Mappillai Azhaippu

Mihipee and I were discussing groom-screening processes - since it seems unlikely the family will stop ineffectually thrusting them my way, I figure I may as well get my entertainment's worth out of it all. Here then are the possibilities:

1. Get all the maapilais to write a common entrance test (all dirty ribaldry in this post, including ineffectual thrust and this one, are fully intended btw). Potential questions include:

(a) Responses to swearing

(b) Ability to recognize sarcasm (note subtle demo, applause please)

(c) Endless amounts of patience in the face of my more or less perpetual PMS.

Plus a grammar round that will make Google's screening test seem like an LKG exercise.

2(a). My great-grandfather had two wives who were cousins, i.e.: he married the first one's cousin after she died (The first one died, not the second one. You can fault my family for many things, but not necrophilia. I don't think. Also, the second one died too, eventually. And so will you someday. But that's a story for another post.)

Anyway. I think I'll marry anyone who can respond with wry acceptance as I explain all the various twigs in the family branch (calling it a family tree indicates it branched out at some point: whereas really it's just in-grown weeds).

2(b). Mihir's contribution: Make the condition....listening to you tell it all while hanging from a rope over a croc pit, with the string loosened everytime they yawn.

3. Slot what's an absolute no (making me work after we're married), what's an ok-we-can-work-on-that (making me cook just because I'm not working after we're married), and what's a fine-whatever-have-it-your-way (... My ego and I can't think of anything that'd fit within this category).

Interview maapilais on these criteria, score them with different weightages for each bucket, and then ta-da, marry the guy the Excel macro says to. Macro Man. You can't go wrong.

4. I think I discussed this with Abhijeet whom I frequently torture with this method - first I'll get into my hyper active oh God don't EVER give this girl alcohol mode and ramble away to great glory for a full half hour.

This will be followed by 15 minutes of absolute silence making the man nervous and wondering if he somehow broke me because how else would THAT have disintegrated to THIS in that short a time? It's a lethal combination and a kickass way of getting men to commit suicide.

... Why bother with all this. Who knows any non-gay unmarried 28 year old Tamil Iyer guys with more ambition than me that are capable of conversing in English that isn't Tamil? Just find me one that thinks the Milka Wondercake commercial isn't the funniest thing since sliced bread, and we'll give it a shot.

Sniffle

Eating non-tuberous non-oniony indistinguishable piles of green-and-yellow off leafs gets really old really fast. Not even the allure of gossip can salvage your soul when you've to wake up at four every morning. And let's face it, generations of in-breeding ensures all of my family only know a limited set of jokes and still think they're hilarious.

Yet there's nothing like an arranged marriage to make you believe in love. I think there's a certain brand of innocence there that nothing else in these cynical times can quite replicate.*

I cried non-stop at this wedding, which is a definite first. Of course, I only cried on the INSIDE, because having woken up at three thirty to do my face, I wasn't in the mood to ruin it on an emotional moment.

*With due disclaimers that I'm talking about non-forced, sensible-aged, completely bride-and-groom decided unions with sufficiently long engagement periods.

Kudumbam Bwahah's

Jokes about in-breeding, caste, and polygamy. Cracks on what's indigenous and what's - one step more regressive - Iyer. Ah, family time. So. Much. FUN! I'd put down the details, but you wouldn't even believe it, so I won't.

PS: Jamby, will you marry me?

Lights, Camera, May I Be Excused?

TMI Time! Disclaimer: I know a lot of you know this story already, but my brain's not functioning, I'm on vacation man :) Here goes.

I was working backstage on the sets of a critically acclaimed play I won't name here to be on the safer side. Believe me - you've watched it or read it in some form or the other, even the most non-literary of you.

Anywho. There we were, waiting for the 50-second cycle gap that meant putting a (very authentic, may I add) cast on one of the cast (in the dark at that!) Backstage rushes the character, and a friend and I descend on him, bearing bandages and sundry pins, but no no no, our Cast-Bearer wants to urgently... erm, pee.

