On the market

So people, I’m on the market now. The Marriage Market.


Acha made me register on some matrimonial website, with the most decent-looking pic I could find, and one long description about me and about the kind of partner I’m looking for.

I did it just to get Acha off my back, because I'm in no way ready to get married right now. I created the profile and then left it to him to handle it.

Wrong call.

Because what do I see now when I open the account? My dad has sent ‘interest’ to countless moustached Mallu uncles with pot-bellies who are ‘simple guy loves family looking 4 true luv’.

:/

If there are any Mallu guys reading this, then I’m sorry. I really am. But you gotta admit, mallu men are not the best-looking guys on earth. You’ll find one in a hundred. Alright, I admit, I’m not a Vidya Balan myself. I’m short, dusky, wear spectacles, have a large nose that would give even Ganesha ji competition, and as of now, my ‘physical structure’ is ‘average’ rather than ‘slim’. But that doesn’t mean I should get married to a guy who looks older than my dad no?! And yes yes, looks are not the most important thing, it’s the person that matters and blah blah. But hey, I have to spend the rest of my life with the guy. I need to be able to look at his face day in and day out, right? As shallow as this may make me seem, I’m not willing to spend the rest of my life with a guy who resembles an 80’s Mallu movie villain (I’m not exaggerating. My dad actually did send interest to someone who looked like that. And went ahead and got the horoscopes checked also, after which he’s telling me that it matches perfectly and that the ‘party’ is very interested. :/ I told him that while I may not be Miss Universe material, I don’t think I can get married to a guy who looks older than my dad.) I'm not searching for an Adonis either, but at least not someone who considers a moustache to be the ultimate symbol of manhood. I don’t like guys with moustache, unless it’s accompanied by a French beard or stubble. And the worst part is that Mallu men without moustache are hard to come by!

If it’s not the looks, it’s the name. I mean, seriously! What is it with us Malayalis and the fixation for bad names!! There was a slightly interesting profile that I was checking out. Looks ok-ok, job ok-ok, etc. Then I read the name. Shine. :/ Can you even imagine what my kids’ names would be like, with that as a surname? They would sound like the brand names of liquid bleach. Or like the name of a dry-cleaning store! Another guy had a name that was just one letter different from the camera-brand Nikon. I don’t judge him. I judge his parents. Why would they do that to their own flesh and blood?! And don’t even get me started on Mallus and their fixation for the sound ‘sh’ in names. They just love it. while most names are good, some of them are so imaginative, it’s ridiculous.

In my ‘Partner preference’, I’ve given one lamba-chauda list of requirements, not at all on the lines of ‘seeking groom from good family background’. There’s actually a long list of things, starting from ‘preferably a Nambiar, so that I don’t have to change my surname’ to ‘someone who loves Calvin and Hobbes’. I think most of them got scared away just reading that. :/ Because no one seems to be falling for me. No one good, anyways. :(  The ones who do show some interest make me want to become a nun.

One dude (or whoever created his profile) replied to my dad’s message- “Dear father please give clear and polite partner preference and please remind this to your daughter and marriage is not at all a business deal”. It isn’t? Then why was he paying money to look for a partner on the internet? :/ Well, actually I'm not surprised he responded like that, because in my ‘About me’, I've written “My forte is humour and satire, so if you don’t get sarcasm, chances are you won’t like me at all”. Well, I was right about that, wasn’t I?!

Another guy who expressed in me claims to be a blogger, but also mentions that we can’t find his blog by typing his name. Seriously, dude? And his paragraphs were like loose motion- no full stop, comma, or punctuations of any sort.

Ok, so maybe proper grammar is hardly the thing you look for in a prospective life partner. There are a lot of other things that matter, like income, family background, personality, etc. But it matters to me! I tend to judge people based on their grammar and how well they can write. WHAT do I do about it?! Do you think I’ll die alone, surrounded by grammar books? :(

And a couple of them had the nerve to send me friend request on FB. Did they REALLY think I would accept their request? Seriously?! Damn you, FB!

I think my dad truly believes that the world will indeed come to an end in December 2012. I can’t see any other reason why he would be in a hurry to get me married off to one of those. I would rather die single than Mrs. Thick Moustache.

Damn. It does look like I’ll die all alone in a room surrounded by grammar books, no? :/

Et tu, Brute?

