...
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Alice: Which way I ought to go from here?Cheshire Puss: That depends a great deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
Cheshire Puss: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.
Alice: …So long as I get somewhere.
Cheshire Puss: Oh, you are sure to do that if you only walk long enough.
- Alice in Wonderland
This was about a month ago. Suddenly something occurred to me and I called up home.
"... you mean the girl hasn't even seen my photo!?" I asked mom.
"She will be seeing you on the weekend anyways right?"
"But... well, anyways I don't know what to say"
"Don't you worry at all. They are our distant relatives too. It will be very informal".
I sighed.
But not for very long. When I went home over the weekend, I came to know that a party hall has been booked and arrangements have been made for breakfast and lunch. Everything needed to build up my tension was in place. I could imagine the difference in the faces of both the families during breakfast and after the lunch. Why? The Go - No go meeting was scheduled just after breakfast.
The guests informally arrived and that is when she saw me for the first time. After going through an hour of tension-uncertainty mixed emotions, we decided to go and sit in a temple. Just two of us, to talk about everything that needs to be known before you say 'I do'.
What do people discuss in this talk? Whether or not the girl or the guy is compatible and will adjust for the whole life and potentially for the next seven lives!? Was I even prepared to talk? I didn't have a questionnaire or guidance or tips to assist me.
But after about 30-40 mins, we could not find any contradictions and we said okay. The elders then decided to go live over a weekend in the last week of August.
I thought I ought to come up with a book for what and what not to ask and answer in such meetings.
But then, does it really matter? I remembered one of my friends from client side in US telling me, the usual timeframe a guy and a girl spend together before getting married is about 3 years. Leaving alone the fact that about 37.4% of statistics are made right on the spot, I would say about 30% of them will shred the relationship and try to pursue a newer and potentially better one after the average happiness expectancy of a married couple (5 years). They wonder how on earth we could just go ahead and talk with a girl for about an hour and then commit for the whole life.
Traditionally in India, a girl's opinion has never been asked! It is only in recent few decades that this is happening. It is always decided by the parents. But when the relationship can be so fragile that even after 3 years of going together, it could meltdown, does it really matter?
Changes are inevitable. Everything, everyone in the world keep changing. You may like one thing about a person today and after a few years that very thing would get on your nerves. Relationship is a constant learning process of how to accept changes and flow with the current. Clinging to a root or a rock along the river is the only way of experiencing the turbulence of the river. Let go and flow with it, you will learn to float.
With that thought I dropped the idea of writing that 'one million copies sold' book. The journey doesn't end when the project goes live; it then begins.
