THE BEST PROFILE FORWARD

 

Im 23, 4 more months and i will be done with college,a seat to a pg course is somewhere in the near future, A horoscope thats is pretty screwed up, cousins younger than me about to be hitched, aunties and uncles who have "my best interest" as their  prime concern who egg my parents further until they finally decide i have to get married!! and to sort it all out and to help my family with the same comes the most savy, Bharath matrimony, and a bunch of other matrimony sites.

I totally hate these online matrimony portals. Some random person expresses interest,  and courtesy demands you do the same..numbers are exchanged (so are badly photoshoped pictures) and somewhere along the line things go off like the fizz in a bottle of cola opened 2 hours back.

Every time im shown some profile of a potential groom, my highly judgmental part of the brain become overactive.  Every single line i read, ends with the same thought "bull shit".

98% of the profiles i come across have almost identical description about the guy in question. "god fearing, soft spoken, homely boy" wait a second! this is where you begin to select a groom based on the principle of exclusion. I most def do not want the god fearing soft spoken homely boy!

First - God fearing??! who fears god? the one who commits sins. so does it imply the prospective groom commits sins on daily basis? or does it mean he does not commit ANY sin just because he is scared of some invisible presence on top of his head keeping a watch over him and his deeds 24/7?? Either way not good! what im actually looking for is someone with a conscience, who does what he does not because its the expected behavior, but because he believes in him and his deeds to do no harm to those around him. Now common thats not too much to ask for?

Second-      homely and soft spoken. sorry!

   how did life come this far? we evolved obviously. we learnt to face the struggles that life throws at us, we fight, we establish territories, we create boundaries and we rule. Had our cavemen remained passive to what fate had in store or them, we probably would still be living in caves and mountains, guarding ourselves from the wild with fire  from the stone. Again is it wrong to look for someone who shows traits of being able to evolve,. and this most commonly used expression hold good for women too.!

 This does not mean im looking for some wandering hooligan who dominates and thinks the world is his head, rather someone who respects fellow human being and their space. who can be considerate and diplomatic but at the same time is not afraid to raise his voice when he is wronged.

After all this description about the guy, comes the demanding part.

Looking for  "Tall, beautiful, slim, fair,homely,well cultured girls from decent families" then my head says, why don't you add, 36-24-36, blond or read head, rai's face, Madhuri's smile, Paris Hilton's brains and can still look like a traditional doll in strategically draped saree??  Never mind the guy looks like the uncle you see around at malls. IF you want a doll go buy one jackass!

some demands go a step further to border on near selfishness when the look for a bride "who can support the groom, make him happy,look after him and his family at the same time help HIM achieve his goals!" well just so you know mister, the girl has a family too, she has her own dreams and whimsical fancies..she is not your "talking ginger" or "talking tom" who you gradually loose interest in just because another app comes around!

My online profile is hilarious too! Describing me in those exact same words i mentioned before. everything that i am not. But why does this have to happen??

Every one lives to fulfill the needs of the other. First you assess what is in demand and then you manufacture goods accordingly, thats basics of business. Business that now also includes matchmaking. If tall, fair, slim ( the magic adjectives) is what you want, then that is what you will get. some how the bride / groom miraculously have to change accordingly, because anything less will become a compromise.

Marriage is no more the sacred, family affair it was ages ago. Its now reduced to choices. This web site or that. this boy or that, giving true meaning to the phrase you choices make you what you are! Of course the old ways might still exist you say, but judging by the success of these online matchmaking sites i doubt that with a biig question mark! 

THE RESULT HORROR

My final year M.B.B.S exams  came to an end. I wanted to scream my lungs out, cry for all those hours of metal torture, sleep myself to death for all those days of induced insomnia, talk endlessly to any one who would listen about any nonsense beyond the subjects, listen to all my favorite songs, take a nice long shower, go to the marina beach, eat roasted corn...the things i wanted to do was endless!
But the day the exams got over, another nagging pain in the rear took over...what about the results?


Every single day the MGR university website replaced the morning paper and ensured that my bowels forgot all about the constipation that accompanied exams! My dream lovers and the happily ever after dreams were replaced by various nightmares about the results and its consequences.


