The Marriage blues

The minute I stepped into my 26th birthday on another fateful Oct 11th,my mom dropped a bombshell. She had shortlisted a wonderful girl from countless horoscopes (in her own words, but I bet my Pulsar for the real figure ie. 2). Without warning perfect strangers would turn up either in my office or hometown (whenever I happen to visit Madurai) on the pretext of meeting my parents but through the corner of their eyes would measure every inch of my frail frame. Seemingly harmless mamis would start enquiring about my health, wealth, job, house, hair, future plans (my dad never worried that much) and finally bless me (!!) with a nice "nalla ponna seekrame amayattum" tagline. I started dreading every greying mama or mami to an extent that I stopped one man from entering my house and he turned out to be my house owner !!.

Then on a sweltering May day (pun unintended) I met a girl sorrounded by my parents and her's in the crumbling Woodlands outdoors. Thoroughly embarrassed, outwitted and indecisive (as ever) I had to tell my parents not to go ahead. It was one situation I had always wanted to avoid and exactly ended doing it (shades of Mr.Gittes,Chinatown) -hurting women's sentiments.

That lead to a new strategy. I had spent a lifetime trying to teach my father to send an e-mail. Suddenly he morphed to Bill Gates and started ripping matrimonial sites apart. Mornings saw my mail boxes full with prospects and rest of the day was spent browsing or deleting them. Much to his chagrin girls at least 3 years younger to me were making mega bucks (they are generally smarter and blessed with thoughtful male HR professionals .grrrr. ). They either remained silent to the queries or nicely said f*** off.

That lead to a two new assignments
1. Looking for a new job.(er.. sorry,nothing new, just back to square one)
2. Self-help aka the see-date-move around-propose route.

I am a guy who gives credit where it is due. My parents have been broad-minded enough to ask me if I had any girl in mind, caste/religion/ethnicity no bar. But as usual I goofed by giving the following list
1. Meera Jasmin
2. Shreya
3. Trisha
4. Padmapriya etc

So here I am, back to job hunting, girl hunting, head hunting. From cave age to computer age man has had all but one job -hunting. So, to all Mapillai benchers Happy hunting!