tooo personal !!

You mostly guessed this right - its about my marriage (din't u see that my profile details actually changed :-) ). And eventhough I would not deny that this post is almost like a matrimonial ad, hopefully at the end of this post, you will realise the connection this one has to my previous post, as well the future parts of it

So lets get this straight. Yes, I have started looking.. The story goes back to around Oct of 2005 - about when I turned 26. Still the time when I used to tell everyone who asks abt my marriage plans "why do u want me to ruin some nice girls happiness in life?" ... And then comes my usual b'day greeting card and letter written in mallu (they come every year w/o break, of course nothing compared to the weekly letters that i used to exchange with my parents when in chennai) .

Among the many things there was this small bit from my mom . "Deepachechi asked.. what your plans are... " Deepachechi (a very common mallu name) is my neighbor (ever since i was 5), one year older to me, now married with a 3 yr or so old kid, and like a sister to me, as both of us were single childs. The implications of what my mom wrote were clear.. "we are not saying anything, but u see, people around are" ..

Don't I know u amma ?

I have always been frank with my parents on these matters. My father keeps saying, if u fall in love with some one, don't run away with her, tell us . Everytime my mom sees a group picture of mine where she sees another girl standing somewhere, she wud ask "Aaarada Athu?" (who's that?).. and when I say "she is so and so, and she has a boyfriend", my mom would go "ummmmmm".. I know that deep within she will actually be regretting "Dammit, this fellow is still not good enuf to go after girls" ...

So I asked my mom whats going on, next time i called them. They really wanted to know where i stood. So then, for a month i had to think, where life stood for me, whether practically its ever going to be possible for me to remain unmarried , being the only child.. and so on.. and as always is the planning man, I evolved a details 2-3 year plan (oh yeah) and in my new year letter to them (again fully in mallu), wrote abt it in detail .

Don't wanna get into what i wrote, suffice to say that the talk from their end continued, almost every other weekly call "There is a girl from our caste doing MBA in US da " .. "Why don't u put your profile on the internet ?" , "why are you so slow on this, do you have anyone in mind" stuff .... I kept doing the usual "let me come home amma".. and they kept saying "this is the fifth time you have postponed your india trip... God knows " stuff..

So then finally one day I decided to give in. But then its me, its scorpio, and so I have to believe that I made the decision, and not my parents.. so I came up with the necessary logic for that and so on and so forth (nope, don't wanna bore u with all that) ..

Funny thing, two weeks or so before, I put up my first profile, it got rejected.. I must have carelessly typed up something.. or may be the internet portal also thot I am not eligible :-)

Pulled myself to put up another one the week after

Anyway, so there I stand, getting into a "new field" altogether, with a childs curiosity to know how things work.. i predict that me shall end up wasting a year or two doing this.. well, not really waste i guess- just that i wanna take my own time .. and by the time someone likes me, i think it will take about that time...

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So what are ur preferences machaa ? the usual question eh ? nope i am not going to get into that full details except a few points which may be relevant to being on a blog.. yeah, I am particular of the girl being malayali, atleast shud know to speak fluently in mallu because otherwise my parents won't be able to connect ...And the more mallu she is, the better !! And now comes the main reason why I even took up this excercise - caste

So that was an issue that I myself posted to my parents.. well to begin with I kind of jokingly said, "I don't mind inter-religious marriage also, as long as the girl is willing to become a Hindu"... and my mom immediately went "do u have a girl in mind , eh ? " .. But then, the caste issue was serious - because thats part of my belief, and something which I thought, may work out afterall . What is the point in talking about ideals, if one's feet start trembling when it comes to following it in one's own life .. ? atleast a try

The first time I suggested a "caste no bar" , my parents rejected it outright. So I kept the profile to my caste only.. But then surprisingly last friday, they gave in .. (hope thats not just a momentary abberation) . Have to admit that it did excite me quite a bit..

End of the day, I may still end up marrying within the caste, because it takes two hands to clap- even if the girl is okay , her parents are most likely gonna b against it.. and I am preparing myself for a series of rejects to every inter-caste case that I propose.. but thats okay, I will have the satisfaction of atleast sincerely trying . And yeah its not as though I will marry only intercaste to prove a point.., and I do not consider those people insisting on same caste marriage as any meaner to me... Its discrimination thats bad, having a choice (to stick to the same caste) is not

My profile says "parent's preference - same caste; but caste no bar" .. thats the part in my profile that I am most proud of !!

And one more note before I leave.. I will not have anything against my parents if they did not agree , or even if in future they did not support me in this. I will just assume that they have their reasons, something which I cannot understand with internet and bookreading knowledge.

And for me, they themselves are the greatest inspiration as far as mutual adjustment goes. They are a blend of contrasts. My father is only 5 ft and my mother 5'4" - father is quite fair, and mom quite dark... and yet against usual norms, they married - arranged marriage.. When people ask me, aren't u sad that you are short, I quote them this fact and say- u imagine, what if both my father and mother had stuck to the usual ways .. There wud perhaps have born a shorter kid and a darker kid... May be they too thought about it and thats why they are now letting their son letting to try to break another barrier !!

All the best to me :-)