Screwing up the English Language again!

Being an English teacher has its pros and cons!
We’ll keep the pros for some other day...anyways you guys know of them reading about my Teacher’s Day experiences last month. How much can one speak about the adoration one receives anyways? I think it’s foolish to state the obvious! ;)
So let me concentrate on the cons now...

For one I am always checking spellings....
I think it is a mental disorder and maybe such a disease has not yet been detected (I file for copyright issues hereby, in the written!)
When a wrong spelling appears on my screen on Facebook comments or otherwise....a kind of a chill passes through my spine!
And then I have to physically hold me right palm with my left one to stop it from typing the correction in the reply. Needless to say, like our ‘bade buzurgs’ (mind you...that’s ‘buzurgs’ as in elders and not ‘burgers’ as in what we gulp down thanks to Mcdonald’s bhaiyya every weekend!) have said...ant mein jeet hamesha right ke he hote hain...So there, without much that I can do about it, I spread my pearls of wisdom to the defaulter...much to my annoyance and his smug pleasure!

With the result that I am now officially jibed at as the ‘spelling corrector’!
Sometimes I feel my friends test me in game just to ascertain if my resistance powers have been strengthened or finally cultivated!
And like I do with everything else...I just give in to temptation!

But then some cons are quite hilarious actually that need to be shared with the world...
I happen to know a very sweet lady in her early forties...
She is a darling, a complete socialite and a charmer to say the least...the most polite and magnanimous soul that you could have come across...always ready to lend a helping hand and so ready to ask you to lend her your ears for displaying her gift of gab! But, but, but...and by ‘but’ I don’t mean her ‘rear’ side baba...here I would like to give you a peek into her ‘rare’ side!
Her ability to screw up English language with her literal translations!

Statutory warning: With due respect to all those who are not so fortunate to get education at elite convent schools to be able to ramble off English like a pro...this is just in light hearted humour, which she MIGHT also enjoy...but I have no qualms in admitting that I am a ‘Phato Singh’ and wouldn’t dare to let her read this!

Let’s call her Madam X for reference’s sake!
It’s so much fun as well as a torture to converse with Madam X.
‘Fun’ because in almost every sentence she would attempt to bring in her limited knowledge of English to exhibit how “with it” she is!
And ‘torture’ because you have to press your teeth hard so that the jaw does not open in a full spirited laughter or guffaw at the horrendous errors she contrives....

Scene 1:
Madam X is angry this day because she and her dhobi are at loggerheads over some petty matter, when a poor soul walks in unaware that she would be witnessing a big bugle...
“Oh my god beta ji, you know this man is arguing and arguing and does not give down (she means give in)...I don’t know which mud he is made of (she means yeh aadmi kiss mitti ka bana hain)!

Scene 2:
Madam X is knitting...and the electricity goes off. In a hurried bid to get some light, some of the stitches from her needle slide off....
Poor Madam X...all her efforts of the last half an hour gone down the drain. How does she react?
“Oho bhabhi ji...you know what happened today...I was doing knitting (mind you...not just knitting but doing it also!) And the light went away (not to the market my dear friends...it just went, ok) and my houses were falling in the dark (she meant to say...mere sillaaye ke sab ghar udhar gaye andhere mein...phew!)

Scene 3:
Madam X has fractured her leg and is on bed rest, as well wishers pour in to find out how she is doing. A very tall visitor comes in and she tries to hug and give a peck on the cheek to the poor patient as a consolation...But obviously the restraints of space and heights come in between...
Madam X’s response with an innocent grin: “Beta ji...you would have to come down to make love to me...”
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat! (She meant the girl would have to bend down to be able to embrace her lovingly)
Thank god the visitor was a girl and thank heavens she knew of her habit or else she would have fainted at the idea of a not so acceptable proposal of ‘making love’ to her aunt!

