The question for the day is ‘What is common among all these pairs of terms, other than opposites?’

My answer would be ‘Morons who got their better halves into the same company, or even worse, same project as theirs – did they actually think it would turn out to be the positive opposite? Really? What were they thinking?’

For the sake of simplicity, I use the male pronoun herein. The following is equally applicable to the female pronoun too [If only defeating sexism were as simple as throwing in an occasional he/she, her or hers. Kindly don't look for sexism where none exists].

As has been the sad case over thousands of years now, people have been getting married. What is even more pathetic nowadays is that they are getting married to a person who is in the same profession! Even worse, same company and the most blinding wonder of wonders, same project. Seriously dude, what were you thinking? Has your IQ turned negative? Or, are you on a mission to reach unsurpassed stupidity? What exactly is your problem that you committed such a colossal blunder?

From an Indian perspective (and is equally applicable to almost all nations), the boom in IT industry has created major behemoths who employ close to a million people. This in turn has affected the marriage market in unimaginable proportions. Apart from creating various love-bird colonies in almost every campus, this IT boom has affected the arranged marriage market in a profound manner. A sample conversation between three parents -

Parent1: My daughter did her B.Com. She is now working in a call center

Parent2: Oh! B.Com aa…My son did his Engineering. Now he is in software. We are looking for a software girl who can understand his work too.

(software girl…wtf?!)

Parent3: True, just like platform-language compatibility, the kids should also be compatible in their own sectors…like software…hahahahh!

Parent1: Yes, yes…I am sending my daughter to computer coaching. She will also join a software company very soon…nowadays who wants to work in retail shop or manufacturing plant I say!

That being the case of parents, most of the marriages are happening between IT professionals. As far as I am concerned, since the majority market (and I use the term ‘market’ in the truest sense, no insult here!) is in IT now, I don’t see an issue why the couples shouldn’t be in the same profession. But imagine the conversations at home:

Guy: So, can we go to Gopal’s function now?

Girl: Ahh, I think I can’t make it…I have a problem with this Oracle database…can you help me out here?

Guy: Oh sure sweetheart! So, what exactly is the problem…is there a problem with the Extract process, the Transform process or the Load process!

Isn’t that sad to say the least?

What is even more depressing is if they are working for the same company. ‘Ahh, they go in the same car, they go-together, come to-gether – they save on petrol as well as they spend more time to-gether, how nice!’ and ‘Awww, chooo chweet, no?’ are statements we tend to hear. Firstly, No, it is not sweet…what’s more, the guy is probably going through the worst torture in his life. Don’t get me wrong here – I think a couple working in the same company is absolutely fantastic…as a concept. Practically, it would drive most guys insane.

When Einstein spoke about the infiniteness of human stupidity, I am sure he was referring to guys who have their spouses in the same project as theirs. Imagine a jail – same thing; in fact, even worse. Imagine a noose around you 24×7, office and home – like heaven and hell being one and the same. Absolutely no privacy, and every move being monitored, analyzed and feedback duly passed. The better thing to do here would be to choke themselves rather than get into this afflictment. As Shakespeare says in the Twelfth Night, ‘Observe these guys, for the love of mockery’. Actually, ‘whole-hearted sympathy; is the phrase to used for such people – I like their approach, but definitely would love to see their departure from my sight.

P.S: This blog’s topic was a random idea my supervisor had come up with. All credit to her

1) The past week has been a Nostalgia week. I accidentally happened to browse through my chat conversations on both yahoo and google. My, my – it was one emotional roller coaster. What started off as 5-10 refreshing exercise turned out to be an endeavor close to 3-4 hrs spread over couple of days! Conversations, letters – some which I read twice, maybe thrice and some which didn’t even matter; Photographs – some which I wanted to frame and keep them in my bedroom, and others which I despised; Letters – some so genuine that tears trickled down, some so sham and artificial, I wondered why I even had stored them. Some thoughts evoked a feeling of ‘The world seems to have drifted a thousand miles and left me alone’, while others ‘Mann! I couldn’t have said that’ types. As happens with nostalgia, you feel happy and sad at the same time – with some thoughts still active, others dormant and most of them dead.

2) I might not be qualified to say this – but I find some of the things newly-weds do absolutely hilarious. To the risk of sounding cynical- ‘Oh! We went out for dinner. It has been 3 weeks since we got married and we thought it was time for celebration’ – Some achievement, eh? Oh my God! Look, people said we couldn’t even get along for 3 days and now we have completed 3 weeks!! Bah! Another distinct feature of newly married couples – When they sit in a group, they slyly look at each other and smile, wink and to top it all, try to ensure that noone else in the group has noticed that! I mean c’mon – if you slyly look at each other for 30 min out of a 45 min gathering, others are bound to notice you guys. And We know what you guys are thinking and smiling about – we exactly aren’t products of immaculate conception, are we? So, how about some ‘actual’ social gathering rather than a ‘sly’ social gathering!

3) I haven’t been getting much time to read books lately – but I am stealing a read here and there. I would definitely recommend Khaled Hosseini’s ‘Kite Runner’ and ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ – both extremely well-written and gripping. Given the current state of Afghanistan, these two books give an excellent perspective of the state.

4) Some of the readers’s comments I received through my email – would like to put them here

a) ‘Why are majority of your short-stories based on this boy-girl theme? You write them well…so why can’t we have a diverse set of topics?’

My response: Well, probably it has to do with my age However, will definitely keep your comment in mind whenver I embark on a short-story.

b) ‘Can we have more posts like ‘State of Indian education system etc?’

My response: More such posts found on Desicritics.org. I write about generic topics on that site; I put in one or two such articles on this blog. I would definitely love your comments on that site too.