Well here’s a confession of an unmarried man – in all my life of 30+ years, only one time have I taken a girl out alone for coffee and a chat. And that was only after I found out that she was married and there would be no cause for misunderstanding 😉
I’ve loved my life and freedom too much to risk getting obsessed and bonded by some or the other particular person.
Of course I’ve not been any introvert and had several very close friends who were girls, but not any ‘girlfriends’ as such. A friend had once remarked – “if you haven’t spoken closely with girls (taking them out and chatting with them alone), you’re missing something in life”. I know about how girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice andl so on, just that romance/flirting never ranked as a #1 priority or even a #871 priority. I’ve had a lot of respect for feminism, but have seen girls as just like guys being fellow human beings and friends.
[To be honest, there have been times esp when I see some fellows absolutely crazy about the fairer sex, I’ve wondered if there’s something wrong with me 😉 Just kidding, there are always fictional characters like Jughead of Archie comics or Amir Khan in Dil Chahta Hai. Its not that I come from any orthodox conservative background, in my family both my cousin brothers have had love marriages! 😀
But especially nowadays, there is tremendous media hype (eg during Valentine’s Day) that tries to highlight and promote dating and so on a lot, and that sort of indirectly that a single person is a ‘loser’. In general, Indian society dosen’t look too kindly upon single persons – bachelors/divorcees/widowers (a lot worse for female equivalents). As a society I feel we should be more accepting and liberal of an individual’s personal preferences/circumstances, this is probably actually happening to a reasonable extent in our current generation 🙂
I wonder how teenagers can avoid being influenced by the occasional senseless media hype – do they really manage to see that its just opportunistic marketing for greeting cards and related products? That there is no real substance in most of these ideas of romance? I have nothing against dating, flirting in general except the people who aren’t interested or don’t get an opportunity (for whatever reason, maybe conservative upbringing or lack of communication skills, etc) shouldn’t end up feeling lonely or missing out on something! 8)
Recently in some newspaper or something I found some scientific explanation somewhere about why a person who feels self-content has sufficient amount of some particular chemical (some new discovery beyond hormones, pheromones, etc) in his system that others lack, but I don’t have a reference for the details. ]
Over time, my peers and even juniors got in love/engaged/married/had kids/etc but I never felt for a moment that I’m missing anything. My own world – family, friends, photography, work, writing, books, travel, knowledge and learning, etc were all that mattered to me! My mom on the other hand felt pretty alarmed mostly because *her* peers were making her feel like she had ‘failed her duty as her mother’ ( Ugh 👿 ), in fact this has been happening every now and then since the past 5 years!
Finally after a certain point I did decide to get married. I searched for a few years as a background hobby. I did try the portal shaadi.com – its worked for a lot of people but somehow didn’t suit me personally. Nor did I prefer any girl who liked me just by readomg my writing, hence have never advertised on this blog. So I must admit my search has been a sort of lazy and largely passive one where I’ve just got on with other things, and have just been approached through the arranged marriage system (they see my name registered in a book). Some liked me and some I liked, but it had never been mutual.
I value my mother’s inputs in this regard a lot, though sometimes I don’t see any logical reasoning behind somethings she says, later on it sometimes [Ma, if you’re reading this pls note the word in bold font] turns out that the basic effect of her suggestion was actually a very good thing. On the other hand, there’s also the risk of getting superstitious and over-influenced, so it takes a certain amount of trial and error. Of course, there was no doubt that I was the one to make the decision and take responsibility for it!
As Richard Bach expresses in the book ‘The Bridge Across Forever’, a man who values his freedom greatly inadvertently puts up barbed wires around his heart. He dosen’t allow anyone to come too close, and is very defensive and protective about his own space and territory. Reading this book as well as my own introspection definitely reduced this.
So after all these exploits (only some of them written down) I finally got engaged to Vijetha, a physics lecturer teaching pre-university students. She loves physics and is interested in research in molecular… er… something. She likes nature, walking endlessly, and travelling. One of the main things I liked about her is her deep sense of integrity, sincerity and compassion to others – something I could try to learn from her!
How I met her a month or so ago, and how it ended up in us getting engaged (see photos) is a story worth sharing here. I wanted to tell it today but will say it some other time – because I already spent a lot of time today digging up background material and putting it up here as posts in the samsaara archive.
The story involves several interesting factors, twists and turns, including useful inputs from well-wishers (including a fellow blogger Shruti). I don’t know when I’ll write more details – but thought I’d better atleast announce the event here for the time being!
But the summary for now is that I’m an extremely lucky man having by some fluke got a far nicer girl than I deserve 
and whom, by some wild coincidence, my mother happens to like as well!
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