And at another time...she was expressing her well worded concern for me when she made this rejoinder:
“Beta ji, I have a feeling that you are not feeling too well?”
OMG...my feeling being felt by her...I then felt a feeling that the ‘pulse has something black’...daal mein kuch kaala hain....
OMG again...is this thing bloody infectious because I’ve begun to talk like her!



Scene 4:
Madam X’s door has got jammed and try as much with her petite frame to push it open...she fails. So she hollers to the two sturdy young nephews who live on the ground floor to come up and help her open up...the door that is!
They oblige...use their shoulders and then their legs to shove it open, till they finally succeed....
Now in lieu of their services...she had to say something....she would have said something anyways even if they had failed or some other catastrophe may have conspired. So what does she say?
“Beta ji, thank you so much for the kicks...it feels so better now that it is opened!”
Nope...she is not semi pornographic my friend...she is just graphic and brilliantly literal at it!

Scene 5:
Madam X goes to a party looking oh-so-page-3 and wanting oh so desperately to sound like one too...
She looks around like a lioness squinting here eyes incisively for a prospective prey and catches a glimpse of me...so I am the target today, huh?
I hear the prophetic words in the backdrop as though some aakashvaani blaring: “Thou shalt not laugh...though shalt not faint...thou shalt just grin and bear!”

She walks up to me, seeing me in jeans and a top for the first time, since she has generally seen me in the traditional salwaar-suit.
And what does she come out with:
“Beta ji, you are looking nice for a change!”
Oh ya aunty ji...you mean the change is looking nice on me or is this the first bloody day of my existence on this planet when I am looking nice!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of course I didn’t say anything...I just grinned and bore!

She moved on to her next victim- the host!
“Oh my god bhabhi ji...see what your servant has done...so much water spread on the floor....
You know I was supposed to fall down here...and i saved myself from falling!” (mein shaayad yahan gir jaate aur mein girte girte bache!)
She meant she could have fallen down there...but then like the hundred other things that she supposes...she supposed this one too!

The evening concluded with the meal, as the sweet-tempered host came up to Madam X to ask if she’d take another serving of the dessert:
“Na na bhabhi ji...you know my stomach is full uptil here (she makes a line with her palm on her throat). Wow, her stomach had managed to rise up to her throat! Do we need to call the Guiness or something to inform of a new record being made here?
Boo hoo...we all could have cried for our inability to laugh at such a juncture. But then like always, we just took mental orgasmic pleasures in imagining how her hands and edges of fingers would have also been filled with food...poor soul...tch, tch...and by soul here I mean me!

Errors like these abound in everyday encounters. Although my dear friends, I don’t sit in vain pride to mock at them for each one of us is contrived of some folly. But at the end of the day...it never harms to be able to laugh at ourselves and squeeze out moments of humour that are harmless and not really at anyone’s expense. I still uphold that Madam X is a darling and the centre of attraction wherever she goes. She brings smiles on faces...knowingly or unknowingly and all adore her despite waiting every moment for her to falter...thankfully they all would be also just as willing to catch her before she falls!
Three cheers to Madam X! May she continue to screw up English language...we all are screwing it in our own right anyways!

P.S. Just to add to the screwing mode: I asked a little girl in my class to give me the female gender of a ram (a male sheep)...I was expecting her to say ewe (the female sheep)...but pat came the confident reply... “Ma’m Ram’s female would be Sita!”
Another student who insists that the abstract noun of truth would be truthness and badgers me on why make it full by calling it truthfulness? He invents words like repupulsive which means height of being repulsive...
Yet another was learning spellings when the word “jaunty” appeared...
His way of learning it....ma’m when “J” hooks up with “aunty” it becomes “jaunty”...
Phew! Would you still like to hear more?

The Love Letter of a Complete A$@#$%@!

Dear Love,
You have always wanted me to write a love letter to you and so I thought that having travelled so far on the road of togetherness, you deserve one now baby!

