The quest for the better half

People say it is tedious, but the maamis have always lived with a single minded focus of bringing people together.  They have derived a deep sense of pleasure by doing this favor to the society.  As soon as they know that there is a boy in the household, they just have to look into their massive database to get a girl into the threshold.  Google pales in comparison to the way the maamis organize and process data.  But, how do the maamis know what kind of girls are compatible to the guys and vice versa?

Today, I was having an interesting conversation with a friend of mine.  By the way, I am not one of those guys compelling people to get into a wedlock.  Rather, I am the last guy to do something like that, save of course, for the leg pulling.  My friends are so thick skinned that the leg pulling will hardly purchase even the remotest kind of blush.

What's up man! What's happening to your love life?

Oh, nothing much! Just not interested now.  (It means that there is no girl in my life, no girl within the next 100 miles, rather no girl at all.)

Why don't you ask your parents to hook you up with one? (Pretty legitimate question, as once the parents realize that their son is 27 or 28, finding a girl becomes a full time job for them.  For a girl, it is even more harsh; it is 24 or 25 years)

Hook is a strong word here.  It actually means, why don't you start talking to somebody?

I am not mentally prepared man! It's too hard to commit at this age (He is like 28).  I am not ready.  My parents know it.  They are waiting for my approval.  

But, why don't you ask them to introduce a few girls to you and see how you can take it on from there?

Oh come on! They don't even know the kind of girl I want.  I spoke to them for some time and realized that there are absolutely no similarities in our likes.  It is too hard to find cool girls from our community (No way I am giving away by naming the community.  Not sure if he wants girls running around with cucumber slices.  I mean, what is cool?).  

Anyway, this guy being a Marathi, I find it hard to believe that he finds it hard to find a "cool" girl from Mumbai (whew! I find it actually hard to...(No, not again)!).  At least, according to me, and several others, and actually a lot more, traditional Marathi girls are as cool (or hot) as South Canara girls.  Before it explodes into a major controversy at home, TAM girls are way cooler!

Continuing with the conversation,

So, why not the matrimonial websites?

Nothing interesting dude! (which means I don't like the profile pic of 99.99 percent of the girls out there).

In addition, most of them have nothing interesting in their profile information. Most of them have written that they hang out with friends.  What's so interesting about that? I can as well ask them to introduce me to their friends.

Note that The girl is not interesting is way different from The girl's profile is not interesting.  The reasoning goes like this.  If the girl is beautiful in her profile pic, it means the girl is interesting, which results in the girl's profile being amazing.  The reverse is not necessarily true.  If the girl's profile is interesting, then the girl is interesting if and only if her profile pic is beautiful.  Men! Darn!

I nod in silence.  I can understand the confusion.  Spaghetti situation.

Dude, by the way, you can ask your wife to introduce me to her single friends.

This was the clincher.  The chance of finding a Tamil single girl at an age greater than or equal to 26 is as slim as the Dow Jones going up by 1000 points after the S&P downgrade, or Harbhajan Singh getting a wicket in a test match with his current form.

Coming to interesting facts about matrimonial profiles, I had a situation where the profile of a girl was stacked with Ayn Rand books (Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead), along with RK Narayan's Swami and Friends.  Obviously, I was very excited.

The Fountainhead is one of my favorite books.  I just love the discussion between altruism and selfishness, where for a change, we find an argument that favors the latter over the former.  I thought that this would be a good starting point for a discussion.

Wow, so you like The Fountainhead.  That's an awesome book.  That book has inspired me a lot in life (though I have no idea what I did after I attained inspiration.  So typical of me!).

Hey, you know what.  I stopped reading the book once I got the gist of the plot.  Her reply stumped me.

Thank God, we were not having a face to face conversation.  My jaws dropped and I knew where this was heading.

What about RK Narayan? I asked.  I secretly prayed that she had good words for the great man.

Oh, he is an Indian writer, isn't he?  Twice in two minutes, I had a bad feeling on what was coming.  I am sure even RKN wouldn't have wanted to be remembered that way.

I some how don't like to read Indian authors.  I find them too laborious.

I didn't get into an argument.  RKN has the most simplistic style, but I could keep the argument for some other day, if ever there was going to be one.

The rest of the conversation harangued pointlessly.