any wedding or reception or house-warming ceremony or baptism or even a funeral (no exaggeration), the so-called “well-meaning” aunties sweetly pinch the cheeks and pour gooey sugar syrup over well-calculated barbs and ask “Ohhhh our baby is all growwwn up!! How time flies!!!” To translate, this is a message to the hyper-tensed mom who is swooning nearby to get the overgrown baby married before she turns into an old maid. A common scene especially in a country like ours where the sole purpose of a girl’s life is to enter the matrimonial life and produce offspring in order to retain the family name! Yours truly being a helpless victim of such a system, I had to register on one of those matrimonial websites against my will. What the heck, I thought; if I HAVE to go through this humiliation I’d rather be humiliated my own way. “Add a picture to invite more proposals” advised the site. Heh heh. Take that. I muttered as I maliciously added a picture to my profile. Having obediently performed a distasteful piece of duty, I promptly forgot all about it.
One week later…
I open my mailbox and my eyes pop out of their sockets. Fifty two proposals waiting for a YES from me! Boy! How I underestimated myself! I open the profiles of the knights in shining armour one by one. “I want a slim booty” said one. Eew how desperate! “I am flexible, elastic and comfortable” said another. Lord, I thought this was a matrimonial website, didn’t realize it advertised underwear! Elastic, flexible and comfortable indeed! Then there was this gorgeous hunk with a shirtless picture of himself. As I was drooling open-mouthed over this one, I noticed his self-description. “I likes any girl with 36-24-36 measurements” Gorgeous hunk went kaput in my heart. Gosh, I didn’t realize this site was a rendezvous for desperadoes and jerks like this! One by one the Mr. Rights turned out to be so, so wrong. And then came a moment of enlightenment. As it happened to Mr. Buddha under the famous Bo tree. YES, finally Mr. Very Very Right!! Not a Greek God to look at, but very educated, outgoing, fun-loving guy with so much in common with me! This matrimonial website thingy was not a total washout after all! I tracked the guy down and we started chatting. My office hours were punctuated with stolen moments of chatting and getting to know each other. I won’t tell you his name but the name means “basket” in Hebrew (this piece of gyan was given to me by him) Gosh, we were so similar! Our opinions on everything matched! He wanted my phone number but I was a little wary of talking to him directly. I wanted more time to chat before we took the relationship one step ahead. Before I had time to say “Boo” he was dragging my parents and his parents into it for the small sin that I gave him my parents’ phone number. The parents met and were all over each other like they knew each other for years. He was a hard core facebook-er and orkut-er and changed his status to “committed”. The next thing I knew is all his friends and relatives tracking me down on orkut and gushing and blushing and rushing on and on about what a fantastic guy he is how lucky I am blah blah and so forth. He was posting stuff on his blog and letting the whole world know that he had found The One finally. His friends started replying with congrats and fixing the dates for the bachelor party and the precise place and style to get married. I was rabid with nervousness. Being a solitary type and more introvert and private person, all this hoo-ha was unnerving me. All this exhibitionism was making me think twice. “Ha ha, at this rate, he will post a detailed description of your honeymoon on his blog after your wedding” said a serpent in a friend’s clothing. I tried to drop hints in our chats to take things slowly but he was already fantasizing and building castles in the air. What the hell, he was already naming our kids and appointing their God parents! My peace of mind totally shattered, I went to seek advice from my most reliable, wisest advisor, my father. He had very practical, simple advice to give me. “A marriage is something so very personal. YOU are the one who is getting married here, and if you are not comfortable, if you feel this is not the one, you’ve GOT to tell it to him. After all, you are not committed in any way and you have all the freedom to make your decision!” That made my nerves come back to the normal state. I sent him a mail saying listen, I am still not sure if you are Mr. Right, why don’t we take things easy. After all, we know each other for hardly ten days! After I pressed the “send” button on the Email, I felt a strange sense of calm.
Three days later…
A call. He had somehow got hold of my number. A baritone at the end of the line yelling abuses “What the f***ing s*** do you think you are up to? I know b****y well that all women are like this. They play with your f***ing heart and then throw it away like used tissue paper. You will regret this! Mind you!” Wow! My father had a good laugh. “At least you should be glad that you got away from that foul mouthed lout!” he said. I never heard from Mr. Basket after that, but there were clear signs that he had got my message. He detached himself from my chat list. He de-facebook-ed and de-orkutted me from the list of friends. He deleted all the scraps that he had sent me so far. And I heaved a gigantic sigh of relief. The last I heard, he has become a misogynist and is busy filling his blog with anti-woman sentiments.
As for annoying grannies, there’s a great way to defend yourself against them:
You go to a wedding and if they say, “you’re next”, you go to a funeral and tell them “You’re next!!” And don’t forget to add a devilish grin. That will keep their mouth shut for a while! (I learnt this from a forward sent by the very same Mr. Right!!)
Three cheers for bachelorhood!!!