Today as I write, I remember the first time we had met!
That bookshop where I first caught you unawares, in that spotless white kurti and chudidaar...the cloth clinging seductively to your curves and just see-through enough to make me visualize the lack of it on your perfect body...Your pink cheeks blushing against the pastel hues of the attire...I remember how your duppatta played flirtingly with your shoulders, as you would place it firmly there but within the next moment, it would bounce down baring a hint of you perfect cleavage...You would shyly pick it up...look around if anyone’s noticed or not...and get back to work on the books...

Your curly black tresses would wantonly spread over your petite back but leaving enough scope to view the milk white skin just before the neck of the kurti took over...A lock would hang beckoningly on your forehead, trapping all men in sight with the urge to come over and run their fingers over your flawless face and put it aside...oh the whiff of it was all grappling! You would pensively bite the edge of your lower lip, touched with a dash of glimmering lipper, as u pondered over in your mind which book to pick up.

I watched it all...with a desire burning within me to pull off that duppatta and to bare those shoulders and be able to snuggle up to your nape! If we could have all we desired, I would have had you right there!

But I had to be cautious....
You didn’t look like the fiercely brazen modern kids...whom I could easily twirl on the tip of my finger...though drowned equally in vulnerability, I could perceive you had a list of do’s and don’ts for lesser mortals like me to qualify, before they could come any closer to feeling that heaving bosom against their own chest! Ah! An aching thought then and even now!

And then what followed is what generally follows when a man meets a woman:
“He’s asking her about her favourite books...listening to her own mush sequences...sharing her perspectives...poking her to give up her guard and defences...he is genuinely smiling....looking at her interestingly...being gentle when she whimpers and defensive when she goes on a guilt trip...he seems perfectly non-physical!

She’s telling him things excitedly...things no one’s ever asked before or bothered to hear...She talks without inhibitions...he compliments lavishly...Was that a pass he made at her? She smiles coyly...the corners of her mouth turn upward in a beautiful giggle instead of going wrinkly in a frown...he takes the clue and gets bolder...She basks in the glory of the triumph of her charm...he in the triumph of yet another trophy....she seems perfectly gullible!

She’s thinking: Finally I get a man who thinks beyond my boobs...
He’s thinking: Finally I get a woman who doesn’t blast me at my passes and this would eventually lead straight to her boobs!”

Yes, so there we were...chatting and laughing...once you innocently, (or was that deliberately) held my hand while you gave into your clear ringing mirth and I felt my blood rushing to my head! You left me wondering baby, how it could be that after being with so many women, I could still feel the adrenalin pumping and my vision groggy when you so much as just touched me! I knew I was driven completely by my libido, but this was a novelty even for me! I sat through your recital of the characters in your big, fat joint family...I heard the irksome details about all the schools you changed...about your aunt who gets “boys” to get you “settled”...And all the while I was looking at those luscious curves of your mouth...feeling how they would feel inside my own...I was thinking of your tongue that was wagging with talks I cared a f@#$ about...I was imagining would it seem as tender when I suck it in with my own...
I was hoping you’d just stop talking and let me enclose that mouth...and let my fingers caress and run all over you before ripping to the core!

But you have been going on and on...and I have been waiting patiently like a hawk, to strike when the iron is hot...bearing my own heat with a smile to conceal my intentions and deceive that all I want is to take you to the sack!

I know you are reading this now and I can sense the lines on your forehead forming sexy cresses of distaste and horror...I know you must have already once flung the paper in an outburst at my revelations of how sexually you turned me on (you still do baby...oh how you still do!) and then picked up the paper again to look for a hint of love! My dear child...what a fool you all are! There’s no such thing as love...it is just an excuse to take unsuspecting souls like you to the first level of the game of lust!
I am writing all this to warn you baby because somewhere I did get touched by your innocence...Or maybe somewhere the man in me feels...if I couldn’t have you, no one else should either! What a waste of all that oomph crammed in your perfect mould...the oozing sensuality that needs expert hands to guide it to the peak! I feel sorry that I couldn’t do you the favour...not that I didn’t try...

