Great Indian Bride Hunt Reloaded

Whenever a Hollywood movie becomes a hit, you can always expect a sequel. If that become a hit too, make one more. Keep at it till people are sick of the concept. In terms of economics, keep making the movies till the marginal utility of a sequel tends towards zero. For the uninitiated let me give an example to illustrate the marginal utility concept. Give a hungry man a piece of bread. It has high marginal utility. Give him one more piece of bread. The marginal utility is slightly lesser. Keep on giving him more and more. The marginal utility starts dropping rapidly. At some point the man would yell if he sees another piece of bread. At this point one can say margin utility is tending towards zero. Hit him on the head at this point and block his nose to get him to open his mouth and stuff the bread inside. Once we are done with the experiment, he will never eat bread all his life. Probably it is not a very kind thing to do. But who said economists are the kindest people on earth? Before feminists begin to protest that my example is male chauvinistic, I would like to clarify that the experiment can be done using a woman too. Just ensure that there is a woman economist in the room when forcibly stuffing the last piece of bread inside her mouth. Getting back to movies, Bollywood is also beginning to adopt the trend as seen in the case of Munnai Bhai MBBS and Dhoom. Keeping with this trend, having seen the popularity of my earlier post about my bride hunt, I could not resist posting a sequel. So here I continue the story of my misadventures.

It was not long ago before my mom came up with the third girl. This time it was a HR executive, again the daughter of a rich dad. But I was wiser from my last experience. I started with few mails and fixed up the coming Saturday for a Gmail chat. The first chat went very smoothly. She was very quiet for a girl and what more - a good listener! And I went on lecturing away to glory. Every now and then she would stop me and ask an intelligent question. Note I have not put the intelligent within quotes. It seemed as if I had at last found my ideal match. Nothing puffs up the male ego especially one with pretensions of intellect like a woman attentively catching on to every word he says. So I was quite Ok with the girl. But she wanted to chat with me one more time probably the next weekend. On reporting the conversation to my mom, she told me to leave no stone unturned in trying to impress the girl and closing the deal.

The next week again the chat started well. But it was not long before we were approaching dangerous territory. “
So what are your expectations?” she asked.

Had I heard this question before? I said “I am looking to find my soul mate”

I remembered a book by Richard Bach called ‘Bridge across forever’, where he talks about his attempts to find a soul mate. I had not read that book as I am not into that kind of mushy stuff. But someone had mentioned about the book to me and it seemed like a ‘cool’ thing to say. At least better than frugality and stuff, eh?  “So are you a spiritual person?”

Now this was a trick question. I decided to think carefully before answering this one. I remembered my friend who had recently attended a preparatory course on marriage conducted by his church telling me that women are likely to be more spiritual. So I decided to use my ‘phone a friend’ life line on this and told her “Yes. I am very spiritual person”.

 She responded “Well I am not”.

This was unexpected. I seemed to have miscalculated. Maybe only Christian women are spiritual or only the Christian women belonging to the same denomination that my friend belonged. “But I have a cousin who is very spiritual and I am very fond of him” she continued.

Finally some spark of hope. Then we had a long discussion about what spirituality meant to me and my philosophy in life. Rather than discussion, we can call it a monologue as she had nothing much to contribute by the way of information or views but kept asking questions to keep me aware that she was still there on the other end. Gradually we moved on to more earthly topics. I remembered my mother’s words and decided to try for a deal closure. I had often heard most women like chocolate, flowers and Harry Potter. I had no clue about flowers and chocolates but I had read all the Harry Potter books, the last one, one day before the official release. “So how did you like the latest Harry Potter book?”.

She replied “I do not read that kind of kid stuff”.

Again a bouncer. It seemed like I was getting back my natural ‘charm’. But I was a fighter and continued to toil on and managed to secure a telephonic interview the next day.

On Sunday afternoon a squeaky voice greeted me “Hi. How was the day?”

“Like all other days. Sunny in the morning and in all probability dark in the night”, I replied. I am not too good at answering these trick questions.

 “So what are you doing today?” she went on enthusiastically.

“Talking to you, of course. What else did you think I was doing?” I replied.

 After we had spoken for 5 minutes, she mentioned that I sounded very much like her boss, who was also from a premier management institute. This sounded ominous. But I decided to find out more.

“So what kind of a person is your boss?”

She burst out “He is so weird. He is a total nut. Probably because he is from such a well known institute of management. I really hate him” “But that does not prejudice me against you” she added as an afterthought.

I had already begun to get a déjà vu feeling regarding how this was going to end. So I decided to limit my losses. So I said “Hello. Hello. I can’t hear you. Hello. Hello. Can you hear me?” and cut the phone.

I thought I would at least save on the mobile bill. Within a minute she called me up and we resumed our conversation. The boss and the philosophical cousin who had made a brief appearance earlier began to appear with increasing regularity in the conversation. I began to suspect what this was all about. Typically most humans like to think in dualities. For Christian, it is ‘God’ and ‘Devil’. For Hindus, it is ‘Ultimate Reality’ and ‘Illusion’. For the scientist, it is rationality and irrationality. For the cold war American, it is democracy and communism. This girl was not a spiritual person as she had mentioned earlier. So she had no use for God, devil, reality and illusion. Nor was she a scientist or an American. So for her the duality was cousin and boss. She had probably simplified the marriage issue to a simple question of whether I was a Type B (Boss) or a Type C (Cousin). It is amazing how human mind simplifies complex issues. Thankfully however there was no type A as the only word I can think of starting with A is not very nice. (Though probably Type B in all probability would have been a Type A as well) I refrain from mentioning the A word however as I do not want my blog to get a R-rating for profanity.

The following Wednesday turned out to be my day of judgment. And the final verdict

“I have been giving a considerable amount of thought to our interaction in the past 2 weeks and I am sorry to convey that I will not be able to take this forward. I feel our preferences on varied issues are quite different and did not find many similarities during our interaction. Wish you all the very best in your future endeavors. It was nice taking to you and knowing you.”

So it turned out I was a Type B specimen. But I liked the nice way she had put it. In the words of my grandmother “It was like inserting a needle through a banana”

You can never beat these HR executives at this. For instance, I really loved the rejection letter XLRI sent me after my interview for their PM&IR program. I wonder how many termination letters she has sent so far. I am sure she has a wonderful career before her and I wish her all the best.

So that brings an end to my third story. Based on the response and my continued interest in this topic I will see if I need to move on to my fourth tale of woe. If before that either I or the readers find bread being forced down the throat, I would call it a day and move on to other topics.

It so happened that readers did find the story interesting and here we move to the next part of the story.

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