of Jorhat and me...

It's been seven months since i left jorhat for guwahati. However sometimes during the solitude of the night or bouts of insomnia my mind does wanders back to my life in jorhat, about how i fought sheer boredom, made new friends and found my sanity in the television.
The initial days were the hardest as in any new place, the sense of dislocation takes some time to creep out of your system particularly if u r wrenched out of places u never wanted to leave in the first place. After couple of months and a house later i discovered a nice place where i stayed put fot the rest of my days in jorhat. The place was good and quite popular with the college guys since it had a huge open field and no curfew on incoming and outgoing traffic since the landlord's house was quite some distance away.
My life to this point was profoundly urban and i did what i did best to pass the time..observe people around me. Unlike in Guwahati where people r least bothered about what's going on next door, here people seem to know each other's blood group. for instance i seriously doubt that back home people knew that i no longer stay at home and have been transffered to jorhat, heck most of them i m sure r not even aware that i passed out of college. However in Jorhat everybody's business is everybody's business which in a way is quite good. i mean there's is something rather admirable in the fact that amidst the monstrosity of modernization there is this effort to retain the essence of human nature, i mean the curiosity of it. But yes it can get to your nerves when experienced in excess.
Even the youngsters who used to come over to my place asked me personal questions about my life rather than the standard issue queries about careers and college that kids in my place asks. Of all the questions in the world the only thing that bothers them is that why m i still single despite having all the so called comforts of life. However i found it extremely amusing that whenevr they asked about my wedding prospects it was always in almost embarrassing tones accompanied by suppressed smiles as if to ask about one's marriage is to ask about the obvious sex that comes along which in any case is considered a dirty thing in jorhat and certainly not a thing to be discussed in public. Initially i explained that i never considered marriage to be that important a thing but one look at their dumbstruck faces i took the relatively easier way and told them i will get married by next year and all of them would be invited. Needless to say all of them were thrilled at the prospect of attending another wedding.
gradually I began to realise all my neighbours are addicted to bihu songs..morning,noon or night there's always bihu blazing from their rooms. I have never been so much of a serious bihu listener ( except the once in while husori or bihu geet during magh or bohag bihu), so when i listened to some of the songs keenly i found almost all the bihu or bihu huriya songs spoke volumes about getting married. Most bizzare i found is the one which narrates the dreadful consequences about remaining unmarried till thirty, and in another the guy profeses his love to his lady and tells her that not to worry he will marry her by next spring and yet in another the guy decides to elope with the girl since her parents arn't too fond of him. It seems all the songs have one clear message "get married or die trying".
A thousand awkward questions and an uneventful three and a half years later i got transferred to another place and now thinking of my time in jorhat there's a fantastic an almost surreal feeling about the place with its lush greenary and beutiful people. Couple of my friends in Guwahati r from Jorhat and when two of them get together the world can go to hell, other people are amazed at this camaraderie and make comments but i never say anything because i know how it works in jorhat and the time honoured line " u can take man out of his home but u can never take the home out of the man" fits exactly with them jorhatians.

Arranged marriage..still going strong!

arranged marriage is my tradition..apache indian rapped about it in the 90's and was a major hit in india..I don't know if it did any good to the institution of arranged marriage but one thing is sure even in this age arranged marriage continues to survive in India and is showing no signs of poor health, one might have believed in the 90's during the economic resurgence that by the next millennium the idea of marrying a stranger would die a silent death. The truth can't be more further than that. online matrimonial sites, ads in newspapers,crazy matrimonial reality shows for losers are living proof that the tradition of arranged marriage is alive and kicking in india.

arranged marriage has gone thro' a major overhaul over the decades. Couples marrying against their wishes are unheard of nowadays and caste and creed does'nt play a major role anymore. These prejudices were partly bred by our middle class deprivations and anxiety about family lineage and status were usually the norm. With the educated middle class coming of age the issues of castes and lineage has become notional. India still is a country where divorces and extra marital affairs are frowned upon. Young people has now realised that falling in love is easier while staying in it is the harder part. Romance is only the extension of the present with promises made towards the horizon while arrange marriage deals with the more real part that is the future. In what still is a rigidly conventional and conformist society arranged marriage has stood out of the line with its very flexible nature. Unlike the days of the yore the final say lies with the girl and the boy. Family members simply play the role of a support system to their decision.
Even tho' u can never plan everything and no one can predict the future the institution of arranged marriage offers a certain outcome if not distinct. Everything is laid bare in an arranged marriage, there's no place for assumptions and delusions here.
So go ahead with your head held high and mind without fear and keep searching for decent matches...caste no bar and family lineage be damned.

single and lonely..or is it??

I think our society is in the slow process of adaption of coming out of the negative imagery of single people and quite evidently its a very slow process. well adaption sure is anyways..even tho' we have come a long way from lonely single women and drunkard bachelor uncles the fundamental attitude has'nt changed much but we can blame it on human nature to some extent.. it's only natural to be curious about the deviated .
well it's about time we begin to accept that a person can be single and do all the things and do all the things a married person does and grow old and die a natural death. u don't have to be mad scientist or a business tycoon to live a single life. but being single is deeper than being married and as Gandhiji said about non violence that it's not the attribute of the weak, the same can be said about singlehood. The most important aspect of being single is the involvement or rather the sense of involvement with ur own life, the things u like to do or want to do..besides the fact that u do end up with a hell lot more money than u wud have had had u got married (assuming that ur wife is not the daughter of some super rich dad). Even tho' singles get a lot of time with themselves its not like we don't enjoy company..it's only obvious that we have more fun than married couples since u don't have to align and co-ordinate ur fun graph with ur better or worse half. In this age of age of networking and instant capuchino and nirvana(both of which takes about the same time..for capuchino u need hot water and sugar and for nirvana u need mp3raid.com ) it's stupid to assume that anybody can be lonely or without friends.
But there's this stereotype sense that u r never complete without a partner more so if u r a women. It has been drilled into our heads that a women is never complete unless she experinces the whole process of creating a life thousands of songs and hundreds of movies has been made about it, funny thing is that now they r teaching just the opposite with i-pills,condoms,operations..but thats another issue. well now thanks to adoption agencies and smart people u don't have to miss on motherhood or fatherhood just becoz u r single. Apart from these things the parents of single people has to deal with the society with evasive answers like terrible horoscopes,insane planetary alignments and uncoperative gods. However with rising incomes and improved lifestyles the questions are getting diminished and answers bold.
Then there are always the standard issue speculations about ur sex life ranging sex starved to utter nymphomaniac and the usual gay lesbian routine. But singlehood lifestyle certainly makes ur sexual choices far more convinient than married since quite obviously u r not answerable to anyone and surely no one complains about the greater oppurtunity for sex. But it's a very touchy issue and u can get branded in no time, specially women..most people naturally feel that a single working women is always on the look out for it. How they respond is one's own personal business, but yes the attention can get to ur nerves sometimes.
but after talking about the wonderful gifts of single hood there r downsides too. At the end of the day after all the books have been read and movies seen and u wake up from the alcohol induced coma u do tend to get lonely sometimes. How u tackle it is totally ur own call.
As for me there r more books more movies and more friends..well there's more alcohol too..