It’s been a month now I suppose...I suck at dates...I pretty much “suck” at everything...provided I get an opportunity to it! And it has been a torture to be with you...to have you inches away from me but not being able to feel your breath over my own hungry lips. To see you raise your arms in a joy of abandon, as your torso swings along too and the uprising of your perfect breasts, bring back the almost physical pain deep down within me. I stand behind and watch you bend to pick up things I deliberately scatter on the floor of my pad...it’s a sight to pine in when your curvaceous rear sticks out at me, mockingly for it is beyond my reach...you gave me pleasure even in excruciating pain! I get a glimpse of your flat smooth belly with a mind blasting navel, when your skirt pulls just a wee bit down and the top goes abounding up to the ends of you fullness...and I close my eyes and yearn. You know now why I often made you get up on the stool and pick out the books from the topmost shelves of my little library!

But you have remained elusive and I can’t bear this any longer....
Also another pretty young thing has crossed my way...
She’s armed with the artillery that could make any force go to war or cease fire! I run a finger down her curves and she is ready to crumble into my arms like molten butter at the cue...
She is gentle and succumbing and could turn wild and thumping!
So baby, I give up on you...I can no longer put up the facade of love, being driven hitherto by the thought of rewards of it!

I no longer can bear the idea of you wriggling and taking steps back when I so much as touch the ends of your protruding lips with my finger. I want you from the bottom of my heart and everywhere else...but not forcefully....Oh come on...I am not a brute...wild alrite, but then can’t crush your blooming petals within my eager fingers without your consent, really!

So there my love...

Good bye and god bless...
I hope you now have a fair idea of “man”kind and would be sensible enough to not do or rather do the same mistakes with other knights that traverse your path....
As for me...just remember I am always there, in case the nights get too lonely or you need some connoisseur direction over unchartered territory....After all what are friends for...
Hahaha...I know its evil...but how I am enjoying this!

Lustingly yours
:)

Can you be in Love with more than One Person at a time?

If asked this question in 1987....
(When I was precisely 10 years in age)
My response: Huh? Love...what’s that? Of course I love my mum, pa, grandpa, bro...And the list would have gone on...tch, tch...the Mother Teresa view of love!

If asked in 1995...
(I am all of 18 now...a coy bud waiting to bloom...legally an adult and already having carved my mush sequence in the dream realm)
Me: Hmmm...Love...wow...what happens to the hero n heroine in the movies n they dance around the trees, right? My friends are doing it as a daily ritual....Let me fall soon and tell....

Ask me this in 2000...
(More grown up now...relatively...n stupid cupid has finally stricken)
Me again: Love only happens once...and no way can you love another person when you are hopelessly in love with some ONE...What a sinful bigamous thought! Ram! Ram!

And now...I am all of 32...
Older (I don’t like that word so much...let’s make it more mature, shall we?), wiser, more practical and also kinda been-there-done-that....

The glasses with which love was perceived seem to have changed or maybe the number has increased coz the earlier vision is getting hazier or rather broader!

No more is love about running around trees...holding hands and walking in the moonlight...love is not about fancy gifts or chocolates or roses (ok...it partly still is)
Like a dear friend used to remark...love is not a bloody Yash-Raj flick!
Love is not falling for the cutest girl around or the dude who’s pumped it all into his muscles...love hungers for a beautiful mind!
It is less visible now and more inherent!
I just don’t feel love now...I try to understand it!

Love is less fanatic, less conquering and more settled...less hitting like a bullet and more gradually scattering into the system even without professing...
Love is not staying together constantly; it’s about being connected even outside each other’s radar...
Love is not just a frenzied adrenalin rush (ok again...sometimes it still is)...it is more about the gentle, milder mingling of like minds and bodies may or may not follow....

I know I am still sounding dreamy about it all, right?
But then there is a sense of reality even in the dream here...
Fact to fiction...
Existence to fantasy...

Gawsh I am not making much sense here...
Let me start from where I began...the title...
Can you be in love with more than one person at a time?