Dear blogger,

Life hasn’t been all that kind to me lately. 2012 isn’t exactly what I can call ‘a walk in the park’. It’s been just four months, but I already feel like taking VRS. True, I finally took that vacation I’d been wanting to, and had a fab time in Goa with my friends. I spent all the time I wanted to at the beach, sat by the sea in the moonlight, finally did parasailing and a few other water sports, got dunked into the water and thought that I had died, got a temp tattoo (which washed off in two weeks instead of staying for a month. Apparently, not taking a bath too often would’ve helped it stay longer. Yes, brilliant idea. That too at the peak of summer), got burnt to a crisp because of the heat, wore shorts to my heart’s content and ate a lot of seafood.

Sorry, what was I talking about again?

Ah yes, 2012. So yes, as I was saying, 2012 hasn’t gotten off to a great start. Too many things have changed, and there’s more to come. You know what I’m talking about, right? People have done an about-turn, circumstances decided to change without giving me proper notice, and Hyderabad is so unbearably hot, I could weep.

I understand that change is constant. Change is mandatory. It may or may not be for the good, but it’s mandatory. It’s what propels life forward. I get all that jazz.

Whenever I open my FB account, I get scary visions of the timeline profile that will apparently be made mandatory soon. FB keeps asking me if I want to switch to it, but I ignore it. Because I DON’T want it. I’m happy with my profile the way it is. I don’t have any life-changing events worth time-lining. Unless you count winning the skipping race in 2nd standard.

But then, I’m not much on FB these days anyway, so I figured, maybe it won’t be the worst thing if the timeline becomes mandatory. I always have the option of quitting, right? Right.

A couple of months back, your clan gave me a scare, saying that they’re going to upgrade to some new profile thingy. You and your elder bro (or sis or dad or mom, whatever) Gmail said that you guys are also going to change. I didn’t take it seriously. I was like “Arre, ye tho apne hai, nahi badalenge”. So in true Hyderabadi style, maine light liya.

Lo and behold, a few weeks back, when I opened my gmail, it had gotten a makeover. It didn’t look too complicated, so after the initial panic attack, I calmed down. “Chalo koi nahi, at least blogger tho nahi badla ab tak”, I thought.

Saale kameene! Tu ne bhi dhoka diya! Who told you to change without asking me! Just because I haven’t blogged in a while and haven’t even logged in for a few days, this is how you take revenge? By turning into this super-complicated thing that I’m just not able to make head or tails of. Yesterday it took me almost half a day to figure out how to publish one comment. God only knows how long it’ll take me to publish this post after I’ve finished typing it in Word.

I’m not pleased, dude. Not at all pleased. You can expect many more hate-mails from me. Do NOT mark me under spam.

Not-all-that-sincerely-but-whatever,
A very miffed Spiff.

***

Here's a Dil Chahta Hai-esque pic from my vacation, taken at Chapora Fort.

That's Anand, Chitra, Roro, me and Vijish.

I wish I could've taken a pic of the moonlit beachside at 2:00 AM, but neither words nor a picture can capture that breathtaking sight. Trust me.

ETA: You remember my friend Rohan, the guy who takes the most awesome photographs (some of which are there in my header)? He lost his cam in Goa. It's like losing a part of himself. We honestly cannot imagine him without his cam. The pic above was taken with his cam, in self-mode. Pray for his cam and pray that whoever stole it has non-stop loose motions day and night.

To share or not to share

(This article was originally published in ignitink.com)

To share or not to share...

Is that the question? Are you in a dilemma? Let me help you out then.
Don’t.

I’ll tell you why in a moment. But before I tell you why, let me ask you something. What was the original purpose of Facebook? Or of social networking in general, for that matter? To connect with friends, acquaintances, colleagues, etc., right? To get back in touch with long-lost buddies, to share photos, perhaps? Ok, fair enough.

Now back to why I said ‘don’t’. Because yesterday, when I was browsing FB, someone had shared a picture of a girl who was smiling at the camera with both her arms lifted and held behind her head, a thick foliage of under-arm hair jumping out of the pic and grabbing my eyeballs. No, I’m not kidding or exaggerating.

A lot of images get shared on FB, nothing new there. The main reasons that pictures get shared on FB are:-

a) They are genuinely interesting

b) They convey a message

c) They are trying to spread awareness

d) They have images of cute things like babies, puppies etc.

e) All of the above.

Trust me when I tell you that this particular pic was secret option f) none of the above. It was Just. Plain. Gross.

