2 Captains?? Isn’t easy!!

Roll call. . . All the independent women please stand up, hmm..well… marriages would be easier if the women were not independent!!!

A certain comment by female on a picture uploaded on Facebook provoked me to write this, well yes provoked I must say! A snap of a friend’s ‘Sindur Daan’ … a shy bride and an intense groom, the picture brought a smile on my face. And then there was this comment – ‘this is the best moment in a gals life’… well I couldn't just grimaced and let it go, I had to write this.

With most of my friends getting married this year, I have noticed one thing common with all the marriage -- the idiosyncratic change in their FB status!! From ‘it was fun with friends and pizza’ or ‘what a movie’ to ‘cooked food for hubby dear’ and ‘ its Monday hubby back to office L’ . And the love for your husband is, supposedly, even more when the FB profile unites ‘Mr and Mrs X’ and more so when suddenly there are no individual snap of yours to put up as profile pictures.

What I fail to understand is why educated, intelligent, modern (well, atleast so called) working girls go almost drooling over their husbands! Why can’t they simply keep their husband and marriage as a part of their life and have a life of their own as well? How can they choose to be so dependent so much so that they seize to exist?

We’ve all heard, or perhaps experienced a version of this story: man and woman meet, they fall in love, date for a while, and move in together. They frame photos, arrange them on the walls, pick out furniture, make a nest. Sweet enough!  But enough to fulfill the dreams of a woman?

Let’s count for the heck of it how many happy moment I had in my life.. my first salary, my successful treks, meeting my close friends after years, going back home each vacation , yet the happiest will be when I am sure that I made myself  what I aspired to be -- professionally and personally.

Now, before you jump all over me, I am a not a feminist and neither am I against marriage. I would be as happy to be married as marriages can make someone happy (well..yeah..honestly). But I disagree with that role-based, androcentric approach to marriage.

 I don't know how many independent women stay married or get married without a hassle. What I think is that marriage would be easier if women were not independent; just caretakers of males needs in marriage with no real lives of their own. Let’s just say to put it modern day meaning (in world of FB and twitter) best and most loving wives are those who tweet ‘cooked rajma chawal today..his fav’  or gets a joint FB account with her hubby dear!

My question is: Does a woman hinder her chances of marriage by doing something or demanding that she loves to? Why are some women not just ‘wife material’? Just wondering how many guys would be actually intrigued by a woman when she has a job, a car, a home, a social circle, takes her own decision and is self-assured. Well guess there are two ways – be a wife who ‘is allowed’ to work have her own life (that means go shopping or a girls day out) provided she cooks and babysits her husband or date but with dignity.

Life or is it..

There are many roads I have travelled since then.. interesting, tempting, risky and boring. I have given myself every chance to be happy and to live life! I have grabbed every piece of life that has come my way. Yet.. time tends to take me back in days and memories.. where I had left a piece of Me!  

Too bad people don’t fall in love at the same pace, at the same time, for the same reasons, and it’s too bad that those emotions don’t move simultaneously. But each bit of madness moved at its own pace, one not dependent on the pace of anyone else. It wasn’t like tandem skydiving, where you were connected as you fell, where you were forced to fall at the same rate and use the same parachute. Falling in love is a solo act. You know that, just learn the hard way. You just jump and hope that your parachute will open. Sometimes, you look up and realize that you were falling by yourself, the object of your desire still on the plane, not interested in jumping and watching you descend into that scary place alone. And then you feel you are waiting for something that is not going to happen…

It hurts to know that one has to start all over again or may be its no more a start or ending. It’s only a journey now, directionless and reckless. It hurts to look back and yet it is the past that looks most beautiful. Well, sometimes you just need to step outside, get some fresh air and remind yourself who want to be and who you really are.

If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by. For who knows whether any of them will return. But as I pass by it’s like coming back to the room I left my fond memories and that I haven’t seen in long time, where I still try to put missing pieces of Me together.

Walk On -- Motherjane

Last... now that I can see

The future ain't what it used to be.

Like a poet without vision

An object of mockery...

A dreamer who lost his dream to reality.

Won't give up, though the going's slow

I'll trade all my footsteps for a shot at tomorrow.

Tattoo my intentions across these streets of time

And fight till the future is once again mine.

'Cos I'm the immortal..Baptized in fire.

Unable to die, unless I desire,

I'm the light piercing the darkest dawn.

I'm the human spirit Walking on.

I'm down and so close to out

I'm the foot soldier who suffered the rout

But I'll stand again in conquest of pain...

To walk on as a king among men.

I'll make mistakes of that I'm sure.

Lose my strength when I need more.

Taste my fear in life's battlefields

But I won't trade my sword for the shield!!

An Encounter with the Dravidians!!

One of the notable features of the Indian Party System is the presence of a large number of regional parties. By regional party we mean a party which generally operates within a limited geographical area and its activities are confined only to a single or handful of states. The term ‘regionalism’ has two connotations. In the negative sense, it implies excessive attachment to one’s region is preference to the country or the state. In the positive sense it is a political attribute associated with people’s love for their region, culture, language, etc. with a view to maintain their independent identity.

But what actually are the implications when regionalism drives a community beyond just holding up its identity, when conserving one’s own language becomes more than a socio-cultural issue? This is what, as far I understood in 2 years, the Tamil Nadu politics thrives on. It cannot but be a concern of every right thinking man to live with the social anomalies in the so called Dravidian land. This is in fact my personal account as an ‘outsider’ to pen down some strange yet ironical experiences of mine.


The first question my landlord asked me while renting me the house took me by surprise. Mr. Ramalingam, my landlord was not interested in where I came from, where I worked. He rather asked me if I was an Aryan or Dravidian. That is not all, you need to pay more for the same house if you are an ‘Aryan’ ! You might be thinking then what decides whether you are an Aryan. Well , that is too simple for the people who claim that they, the Dravidians are true Indian and rest were nomadic groups who settled in ‘their India’. But is that historically true? Surprisingly enough, no one cares in Tamil Nadu. Their only belief that South Indians or the Dravidians true and pure Indians and rest ‘the north Indians’ are mixed blood or descendants of some nomadic tribe. This is infact the soul of every political agenda there as the names of the political parties suggest Annna Dravidra Munnetra Kazagam . Infact the first manifestation of regionalism was the demand for reorganization of states on linguistic basis, but the most effective play of regionalism was the victory of the DMK against Congress in Tamil Nadu in 1960s.


Now it is deep rooted than where it started. It’s a social issue and not confined to political parties anymore and its further implication whether grave or better can only be seen with years to come. This is just an personal attempt to bring out the irony of the much prevailing phenomena, with which perhaps every ‘North Indian’ who has lived there will agree.