Although when I began to understand the term love...I would have flatly and austerely said “no”...being in rank with the moral police who seem to have pre-decided bloody every move and attitude on this planet!
Now...when I am faced with it in ‘real’ life and relate to it...I may say here...why not?

A dear friend of mine had asked me this question and my delay had made me realize the implications of love....
Love is not Heer-Ranjha or Laila-Majnu or Romeo-Juliet...
Love is far beyond what the love stories in books and cinema disseminate....

There’s no ‘someone somewhere’ who’s made for you...
There’s no knight in shining armour who would gallop upon his horse and pick you with an outstretched hand and then trot away to live happily ever after...or a fairy like vision walking down the steps of heaven towards you...
Love is not giving your tan, man n dhan to one and expecting the same from him or her...for life!

Then what is love?
Why think love is only when your body and mind signal that you can’t live without a person?
Hellooooooooo...no one is anyways indispensible...
Even those in the zaniest of love clutches have managed to survive the pangs of separation...

Besides, why do we always have sexual connotation with love?
Who’s to say that if I am sexually attracted to a person is it love or until then it is not love at all?
So if I am very fond of a friend outside the realms of my commitment...I may or may not be physically drawn to him...how can I be so bloody certain that it is or is not love when I feel concerned for him or eager to hear his voice every day?

There are no alarms ringing anywhere that help you decide that you have officially fallen in love!
There would be no palpitation of heartbeats once you get in the comfort zone...heck no mush dreams either...
Then, then, then....

Love is ever changing...
In today’s world more than ever....love happens when two minds click...
And there’s no mandate on clicking just once or copyright issued when once the clicking’s been done...

My dear friend says...you can love one girl for her beauty...another one for her suave manners...a third someone with a sparkling wit may strike you...while a go-getter ambitious hottie may turn you on beyond control...You can’t manipulate your feelings...then why deny them even to or just yourself?
How do you know your deep admiration for a girl who’s devoted to community service and tags you along every time on her marathon is not so deep rooted to term it as affection...since you can’t refuse to go with her even when you really don’t want to?

How would you categorize these feelings?
Which one would you say is love and if that is not...then how’s that different from which you feel for that special someone...throwing aside all the soul mate crap that we’ve been duped to believe in!

In today’s scenario...it’s natural to have loads of friends of the opposite sex...
You love spending time with each one of them...they are all strong forces of attraction...yet not strong enough it seems to compel you from not straying from the orbit....You remain open to the idea of having more friends...and yet take out time for the previous ones!
You can’t become an island...you would meet personalities that repel or interest you...minds that may captivate you because they think similar or completely different!
And yet neither can you feel for them all!
Some associations get that twinge of speciality more than the others...It’s time that we opened our minds to acceptance!

Alrite then...another important aspect here that needs mentioning....
Being in love with more than a person at a time...
Does that mean we can do justice to each relation? Can we possibly be more or less in love with one than the other?
We can...
We do...
We love our parents don’t we?
Do we love our mother more than our father or less than our spouse and that too in all the situations and at all times?
How much easier it would have been if we had a love gauging machine!
But since there is none...we are answerable only to ourselves...thankfully!

Commitment level can certainly not be ascertained on the yard sticks of how many people there are with whom you are sharing your feelings!
You may be loving all souls around you with the spark that makes them wait for your sunshine and also be loving just one who feels that you are not giving enough!
All a matter of relativity then!

More questions for you here my dear friend...
If you say ‘I love you’ to your girlfriend (I am assuming you are a gal reader or else kindly apply it suitably to your gender) you are deemed to be teeming with love and such a nice soul...
But you would be socially constrained to say the same to a guy friend or run the risk to be termed slutty or with slippery virtues.
Who the bloody f@#$ has demarcated these lines?
And why the bloody f@#$ do we follow them blindly?