Now don’t get me wrong. Shaving or not shaving armpit hair is entirely one’s own personal choice. And I have no right to comment on that. But as a Facebook user myself, I think I do have the right to say that these days, anything and everything gets shared in the name of ‘social networking’.

Let’s face it, the standard of Facebook has gone down the drain. It has become a playground for a lot of frustrated losers to grab attention by posting *searching for the right word to express disgust* pictures. I didn’t bother to open the above-mentioned photo and check the comments and likes, but the caption did not in any way signify that the picture was about women-empowerment. It makes me sad that I’m actually part of a society that houses such idiotic people, and I’m referring to all of them involved- the girl who posed for the picture, the person who clicked it and posted it on Facebook, and the people who have shared it.

There was another picture that shook me today- of dogs being cut up and sold at a butcher shop. Really? Is that the kind of thing that you want to share on FB? I log in first thing in the morning, and I see chopped heads of dogs on my homepage. Not only is my day ruined, but my lunch and dinner is too. Thank you very much. Again, I didn’t open the full pic to see what the caption or comments were, but it is easily anyone’s guess that it would be extremely racist towards a particular ethnic group’s eating habits.

Facebook has slowly moved on from being merely a social networking site. It now looks like Baba Zuckerberganand’s ashram (have you not noticed the influx of philosophical and inspirational quotes that get shared as images), the headquarters of Zuckerberg’s Army (want to fight a cause? Post it on FB), the office Beware of Girls Society (images of random girls with cautionary messages like “Beware of girls, they are cheats”) etc. The other day, there was an image of a rather plump girl dancing, and someone had shared it captioning it “Kutti Aana” (Small elephant). I’m not sure what purpose that person was trying to achieve by posting that image, but maybe he/she should realize that the girl is probably somebody’s girlfriend/wife/sister/mother/friend. Who the hell gave them the authority to post her pic without her permission, that too with such a demeaning caption? Would he (yes, I’m pretty sure it was a guy who posted it) like it if his mother’s photo came up one fine day on Facebook, with the caption “Beware of cougars”? Girls may or may not smoke, that is their choice. But that does not make them bitches. And it definitely does not give anyone the right to post a picture of three girls smoking, and then give a story underneath it about some girl who broke a guy’s heart.

My problem is not with these dumb fools wanting to spread a message. My problem is with using photos of girls who might actually be having a real life (and a Facebook account), and then passing it around with fake messages. What would happen if the girls’ prospective grooms see these pictures? Their life is pretty much ruined!

Oh and don’t even get me started on the “Share if u luv your mother, scroll if u dnt!” “Share if you love your father, scroll if you don’t!” “Share if you love your kaamwali bai, give her an extra load of clothes to wash if you don’t!” messages. Instead of sharing such crap, use that time to actually tell your mother that you love her. She might appreciate that a lot more, trust me.



Let me make it very clear, my issues are not with ‘sharing’. Sharing can be a good thing too. A lot of awareness can be spread about issues by spreading the word. Maybe missing people can be found by sharing their pictures. But there is a difference between “Sharing because it’s share-worthy” and “Sharing for sharing’s sake and because I bloody well can and I want to grab attention. Oh and I’m very jobless too.”

Yes yes, I know. I sound like a nag. And if this piece gets shared on FB, it’ll probably get comments like “Go woman. V’l shr if v luv, scroll if v dnt. Wats yr prblm?” My problem is that in spite of having so many problems with FB, I still can’t get myself to quit it. I had quit once, but returned in a few months. We share a very “I hate you (like I love you) relationship.

But the larger problem is that social networking has gone beyond being just a means of making friends and staying in touch, and has moved on to become a way to take out your frustrations and take revenge. Remember the incident where a guy announced on FB that he had dumped his girlfriend, and the girl promptly went and killed herself? People take the “What’s on your mind” thing way too seriously. I think it’s time FB took some very serious screening steps. Because the day is not far when Facebook will make the complete transition into Fucked-up-Book.

Ok, now I’m off to shave my legs. I don’t want to open my FB tomorrow and see “Lolllllzzzzzzzzzzzz: 289 shares: 659 likes: 2120 comments” on a pic of a very familiar-looking pair of legs.

Q&A

Yet another tag. Ya, I know it's starting to feel like the only writing I'm doing these days is for tags. But tags are fun. And it gives me a chance to write at least something. So bear with me once more, ok?