There's no loo in sight. There is however a bottle. And all we have is 50 seconds. Sooo. What can I say? His dick, the bottle, the cast, my friend, and I - all managed to find a room and, well, simultaneously accomplish our goals. Ah, show business.

The Birds & The Bullshit

Did you think I forgot it was Thursday? Didja? Didja? WELL. I so DIDN'T. Here it is then, TMI.

I was fullto innocent growing up, so I assumed the f-word was 'fool.' Given this terminology mismatch you can well imagine my bemusement when my friend told me the f-word also meant "doing it." Being astute and all, I concluded that being a fool = doing it, and THAT is why doing it is baaad.

May I just say, my opinions on the matter have changed drastically since, and I heartily advocate all men to please go ahead and sow their oats, 'cos hey, we don't want you trying to figure out where the opening is based on your sketchy understanding of porn.

Nonetheless, on the subject of taking it to the other extreme - this guy I know wanted to marry me, with a single caveat: he said he wanted me to lose my virginity before we got married 'cos he didn't want to have to deal with a shrieky paranoid tight-holed... you get the idea. That's all folks.

PS: Last week's was completely factual, thanks for asking, and re-asking, and confirming, and re-confirming. You guys need to talk to strangers more often, y'all!

TGIT - TMI Thursday!!!

I was determined to begin with that most fun of all Blogger traditions - TMI Thursday. Woot! Now, all of you probably know too much info already, from the era following the infamous breakup with The Boy (you're welcome). So it was mindnumbingly hard thinking of something new. Nonetheless. Here's what happened the night I got picked up by the FBI. (PS: True story).

I thought really hard about the shortest way to say this without making myself look really bad: sad truth, there's no such way. M & I were lost on the roads of SF with no phones, no cabs, and no sense of direction other than to head in the direction of where there may be (a) cute guys, (b) cheese, (c) more cheese. So when, in the middle of a stripper area (nu-uh, don't ask), we found an Italian restaurant with cute guys offering us their phones, we're like, "Whee, Mannah! God lurves us!" So in we walk.

Now come the disclaimers. I haven't eaten in 36 hours; haven't touched alcohol in atleast 200 days. When the not-bad looking guys at the bar offer us free drinks, I forget all about my abstinence resolution and jump in on a mojito. The not-bad-but-not-good looking guys smirk, tell the bartender something in Italian, and these vaguely shady looking glasses are put out in front of us, with drinks literally dribbling over the brink of THE biggest glasses of alcohol you've ever seen.

This would be a trigger to run for most sane women. To M and me, it simply says, 'Woot! More alcohol! Goooood!' In it goes, all a-merry, and we're starting to find the honestly-rather-bad-looking guys' jokes more funny. Next thing you know, they're pulling out their Fed badges and telling us 'Shhh, we're cops, do you wanna visit our office and play?' So we're like ok haha, cute metaphor, but really? We work at Google, we review porn, you're gonna have to do more to shock us.

We get more festive, the guys get happier, and one sidles up to me, nudging at my hip and going 'Feel it.' And now I'm like uhkay, not drunk enough for this just yet, mister. He tugs at his pant, pats it fondly - I'm focusing on my drink - and goes 'Go on, don't be scared. First time you seein' one hon?' I look desperately towards M, but she's busy fending off the other guy, so I figure I'll pull the whole shy-eyes-down bit. Except - nudge nudge push push- this BULGE is on me and he's grinning and giggling and chanting 'See that? Feel that? That do anything for you love?' at me.

I decide enough's enough, I had enough of this on the buses back home, and turn towards him to give him a good telling to --- and that's when I see the GUN in his PANTS. Omifrikkinwha??? No dude. Not a metaphor. Is that a gun in your pants or are you just really happy to see me? Yeah. Turns out we really WERE picked up by the FBI. What's more, as Jay told us later when he picked us up, our drinks were SPIKED by the Feds. God bless America.