You Know you are married when...
So you are married. Much to the relief of your parents and some three thousand well meaning society aunties who have been sniggering behind youor back since the time you turned twenty.
Slight hitch, though. Everyone knows it. You don't believe it. Not yet, anyway. So here comes some help!!!
Ten sure things which scream you are married:
1. When it rains without warning, you are more concerned about the clothes you left on the balcony railing to dry than the ones you are wearing.
2. You think summer is the best time of the year because your home doesn't smell damp during summer.
3. Chopping vegetables is your idea of relaxation after a hard day at work.
4. Seeing kids bawling at restaurants scares you to death wondering whether you will be next in the line of pacifying parents.
5. When it rains, you no longer can get out in your bright yellow raincoat because it is drying after office yesterday.
6. In conversation with friends, you casually drop the name of the latest south indian coconut based dish you cooked to impress your in-laws...and your friends are not impressed.
7. A good looking man / woman on the road no longer makes you drool, instead gives you a right / left reflex to check out your deal.
8. Especially the women: Elderly relatives from your parents' side (who know you sprint at the sight of sequins) give you sarees which look like sequins have staged an invasion on the scale of the Timurid on them.
9. Especially for males: When you drag yourself out of bed at an unearthly pre-dawn hour, it is not to catch the live telecast of the latest IPL or wimbledon final, but to fetch milk for the morning coffee.
10. Your romantic messages to your significant other are restricted to instructions for buying eggs / cheese / curd on your way home.
Ok, I know I said ten, but I cannot resist this one...
The lengthiest good night conversation you have goes along the lines of "Did you turn off the gas before leaving the kitchen?"
Well...I need to check up on the last myself...and look out for those warning signs!!!
Back to Square one
This is not in the tone of the other posts here. it is a gloomy, dark monsoon morning which does not seem like a morning at all. (I have never really liked these gloomy so-called "romantic" mornings). However, it perfectly suits my scheme of things...rather, train of thought this time.
Was passing through the road I take to office everyday the other day morning. The surroundings looked lovely as everyday. Then it hit me....it looks lovely everyday. Maybe the purpose of flowers and trees is to be lovely, to look lovely. Well, that is more than I can say of the human race...or of at least myself. Many a times, in the middle of a busy day, I find myself stopping and asking myself, Why am I doing all this? In fact, why does anyone do anything at all? Intriguing, isn't it?
Picture this...you come into the world, all red-faced and ugly and bawling your head off, literally (!!)...you grow up a bit, and go to school (because all other kids your age are going too) The bawling continues, only now it is about grades and acne and that cute school teacher who doesn't know you exist. Cut to college. Teachers have turned to professors. Studies have changed, you don't look like what you looked six months back in school. You have all kinds of holes apart from the natural ones which God Almighty provided in your holy body. The bawling now is about good courses which will make you rich soon, so that you can move on the next set of bawls in life. Which centre around the elusive eligible mate. The trophy wife who will be sharon-stone-tulsi-virani rolled into one or the trophy husband who will be George-Clooney-Bill-Gates rolled into one. Either which ways, once the deal is done, you realise one thing....she doesn't really look like Sharon Stone and he doesn't really look like George Clooney. It was just the candle light playing tricks during the first meeting (hopefully without parents around).
The bawls start again. This time, they are real bawls of miniature-you's. Meanwhile back ground bawls about who pays the bills and who works more continue. Then there is that static called the Boss's voice. Life moves on to the same set of bawls from your children which you had, only now the perspective is slightly different, and you wish the bawls would stop. Then you get old, and the bawls turn into squeaks...until the squeaks also die down. Where are you now? Back to square one. The ugly, red-faced body. Minus the bawls. Or the doting gazes.
Through all of this, only one thing remains common....no prizes for guessing....THE BAWLS. Can anyone really see why we do all this? We are born...we die. Life is the hobby we create to fill this seemingly interminable expanse, so it seems. We accumulate degrees, we hoard money....they are meaningless, say the wise ones. Ok, then, we make relationships, maintain them, put our emotional energy into them....but then, do we take them with us? I really don't think so.
From bawls to that final squeak, life goes on. Without much of a purpose, or any hidden meaning. Or if there is any hidden meaning, it is too well hidden.
