Beard's addendum to interstate travel
The palatability index of any food is inversely proportional to the distance and number of times the restaurant advertises prior to the designated stop.

Suddenly everbody in my family is talking about marriages (not mine, I definitely hope not, now...). It all about my relatives and cowsins getting married. They are all over the phone talking to one another about this guy or that girl working in Bangalore or in Silicon Valley, their horoscopes and tall or short, fair or dark, their families, money, real estates and so on and on. It kindof really bugs me.
Everytime my mom picks up the phone, its always some relation who has a nubile (for the laymen - marriageable) bride or groom. They seem to be so eager to fix up people, that they seem to have lost the whole meaning of marriage - its a celebration of love (to quote Joey Tribiani in Friends - 716) "Its all about loving, giving, sharing and recieving." But are we really doing that. They are all in a hurry to get their relatives son's and daughters get fixed up before they become too "old". Recently, my mom was on the phone talking about a prospective bride for my aunt's father's sister's daughter. THERE HAS TO BE A LIMIT TO EVEYTHING
And of course, there is this jhaatakam (horoscope). They keep recieving this horoscopes in many letters before they even look at the face. For example, this was a conversation I had heard recently....
1 : We have this beautiful guy working in the US whose jhaatakam matches perfectly
2 : What's his name
1 : I dont know, but this is a very good fit.

Aren't we looking a little over the board here.
They dont even look whether their interests match - because they consider that the married couple will eventually get along. All they are worried about is the right age, horoscope and working "outside India in a prestigious company". All they hope is that the bond of marriage will keep them together....
And as suddenly as this came up, there is this sudden spate of love marriages among my friends and relatives (I dont wish to disclose names for privacy's sake) as an answer to all this. Somebody did start fighting then.
And I know that I am slightly young to talk about this sort of thing, but its something that I (and probably everybody) has to deal with at some point in their lives. And probably I may also be forced to do such sort of things 25-30 years from now. But I dont want to do that to the human community.

Neways, no Monday Blues today.

And now, we (my mom too) are off to pick up dad... So long..