Every single day out with friends, dinner parties with family friends and small picnics were wrapped up with anxiety and plenty of bile in the throat situations. All facebook chats involved in depth discussion about the rumored dates for results arrival and Phone calls were mainly to reconfirm all the information exchanged on facebook or yahoo!


The only page that was open 24/7 on my laptop was the MGR university site. I am very sure my index finger became a millimeter shorter as i kept pressing the refresh button about hundred times a day. Every time the page failed to load i almost convulsed and my lacrymal glands ran out of tears! My family refused to believe i was sane considering the various facial expressions i would display by just staring at the computer screen!


Waiting for an important exams results is probably the most cruel part of the examination process. All the time wasted, the classes that were bunked, teachers who became the butt of jokes come back to haunt you like the ghost of your  Ex.  Finally one fine day when the sun was setting in the west and i was settlling deeper into my corner on the sofa with tea, i saw it. The result.


Convulsions started so did tears! i dint dare enter my roll number into that rectangle box! It took two whole minutes for my dad to convince me to let go of the laptop, and another three minutes for him to get the roll number out of my mouth! Then in about 5 seconds he told me "PASS" !
NOOOO way! I had to see it myself! and it was pretty much there on the screen! 


The holidays of the haunted results thus ended. I did not do a single thing on my list of to do things. Did not celebrate, did not scream, did not freak out like how i had imagined i would during the exams!


I now regret those wasted days. Internship in its first trimester, and im yet to register the fact that i have passed. The moment of glory has passed to never come back.But definetly we are worth more! And being the dreamer i am i still believe that some day in the next one year there will come a day when i celebrate with my besties in such a way that will compensate for all those years of desperation,hopelessness and days where we worked our asses off! 

To that day i say cheers!

Homeostasis meets nemesis!

December 25, 2011. The day Saturn took over my life.


Initially it was the 10th boards, then the 12th, every university exam in college and now THE final year exams of medical school. 


I made elaborate plans with well organised time tables to make sure i complete the portions by January 16th 2012, but like every other TR's movie, my plans turned out to be a big joke. Complete the portions?? what the hell was i even thinking??


When rest of the world was celebrating new year, here i was staring at the books but concentrating on the songs blaring from the stereo outside, regretting every single second for having taken medicine!
My ipod was untouched for a period of 38 days to be exact..the longest ever we have ever been separated.
Conversations with friends involved dialogues like "man! i have so much left" "i have no clue what im gonna do!!" "im definitely gonna flunk!" over and again!...the only thing i had time was for books, and i hated them!


Prayers increased in frequency and duration; nightmares of sitting "vetti" in the exam halls became the norm; It was like having PMS all throughout! Mood swings, oily  head and faces, exam acne( that's my  terminology), relapsing bouts of confidence, and endless worry..a typical Pre-Exam syndrome complex.


This is just the preview..the climax occurs the day before the 1st paper General medicine one. Its humanely impossible to read trough Davidson before the exam, and so came George Mathew to my rescue. Every topic looked important, every unusual name or sign a potential 1 marker, every unmarked page a reminder of the vastness of the untouched portions..now this is what hell should be like. That emotional turmoil, the mental agony is one of a kind.


One paper after the other with no time to sleep or eat, rumors about the possible questions for the next paper,  few annoying batch mates who go around announcing how badly prepared they are( they are usually the toppers!), a few others who swallow microphones and discuss the answers with the wall, the near death experience when you receive the question paper and realize you do not know both the essay questions, last minute revisions(just before being dragged into the hall), "totally screwed" glances with best friends, hoping for a bomb to drop on the examiners head are all inherent to an important theory exam.


Balding patches, over grown beards, bushy eyebrows,fine tremors on inspection; 


Moist sweaty skin, irregular pulse,on palpation;


Changing murmurs, loud s1 and s2,s3 s4 s5 s6 s7 sn!! all over the precordium, unusually loud bowel sounds on auscultation. 


Investigations- CT brain reveals a recently hypertrophied brain with scattered ares of sclerosis( for all the answers that failed to make an appearance in mind's screen during the exams)
These are the pathagnomic features of a student who has just taken a med school exam (any exam for that matter!).


Bungee jumping scary?? my foot!!!!  Try writing a med school exam!