I don’t know if I have managed to state something worthwhile here or raised moral questions against my own sensibilities...
Just want to conclude...
Love is fun...So enjoy it however you can...for nothing calms our wandering souls more than the gentle sweeps of love!
Love is not serious...let’s not take it too seriously!
Have a LOVEly life, my friends!

P.S. A friend recently commented...The phrase ‘I love you’ is overused and overrated...maybe ‘you’ll do’ is better!
;)Just a thought!

The Quest for Prince Charming-The Frogs that I Kissed-Part 2

Alrity...for all those who were born here late...I am not enumerating my fetish for four legged croaky creatures...
I am just naturally assuming the character of a self proclaimed princess who went through the process of self display and mind churning encounters before she could land upon her prince charming...well, not literally ‘land-land’ for then my poor beloved would have been crushed before he could have had a chance to bloom...

In Part 1 of this hopefully two-part trial...I explained how the pear lump rejected me...
Lemme tell here now about a Delhi ke munda for whom I travelled again 440 kilometres in the hope of meeting my Raj, Rahul or Prem (you have to understand that Dilwaale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge had just released then...and all maidens worth their virginity...oops mettle...were dreaming of bumping into their Raj’s in some khet with a mandolin in hand...even a dumroo would have done...as long as he stretched his arms and did “aaaye...senorita” style! And they would run to him in slow motion with hair going left and right, up and down and a starched stark white duppatta lehrao-ing in the wind...running n running...till....they don’t run into his open arms but get a pat on their heads with a thick book, delivered just in time by their moms to remind them to straighten the upside down notebook and study). Gawsh...pardon me my dear readers for this digression....

Where the f@#$ were we or rather was I?
Acha...the Dilli ka munda...
So the mediators were the same...Le Meridian was declared inauspicious and a humbler abode...in this case a coffee house in Connaught Place was selected as the meeting point.
Same my father, same my mother, same brother n same little miss me...
The same salwaar suit...coz it had been barely a fortnight and such repetitions seemed reasonable!
I was so tempted to voice my opinion...Can’t we see them all in one go, in a day and get over with this? And by now you know that the world’s been saved big time because I’ve chosen to shut my gap at the strategically right moments. So needless to say...I decided to shut the f@#$ up and oblige!

Plus then I was getting a chance to come to Delhi and a whole lot of fuss was being created around me...which not surprisingly I always enjoy to the core!
But this time mediator aunty ji decided to intervene...
“Pinky bhabhi ji (that’s my mom...I know PINKY?????????? But that’s how or rather who she has been and that’s how my brother and I have lived with it....thank god they didn’t call me Rosy...despite the obvious similarities)
So.... “Pinky bhabhi ji...this suit...please don’t mind...but it’s screaming so UP!” (that’s not UP-market mind you...or raised Upper expectations....UP here stand for apna Uttar Pradesh...I could sense how she was aching to say it was “Kanpuriya” implying simple (phuleassssssss not Kanpuriya implying flashy). But then she must have thought that a state reference may be less or rather more affronting than a city one)
Oho somebody please stop me from bloody digressing!

Phew! Focus Suruchi, focus!
Anyways... “So bhabhi ji...I was thinking that since the last munda thought this was very simple...let’s go shopping for some new clothes”. “Oh ya aunty ji”, that’s me, by the way “What do you have in mind...a sexy halter top to match a-flirting-with-the-knees skirt?”
“Na na beta ji...it must be conservative still...but maybe a little more stylish salwaar suit...these metro boys, you know!”

So there....after that began a new torture as I might have tried around 50 salwaar suits to find the right one...as bad as kissing the frogs I’d say....coz when we came out of the stores we had purchased just two of them. So much for the bloody ratio 2:50...damn such statistics. Actually most of them didn’t have my size...thanks to my hereditary big butt where they’d usually get stuck...and then there were other classifications of rejections based on colour, creed n kind...whoever said racial discrimination does not exist...must empathize with the poor breeds of clothes that are mercilessly discarded just because a stupid tailor put orange buttons on a shocking pink outfit or decided to get spade n diamond shaped cuts on the edges of a suit.
Hey bhagwaan...why did you make the side tracks so bloody tempting for my vulnerable resistances?

