More Confusion

PART 1: BRIDE HUNTING PART 2: RENDEZVOUS

The telephone rang.

Everything in this world is forced to a formal ending. Same had to be the case of this failed tryst. Nothing worked out as per the plan, the meeting supposedly failed like a pack of cards. So it was decided by the parents, of course, that the boy and the girl should have telephonic conversation to see if things can be worked out again.

After continuous pestering and cajoling, I agreed. I was confident that the girl would have also undergone the same fate. Now the key question was who will call whom. Before i could ask my father that the girls family should be calling, he had dialed in the number and handed me the handset. The girl was on the other end. After one minute of cold silence, a flurry of questions followed about what made me think that it was not working.

For the first time, i confessed up the first and the only reservation i had for this marriage. The girl was about five years younger to me and that was playing on my mind. She quipped that girls generally go for Mature Minds.Knowing myself well, i replied back that she might be making a mistake as "age does not guarantee maturity". That somewhat cleared the air for me but did manage to put some doubt in her mind. Now she wanted to think again and get back to me whether she is ready for this relationship. Genuinely cursing my tongue for making this stupid quip, i shared my mobile number on which she would be electronically messaging me the result of her thought process. She did not share her number.

I flied back to Bangalore. Two days passed by. It felt like ages to me as i was eagerly waiting for that coveted SMS. May be my killer statement would have made her look for guys closer to age group. Almost made up my mind for this failed attempt - after all she was a kid. She must be in school when i would have entered the engineering course. Still at some remote corner, some hope for the SMS was there. With this heavy heart, i went to a sports pub for the football quarter final match between my favorite team Argentina and Germany - it was 2006 football world cup. Argentina was putting up a great play and the match was down to the wire - the penalty shoot out.

Just before the penalties, I got an SMS from an unknown number - " I am sending this for the second time, why didn’t you call me back". Argentina lost and i was feeling ecstatic. Suddenly another contrary thought, one sms and your fave team lost - will it be the case going forward. I stayed with the positive thought. In my utter excitement, i called her back immediately without realizing that it was past 11 o'clock night. May be the intoxication of beer contributed to it. She hesitantly took the call with an warning that it will not entertained in days to come. Later on,my burgeoning telephone bills negated the same warning.

Apparently, she had sent a formal SMS that she was Ok with the relationship the next day itself and i should have called her to confirm that i was still interested. As i did not receive the SMS and did not reply, she took that i was not proceeding for the relationship. It was at the behest of one of her close friends that she sent the second SMS as a final good bye message.

I still think about what would have happened had her friend not asked her to message again. Maybe it was destined like that as we got married and we have been blessed with a little angel. I am writing this for the little one so that when she grows up, she can read all this.

And there are more stories in store for the new one. Some in person and some in writing.

Raunak-e-Ramazaan

Gate No.1 at Jama Masjid - The Trail Begins

Jama Masjid

On 17th August, we were invited by Itihaas, an NGO, to experience the celebration and festivities of Ramzan amongst the people of bustling Old Delhi. The walk conducted was very informative and was weaved around various stories of Mughal era. The rich insight offered by the stories highlighted the rich vision of our culture.

The Red Fort forming the Tip of the arrow

We started our tour at Jama Masjid where our walk directors described the city of Sahajahanabad (which is now known as Old Delhi). The city was built by visionary Shah Jahan, the mogul emperor – taking inspiration from the Hindu “shastra“and architected like a bow. The river Yamuna formed the string of the bow and the central Chandni Chowk was the road which formed the arrow.

Celebration Begins

It was quite fascinating to observe the fellow devotees breaking their daily fast. It was a celebration inside the Jama Masjid. The sight of ocean of People greeting, hugging and sharing food amongst each other was heartwarming. The most touching moment was when one of the families shared their food with us as if we were part of their family. These were some moments which has been permanently etched in my mind.

The Shops

After the exhilarating Jama Masjid experience, we were taken through the tour of crowded and buzzing alleys of the Old Delhi. It was an experience only to be felt. It was festivities all around. The smoke and scent of the delicacies of the street side food, the color filled decorated small shops, greeting people, smiling faces, running children in the narrow gullies are something to be experienced and not written.

Kala Masjid

Our next destination was Kala Masjid, Tuglaq era mosque (built around 14^th century) for more stories. We were told interesting facts around the historical events to depict the logical significance of rituals, design and festivities held during Mogul era and still continued in same vigor even today.

At Razia Sultan Grave

Our walk through the narrow lane continued where we were given briefings about the culture and societies as it existed three centuries ago. Our final stop was the Grave of Razia Sultan, one of the two female ruler in Islamic Era (Benazir Bhutto was the other one), situated at the interior parts of the city.

At Itihaas School

After the insightful journey, we were treated with a delicious dinner at the premises of the school run by Itihaas. The mouth watering succulent Kebabs, aroma filled Biryani and sweet dishes were prepared by one of renowned chef of Old Delhi.

As the evening came to an end, I was left with rich memories which I will be proudly carrying forward. Definitely , celebrating Ramzan in Old city of Delhi was an event in my life and I look forward to attending more of it going forward.

Team SAP - The Trail Ends

Rendezvous

PART 1: BRIDE HUNTING

Thanks to my wife Priyanka, i am not pronoucing it ren-dez-vus....

Where were we......Flash back - I got a call to BBSR....acronym from Bhubaneswar.

