Arranged Marriage Blues 6 - Three Years of Marriage

It feels just like yesterday that we started the search for a bride and here we are - celebrating our third wedding anniversay already! Banal it may sound but, time just seems to fly!

After marriage, the pressure of new job, adjusting a new life style and shifting into a new house just took a grand toll on my blog. Hope I can get back to it with a bit more focus now. Thought of just summarizing some interesting stuff learnt hard through experience.

What does it feel to be married for 3 years? Well, the answer is - Super! You always have a friend waiting for you at home, a confidante with whom you can share your innermost feelings (mostly!) and someone to share your dinner with. Eating alone now feels like a punishment!

So for people out there - here's what you learn after marrige. Take with a big ounce of salt. And the disclaimer - this is in no way related to anything that I've experienced. It is a figment of pure imagination and totally fictional stuff!

First Year
In the first year, the first 2-3 months goes off in eating. You need to visit the innumerable relatives and relatives of relatives. Each of them will invite for lunch/dinner and you're supposed to looking fit and trim and then eat until the host feels happy. Your intake capacity is of nobody's concern.

The lunch/dinner eats away the weekends. Not much of time is left for you and your better half to communicate. This is the good thing. Since you don't have enough *quality time* to spend with each other, the actual quality of time spent is very high.

Over a few months, the invitation dwindles. People forget that you're newly married and leave you alone. At this stage, you pull out all the gift coupons and gift cards to buy stuff before the coupons expire. The visit will be mostly for curtains, bedspreads and the like. Essentially you'll see departments in shops that you never even knew existed. However, the visit involves a visit to a nice eatery and good *crowd*. So, it is not too bad.

Then comes the first year trip to in-laws house for the Diwali celebrations. This is a taxing time. You need to bring out a paper and pencil and chart the family structure. All the brances have to be traced, and the leaves analyzed. And you need to remember the names and the characteristics. Once the exam is successfull - I mean the holiday is over, you can relax as you're now formally a part of the family.

The first year will have its set of mild skirmishes. These are the like friendly encounters, just like the India-West Indies matches. There are no real winners or losers and the heart is just not there to give a fight.

Second Year
By this time, you'd have accumulated a lot of holiday and can embark on a second honeymoon. This is a much a better time than the first as you're now more familiar with your better half and don't end with any foot-in-mouth scenario.

Relatives leave you alone except at the various family occasions where you are reminded repeatedly that marriage is not recreation but an a legal sanction for procreation. The best answer to it is grin. If you know the relative well, a wink is also acceptable. If you don't know what to do, just say, "Let's see" and flee from the place.

Mild skirmishes become a bit more pronounced now. Since there aren't too many invites for lunch/dinner over weekends, you get more *quality time*. So you get to discuss the *adjustment issues*. If you are an assertive husban, you will bravely defend your position and then behave as told. If you an aggressive husband, you will shout and fight and behave as told. If you are a submissive guy you wouldn't be having the conversation. So, bottom line is it is a zero sum game where the other party always wins. It is just the fighting spirit that matters. Just don't get too aggressive as the argument will then end with a 'Fine - do whatever you want'. In this case, the discussion will continue and that's in nobody's interest. What's the fun in having the same argument over and over again when there are so many new things to barb about?

Visits to saree shops and other places of general interest tends to get boring. Malls get irritating as standing outside changing rooms becomes a chore.

And by the end of year, the pressure to announce the *good news* just keeps getting worse. Getting a 200% hike isn't good enough. Visiting US of A or any other country and earning in $/GBP etc isn't good enough. There is only one *good news* and the to-be grandpa/grandma just can't wait. It is then you realize what a cornored rat feels like. There isn't a very good escape route. If there is any, please add in comments!

And thus ends the second year of your togetherness. So all you folks out there, just don't get scared - it is just a psychological feeling that can be overcome :-) Before reality hits you, you're in third year. That's the next post!

Book Review: Myth=Mithya by Devdutt Pattanaik

-Akshay Ranganath

I keep looking through the top sellers list on Flipkart and almost always notived the book 'Myth = Mithya: A Handbook Of Hindu Mythology' by Devdutt Pattanaik. I'd seen his video on TED about 'East meets West' http://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik.html. I was impressed by his presentation as well as his depth of knowledge on Hindu traditions and mythology. So I lapped up the book and after reading it, I can say that it was one of the best reads in quite some time.

This book is a very quick exploration about Hinduism, the Gods, the gods (small case 'g'), the Asuras and the Rakshashas - and how they all inter-play. Very profound implications of the Hindu mythologies and deities is presented in a very easy to read fashion. Being a Hindu myself, I felt so illiterate about the religion when I read the book. Our dieties are everywhere, the mythologies are told to us regularly. Despite this, the real reason for something like the meaning of Ganesha's head or the symbolical meaning being told via Brahma's 4 heads or abundance of snake is something that had never intrigued me. Mr Pattanaik brings forth their meaning as well as the reason for significance of each aspect of such symbology.

I was very impressed with the presentation where the author brings differences between two forms of the same thing. For example, between the Devas and Asuras, Kali and Gowri, Krishna in Bhagvatha and Mahabharatha, Lakshmi and Alakshmi and finally, Shiva and Shankara. The stories of Hindu mythology are gripping by itself. When interspersed with the hidden meaning the philosophical significance comes forth.

The other aspect that I liked is the non-partisan presentation, if you can call it so. Most of the books of Hindus have a tilt towards Advaita or Dvita (monism or dualism). Mr Pattanaik presents both points of view and presents a case and its interpretation by Shaivites and Vaishnavites without getting embroiled on which form of Hinduism is better.

After I bought that book almost 4 of my colleagues were intrigued and they too told me it was an impressive book. Now it is my dad's turn :-) A very highly recommended book indeed!