So cut to the scene....
This Delhi munda comes with his mother and father...he has a sister too, married away somewhere in the country, not exposed to us yet till the discussions n deliberations reach the next level. Yup...SAARC summits beware...this was more controversial, confidential n crucial than all your damned meets put together!

The munda was again not very tall...wore spectacles and had a moustache adorning his almond shaped head. Mind you I said adorning as in actually a decorative piece...not in the least must you confuse it with another adjective “adorable”. Did I just feel that his hands were trembling or was he just fidgety or worse still an early Alzheimer’s case? He was bloody nervous alrite!

My modus operandi this time around had been altered keeping in mind the previous disaster!
“Beta ji...please don’t be quiet this time...speak something...we don’t want the munda to feel you are dumb...alright?” Show him that you are not a simple small towner...okkkkkkkk?”

And when someone tells me to show something....I often go all the way...Please don’t get ideas...what I mean is I go all the way to deliver what is demanded.

So again we-the proposed ‘couple in question’ were told to go and take a walk...
By now I was more relaxed in my skin...being one boy-seeing- ceremony down...but I think that was the virgin attempt of the poor boy, this time around. And this time around, as was decided, I yakked my guts outs...I had to show him Kanpur gals can be hip n happening too...I spoke n he fidgeted...I blabbered and he became more nervous...I used my hands and expressions till he almost became expressionless....
And after the rest of the nitty gritties...
What are my hobbies...what do I like to do...how much and what I have studied...part 2 ordeal also got over! Phew!
Result time: 2 hours later
Verdict: F again...not the f@#$ yaar...big Fail...
Reason: “The gal is too bold for our seedha saadha munda”
Ji, ji...NOW is the F-time beta....WHAT THE BLOODY F@#$!

Needless to say my counsellors sucked!
And when a kingdom has courtiers like that...you can be sure of its doom...I had almost resigned to the fact that probably I would die a frustrated spinster if I followed my so-called well wishers.
But a drowning (wo)man catches at every straw....
I continued to kiss the frogs and feel my mouth turn bitter with every kiss and tell episode...thankfully most continued to be rejected at the sorting table only!

The third munda came along from Pune...
Tall, handsome, some odd 8-10 years older to me...and a Casanova in his hay days...knew it as we knew him through family friends...
This time I thought to take matters in my hands...
And just coz I was rejected two times for no fault of mine...I rejected the poor fellow for no fault of his! Come on...I was 19 then...and entitled to show little traces of dumbness that have blown up with age in my case! Actually I getting to voice my opinion here was anyways a sham as the family had already decided upon disregarding the proposal due to too wide an age gap!
Confession time: His suave manners made me a bit insecure...he was perhaps too good for me...so I backed out! Sigh! Sigh!

Then I remember another cute hottie I was being fixed up with, belonging to my own town...This guy came with almost his whole pind to my school where I was teaching (after passing out from there just a year before) and broke all laws of subtlety...as the news spread like wild fire that someone’s come to “dekho” Suruchi ma’m! He was having a smouldering affair at that time which the whole town knew of, except of course my beloved parents. Besides I knew he’d prove to be too much of a dish to be handled after marriage so that he’s not man handled by the fairer sex in the long run. So though there was a lot of hungama around this one...and everyone thought is baar to sangam hoga he...I kept mum and waited for the next grand rejection. Why rub your fingers in mud when someone else was eager to do the dirty job for you? And so the rejection came and went! We all lived happily ever after for a while!

Finally the fifth time proved lucky as my prince charming managed to find me and released me from this frog kissing spree before it would have become addictive and I might have decided to continue it for a couple of years! More on the drama there for some other time!
Enough for now...all’s well that ends well!
And in my case...by god’s grace...the ends have justified the means...no gains without pains!
And what an awesome gain it has been!
Sorry frogs...another time in another life!