The Great Divide...

I had the privilege of reading a book titled "Why Men can't listen and Women can't read Maps" more than a year back. For the average man, usually on the wrong side of egotistic and macho, the book is nothing short of sacrilege, say, like getting tickets to Rambo and being made to watch SATC. That said, the book is hilarious and a must read for everyone. It teaches you a few things about life, not least (and this to my fellow NITTians) how to sight adichufy machi! Note though that the only reason I don't feel too hard done by that book, as a guy, is because it was authored by a married couple, and come on, give the guy some credit. I can imagine how many cold dinners and lonely nights went into WMCLAWCRM.

Descriptive acronym.

Anyways, the reason that came up, from the dusty little one-way pit that sits in my hippocampus - a veritable blast from the past, is the conversation para-quoted below...

Wife getting ready for a very important function kinda like a 3 year old's kid brother's birthday party: "Get that red color sari with the brown border will you?"

Husband who had no idea that this was in his job description: "Huh?"

Wife who is now starting to get impatient and exasperated: "The one I wore to my mom's cousin's in-laws' beautician's fourth nephew-thrice-removed's wedding!!!"

Husband who has just realized the gravity of the situation and has turned the TV off: "Oh yeah that one. Wasn't that a red color sari with the green border?"

Wife stuck in the middle of make up having smeared kajal 0.7 microns too thick on the left eyebrow as compared to the right: "That was my my mom's cousin's in-laws' beautician's third nephew-four times-removed's wedding!!!"

Husband still in the midst of processing huge chunks of string input using an O(n^2) searching algorithm with no history-based pre-processing: "Oh."

Wife considering divorce: "Forget it. I'll take it myself"

Husband considering bachelorhood: "Okay."

Yup... It's a wonder how two people who meet and like each other actually get through to marriage, and not least that trial by, around and over fire that's done over two days they call a Hindu Marriage! So here's wishing Jan and Avi a very very happy married life!

P.S: I'll get you the book your first anniversary ;)

MacroEvent, MicroPlans

Micromanagement: When the kodai is the color of the pustagam is the color of the visiri is the color of the small spot on the veshti that is actually a kungumam stain.

Also Micromanagement: When the daily affairs of 15 people involved however remotely with an event are mapped into well defined time slots so as to turn them into skin-breathable robots purely for the sake of sanity of the event organizers.

Now that we've got that out of the way, I invite all my lovely readers to my funeral, which is slated to occur at exactly T hours, where

T = t0 + t1 + t2

to: Time at which author's mom views post

t1: Time taken for aforementioned mother to stare at the screen in disbelief

t2: Time taken for author to be fished out from under the bed

Ah well. Weddings bring out the best in people. The house is a mess of color, invitations and frayed nerves. while the telephone is equally excited. Some things are common to all Indian (South Indian) (TamBrahm) (Iyer) weddings - there must be at least one problem of critical importance for every day from D-30 days, all servant maids must decide to go on strike/pilgrimage/hunger fast for women's empowerment for a sum total of 1 week starting from D-20 days, and, well, you really have to keep shopping till D day.

Other things, of course, are peculiar to tech-savvy, charted accountant ruled, micromanaged and macro-thinking households. Like Excel sheets, scheduled reminders, VOIP chats with bride and groom, bemused younger brother of bride, etc. Need to update gifts sent/received by that dude who lives in Wassupripet? Just pivot around that district, sort them in order of name, and pull up that reference from column J. Voila! Organization in 1,436 easy steps...

Aaah... Weddings are so much fun.