Book Review: India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha

I used to browse Flipkart weekly and kept noticing the book, "India After Gandhi" for quite a few months. For some reason, I thought that this was a boring tome on history and scholarly book talking about greatness of Nehru and Gandhi. However, the reviews appeared to be different and when the price came down below Rs 400, I thought of buying the book and I feel that it was a great investment.

In this story of India, Gandhi dies within the first 10 pages. Considering the book is 750 pages, this is a great achievement. We're so used to our school history books that appear to close India's history with independence. However, this book starts where the other books end. And that makes it all the more interesting.

Guha has managed to do a tremendous research and pull information and woven them together into a tapestry of an engaging story. The book evolves by showing India as a baby taking baby steps towards democracy, right after a horrendous pain and followed by an exodus of humankind unmatched at no point in time. This book gives a personalty to each person that we just see as postage stamps and passport size photos in our text books: the ever optimistic and wordly Nehru, the principled and at times quixotic Gandhi, the resolute and stern Vallabhai, the pragmatic intellectual in Ambedkar as well as the scheming and opportunistic leaders of various sectarian populace. These are the personalities who have been elevated to god-like status in the current traditions of India. This book potrays them as genuine humans, fighting and struggling to keep a nation together, a nation that most historians from West and East considered unnatural and impossible.

I liked the way the initial days of India is so well detailed: the formation of states, the first war with Pakistan, Indo-China skirmishes that leads to war, the rise and fall of Nehru and the constant struggle of early nation builders to impart the democratic structures into the Indian tradition culmiating in the constitution.

The subsequent section is about the daughter, Indira and how she schemed and systematically dismantled the democratic principles, the market competition and introduced the systematic corruption that we still see today. It's amazing in that her resoluteness to stay in power could not overwhelm the institutions of democracy that her father had help build. Her emergency backfired and she had to rise back only by winning back the popular support.

Throughout, the book unfolds the other skirmishes, the Hindi language and North-South divide, the Green revolution and the Milk miracle. It brings out the achievements of Indians that has hitherto been never highlighted as it was not related to Nehru-Gandhi. The amazing beuracracy that handled the near impossible task of settling the immigrants, the refugees of war and the humongous task of census & polling as well as the non-partisan & disciplined military arms that ensured India was never under threat of a revolution or dictatorship.

It also talks about Rajiv, his policies of appeasement that still degraded the system and then moves on to the modern issues of terrorism and the Hindu-Muslim communalism and politics of populism. It dwelves into the psyche of Hindu-fundamentalism, the worries of Islamic terrorism and the cost of such division in terms of lives lost and opportunies passed by.

The book ends with a beautiful description of India. Guha compares India to sphagetti. It is a mix of different things; never managing to stay uniform, and yet it is the whole gives it its distinct taste. India is not a state of any one religion nor language. Pakistan tried to build a nation with religion as its core and ended up as a nation marred by political upheavel. Sri Lanka tried to build a nation of a single language and ended up with a deadly civil war. India just amalgamated the differences and ensured that these differences contributed to development. Although slow and corrupt, India as a nation survived all the naysayers and set an example of a free world. And this makes it a wonderful place and one of the most fascinating countries on earth!

Book Review: Inside Wikileaks by Daniel Domscheit-Berg

Last week, a friend of mine happened to lend me the book "Inside Wikileaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website". It is written by a person who worked very closely with Julian Assange, the man potrayed at times as being mystical being and at times as a laschivous wominzer.

The book however is more of a timeline of what the Wikileaks did for a 2 year period and less of a biography of the founder. Of course, there is a lot of details on how Julian managed to win support, of how the Wikileaks found funding and the way in which they moved to Ireland. However, if you are looking for a book on the technical nitty-gritties of how this so called unbreakable website was built then, you will be left a bit sad. There are glipmses of how the site was setup and a bit on how the encrypted data was handled. However, that's about it. There is no clear mention on how the hosting was procured and how the sensitive information was backed up and distribited to ensure it can survive the forced shut-down in any one geography.

I liked the easy flow of the story. It has been translated from German but, I never felt that it was so. The story-telling mode of narration is nice to follow and visualize.

All in a all, a book worth reading to get a glimpse into the people who built a site that scared the governments and intelligence organizations of the world. Read it for the details on the mentality of heackers and power of groups rather than to get details on Julian or the tecnology behind Wikileaks.

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Book Review: John Grisham, The Street Lawyer

Last week, we had the Jan 26th holiday and I thought of spending it by indulding it by reading 'The Street Lawyer', a novel by one of my favorite author Joh Grisham.

The story is about a big shot law firm, about to be a partner lawyer who leaves everything behind to answer his calling: his calling to help the helpless and the homeless people of Washington DC. There is a twist to the story in terms of an impending lawsuit being filed. This lawsuit if against wrongful doing by rich people that rendered a group of people homeless.

Unfortunately, the story just doesn't pick up pace at any time. It promises a mystery and then just fizzles out. There is the unexplained hostage drama that appears to be the real plot but, nothing more happens beyond the first chapter. The broken marriage and mid-life crisis of a rich but directionless lawyer appears too repititive.

The story does raise pertinant quesions on the magnitude of the problem faced by the homeless people. It does make you twinge at the thought of how people can just stay out in freezing nights during winter. It almost sounds like a book related to awaken the social conscious person in the reader than a novel of fiction.

If you are looking for a pot-boiling thriller with twits and turns and leagalesse that would leave you breathless, then this is not the book for you. It is a bit depressing so don't carry in when you want to lighten the mood during a travel.

Overall, I'd say this is a novel you can give a miss, if you only looking for the thrill of regular fictional book.


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