Visha from zackandme tagged me with this. And she also gave me the freedom to flout the rules. Yay. What fun.

So I'm going to skip the '11 things about me' part, because even I'm getting bored of writing about myself. I'm heading straight to the '11 questions'.

1) Early riser or late sleeper?
Late sleeper. I can't sleep anytime before 12. I think I got that from Amma. Most days, it's 1-2 by the time I go to bed. And then I wake up late in the morning and rush to work. I tried going to bed early, by 12, a few times. I tossed and turned for a long time and finally fell asleep only around 2. Gah.

2) Holiday on a beach or a mountain?
Hmm.. Can't I have both? The best thing would be if it's a cottage on top of a cliff overlooking a beach. I wanna live in such a place. But if I simply have to choose, I would choose beach. I love beaches. Maybe because I grew up in a city that has three beaches. I love the idea of waking up to the music of waves. Isn't is a lovely sound? The vastness and mystery of the sea awes me.

3) List the cities in which you have lived so far.
Let's see.. Ernakulam (I spent most of my time in the hospital while here), Pune (for two years. Again, hospitals. My asthma was at its peak here), Trivandrum (the city that has seen me grow, live, love, fail, succeed, everything), Hyderabad (the city that I adopted. That embraced me and welcomed me with open arms. It has taught me how to survive. Not live. Survive).
Other than this, I had done my two-months internship in Bangalore way back in 2008, so I was pretty much living there.

4) What kind of music do you like?
Mainly, whatever sounds pleasing to my ears. I LOVE old hindi songs. I'm a bollywood music fan. I also love songs that are accompanied by beautiful lyrics. Precisely why I love old hindi songs. I listen to a bit of English music too- Pink Floyd, The Doors, etc. Ilove singing along to songs, so lyrics are very important.
Oh and to contradict myself, I also love Bollywood item numbers that have absolutely rubbish lyrics. :P Current favourite- Anarkali Disco Chali. Mereko bhi disco chalna!

5) How many BFFs do you have?
I can't count my friends as numbers. Not because there are too many to count, but because I just can't. Let's just say I have enough to make me feel I'm one of the luckiest person on earth.

6) Which is the last movie you saw?
Kahaani. Well, technically, the last movie I saw was Jodi Breakers, but then I saw Kahaani for a second time after that. Thank god. (Have you seen Jodi Breakers? Don't. Seriously).

7) What is the name of your first school?
My first school was Kendriya Vidyalaya Southern Command, Pune.
I went to a kidergarten before that called Greenwood, in Pune itself.

8) What is the first thing which comes to your mind when you hear these words – ‘first love’?
Teenage. School. Diary. Shy glances. Holding hands secretively. Happiness. Principal's room. Tears. A lifetime of memories, good and bad.

9) What is the first thing you notice when you go to any restaurant?
The lighting. I'm not very fond of restaurants that have very dim lighting. Makes me feel I'm in a sleazy bar. I need to see what I'm eating. I also notice how long it takes for someone to come and attend to us.

10) List the most inspiring bloggers according to you
That's not a fair question. There are too many to list. So I'm gonna take the safe route and say 'Everyone I follow'. They have all inspired me in some way or the other, be it by their language, vocabulary, the ease with which they can write about anything under the sun, their dedication. Or simply by how encouraging they are.

11) Blogging to you is…….
Therapeutic. Cathartic. Addictive. A vent. A platform.

I'm not gonna tag anyone. Because no one that I tagged in my previous tag did it. Katti. Hmph.

Familybook

My parents aren’t exactly the most tech-savvy, you know. I guess that goes with most people from their generation. We grew up with computers. They grew up with typewriters. We grew up with email. They grew up with snail-mail. We grew up with landlines and cellphones. They grew up with trunk calls and “kambli pothappu!”

