ultra-serious girl

Saw a couple of girls (for arranged marriage) today.

The first one was a dentist, and it was her mother who seemed to be more expressive than her. Her father seemed to be totally disinterested in the whole thing. Maybe the girl herself was very shy or something but she could only grin sheepishly and kept insisting that she had nothing to say. And even that was mostly in English, though everyone else was conversing in Kannada.

The second girl was a librarian. And an extremely serious one at that. As for me I seemed to be in my drunken mode… as if I’d worn the mask …just that I didn’t say “ssssommmmmebody stop me!” 😉

I kept cracking jokes one after the other – my main idea was that here I am – destiny’s crossed my path for an hour with this girl whom I never knew, things may or may not work out, but let me add some value to her life. I wanted her to relax, to feel comfortable, and most importantly, to smile. The first thing I asked was whether she had chosen to be a librarian (MLib) or done it just like that, and she said she had chosen it, so that was a great start, but that was as far as it went. For some reason she seemed to be pretty despondent about it. I asked if she knew about digital formats and audio books, what would probably be futuristic librarian resources… she just gave monosyllabic replies. I tried to cheer her up by noting that the heroine character of the action packed movie The Mummy Returns was, incredibly, a librarian. But she hadn’t seen the movie. I wanted to see if she could see that a librarian could be a pretty amazing career – all the books in the world and all the time in the world to read them, possibility to interact with so many knowledge-oriented people who come looking for different kinds of information! I asked her what she thought about libraries in the future, she said they would get phased out due to the digital era. The only glimmer of hope was when I commented that there would be no substitute for a hard bound book especially in a place like a train where everybody wouldnt be carrying around laptops, and that was the only time she seemed to be happy, atleast for a fleeting moment. But after that, no matter what, it was simply impossible. She seemed to be completely obsessed with some terrible problem. I couldn’t help noticing she kept folding and unfolding her handkerchief, into a smaller and smaller size. Finally I couldn’t resist and commented “its a scientific fact that no sheet of cloth (or paper) can be folded more than 8 times, maybe you can give up”. Her father burst into laughter – but unfortunately I seemed to have only embarassed her than anything else. I told her awkwardly – “no seriously its a fact”… and then apologized, she reassured me she hadn’t taken offence… but maintained her serious look… finally I did what she probably wanted me to do the most… simply let her be. I wished there was some way I could help her – but there didn’t seem to be much really.