MBA had taught me many things. Doing an ROI analysis was one of them. Flight tickets would have cost me a bomb and that factored with the marriage not happening would have made this trip useless. So the minimum investment of 2

Reached Home - I was sure that no temple would have been left untouched by my mom in her act to plead god to make everything fall in place. Before i could settle down, i was given an entire checklist by her of behaviour competencies to be put on display for attaining the perfect result. Could definitely get the generation gap between transistors era and "transformers" era.

For the formal invitation, father of the prospective bride came to invite for us the morning hours. It was a simple invitation to visit their places where both the parents will meet and we will get to see the "insurance agent" - the name given by one my friend on knowing that the prospective bride is working for a insurance company. My father had out rightly rejected my innovative proposal to meet in person ALONE with the prospective bride alone in at a newly opened coffee joint at BBSR. Even though he considered it blasphemous, but to showcase his modern day thinking he tossed up this idea. In order to outdo each other, my father in law proposed that we should be talking to each other alone in a single room and we can lock ourselves to maintain our privacy. Before this discussion could go any further, I agreed to go their house with everyone and meet up with bride without any innovate meeting engineering.

Evening time, before i could reach my prospective bride's house, there was a plethora of  "Congratulations", "All the best" and "It happens" wishes from my colleagues on my newly acquired mobile phone. My sister was given the charge to pinch me in case i go on a binge on the good food that will be served. Last time, she was not there and i ended asking for an extra samosa. We were ceremoniously ushered to the meeting room. Then followed the deluge of hygiene questions -  Job, work, hobby and habits. I could imagine myself as the neo of matrix evading the bullets by bending my back to extreme - How long will it take them to uncover that i had worst possible combination of all the asked criteria. May be they were a family of doctors and hence were not aware of what an IT professional does. Then came the bride with water. Hope they don't ask her to sing - It may result in somebody asking to return the favor which could have opened a new feat in ripley's believe it or not.

As promised by my father in law, we were asked to go to a room and chat. As a precaution, i asked my sister accompany me and promised myself that i should not give any such ideas to my dad in future to be tweaked like this. Then the second round of rendezvous - I heard ladies were chatter box and i was seeing it now. All the things were covered under this half an hour - Career aspirations, boss bitching, good insurance plans and Rang de basanti were some of the items covered. No marriage talks and i was again lamenting about the return flight ticket investment. One more miss.

My mother was the worst casualty. She had just dreamt of her 10th castle and it crashed. My Dad started giving me Pep talk. He should have been the hockey coach of the recent Indian Hockey Team. I was supposed to fly the other day. Evening was spent talking to all my friends about another missed opportunity. I called my friend in Bangalore that nothing is happening and spread the news across everyone so that nobody "congratulates" me on reaching Bangalore.

Next morning, the telephone rang.

PART 3: MORE CONFUSION

Bride Hunting

Migrating some blogs from other sites...

Bride Hunting

Saturday, January 2, 2010 8:22:11 AM

story, marriage, subhankar

This is the series of stories

It was the middle of Hot summer June of 2006. It was a regular day with its regular set of activities. I came to office late and was preparing myself for my daily coffee. I was about to press the "CTRL ALT DEL" button, i got an yahoo notification that i have received a mail from my Dad with subject as Photo. It was his regular monthly update. Oh. Let me clarify.

The photo mails were the mails which my dad sent for the prospective bride. He had been religiously sending me these mails from Jan 2005. I really admired his perseverance and punctuality. After carefully avoiding initial photo mails, it took a crying session from my mom to look into the June edition. As i opened the mail, the office internet speed also accentuated my eagerness to have a look at the prospective bride photo.

My system hung which was a common phenomenon. As i rebooted, i went to the cafeteria with Vikas my colleague to fetch a cup of warm coffee. We broke into a conversation about office politics as usual. But i was incessantly thinking about the PC, whether it has properly been booted or did it die once again. My eagerness was quite obvious to my colleague who generously asked me to go back and carry on with any urgent deliverable my mind was occupied with. I took the opportunity and immediately went back to find that the machine has properly booted and was waiting for me to open the explorer again to log in to my mail account. I again went through the log in rituals and opened the new mail sent by Dad. The content read as " Priyanka Mohanty, MBA, Bajaj Insurance , Delhi. using my cognitive ability i could decipher that the name of the prospective bride was priyanka, she has done her MBA, and she works with Bajaj insurance in Delhi. Quite impressive profile for me being a typical Oriya nerd. Now came the important part - Opening the attachment. As i saved the attachment and opened it , i saw a simple girl standing in a smiling position. Before i could observe her facial features, i was disturbed by boss who was standing behind me.
He always considered himself the most intelligent person ever to walk on this earth. On seeing the picture in my computer, with his typical smile he quipped that " your sister looks a lot like you. Are you looking out for a prospective groom for her". He knew i had a sister.

I clarified to him that it was not my sisters picture and told him the entire story. He was very happy. To show how happy he was, he shouted to every one in my department who were sitting around me to come and see the pic of the girl to whom i was getting married too!!!!. Everyone came and congratulated me. And i spent the entire clarifying the exact story to everyone that it was "prospective" bride and nothing has been been fixed.

Later that day , my Dad had called me to come to Bhubaneswar sometime later that month as my prospective bride would also be coming during that tenure. The day later he confirmed the exact dates and instructed me to book the tickets accordingly. The day i left for Bhubaneswar my mail box was flooded with " All the best wishes" from everyone from my office. How come they did they know that i needed that the most. Premonition....

to be continued..........

PART 2: RENDEZVOUS

PART 3: MORE CONFUSION