My mom grew up and studied in Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata (Calcutta then), etc., but still, she has absolutely no interest in technology. Or rather, she never used to. My sister and I have tried our level best to teach her how to use the computer, but other than we losing our patience, there was no real progress. It’s not exactly rocket science, no? All she had to do was put in some time and effort. But how will she learn when five minutes after we’ve made her sit down in from of the system, she’ll run to the kitchen because she had forgotten she’d kept milk on the stove? One time, I had forgotten to switch the system off in the morning before going to college, and mom called me to tell me that there is ‘some light coming from the screen’ (yes, that’s how she described it). So I tried telling her how to switch it off. In two minutes, my entire class had come to know that I had left the computer on before coming to college. I think she finally called the girl living next door to come and switch it off. She couldn’t operate the TV remote to save her life. She would keep pressing some buttons, hoping to change the channel, but by the time she figured it out and found the correct channel, the programme would’ve ended. She could never figure out how to use a cellphone, it was just too complicated. That she uses a Blackberry now is an entirely different matter and story. My dad got it from his office. He didn’t like the QWERTY keypad, so he gave it to Amma. When I asked her if I can take her Blackberry and give her my old phone, she said that she’s ‘so used to Blackberry, she doesn’t feel like using any other phone’. :/ This, coming from the woman who used to send ten blank messages before finally getting one right. She’s damn cute, I tell you.

My dad grew up in a tiny little village in North Kerala, studied in a Malayalam medium school, saw a city for the first time only when he joined teaching college in Mysore, and for 20-25 of his 38 years of career, did all the paper work and filing manually. But he was a lot more open to learning about technology than my mom was. He created an email account, started learning how to type, he learnt how to listen to songs on Youtube. Now he books all his tickets online, sends me mile-long mails sometimes (when there are burning issues, you see. Both me and dad, not big on talking). Since he was a telecom employee anyway, learning how to use a cellphone was not a big deal for him.

But you know, our generation is a very kutthi cheez. We make fun of the older generation for not knowing how to use technology, but soon as they learn it, we realize they were better off not knowing it. Oh you know what I’m talking about. We’ve all been through it. We don’t want them to know how to use cellphones so that they won’t check the messages in our inbox. We have gotten away with so many stories like “That was not a call, that was my alarm” when the phone rang in the dead of the night (no prizes for guessing who would call at that time). We don’t want to give our passwords to them in case they want to check something important, because the passwords would invariably be the name of a current crush. I remember when we were groom-hunting for my sis, her account in keralamatrimony was registered under my email id. And I used to regularly monitor it. Acha and I would sit together at night and go through the profiles. It was all going smoothly till Acha called me from office one day and asked me for my Yahoo password. Why? Because he wanted to check the email of some prospective groom immediately, that had been sent to my id. Now how can I say a no when my own dad asks me for the password? If I say no, that’ll mean that I’m hiding something. If I say yes, well, he’ll see my inbox, and even though my password was no one’s name and there was nothing suspicious in my inbox, I was just not comfortable with it. I used to get a lot of forwarded emails, some of which contained adult jokes, and I obviously wouldn’t want my dad to see them, right?!! So I tried to stall it, saying that I’ll check the mail and tell him what the contents were. But he insisted, so I gave him the password. Then I quickly switched on the computer, logged in to my account, and changed the password. So when my dad tried to log in, he couldn’t. He called me to ask what was wrong and why he wasn’t able to log in. I pretended to be confused. “What, you can’t log in? But I’m able to. Don’t know what’s wrong. Anyway, here’s the mail you were talking about. Take down the number…”. And then I quickly changed the password again. Ya I know, sneaky little liar.

But we got over all that with time. I was happy and proud that Amma had finally managed to learn how to send SMSes and that Acha didn’t have to wait in long queues to book tickets.

Until one fine day, dad asked me about my blog. He knew I wrote in a blog, so he asked me to send him the link. I said I will, but I never did. Because I don’t want him to read it. I don’t think he’ll be able to handle the fact that his darling little daughter drinks vodka and has been in relationships. Nope, no sir! So when I go home, I open my blog, show him and Amma a few posts, so that they’ll know that I do write, and quickly close it down before they can spot anything scandalous.

Then he asked me about Facebook. I very excitedly told him that it’s this supercool thing where you can keep in touch with people. He asked me to create an account for him the last time I went home. I ahemed and aahed and changed the subject. I definitely do not want him on my Facebook list. No no no no no no no no no.

And then, yesterday, I open my FB, and see a new friend request from one Mr. Ramachandran Nambiar. For a second I wasn’t sure who it was, because that’s not how my dad writes his name usually. He writes it with his initials and not with the ‘Nambiar’ surname. There was no pic either. So I figured it must be someone else, and, hoping against hope, opened the profile to check out the details.

Sure enough:- Worked at: BSNL. Studied in: Nirmalagiri College. One mutual friend (a family friend, who probably helped him create the account).

The request is still pending.