Mr. Dragon: the (forced) eligible bachelor

Firstly lemme tell you a few things about my family, it’s quite a huge family, resembles the Greek family in “My big fat Greek wedding” as one of the cousins puts it. I don’t know, I haven’t seen that movie. Anyways, huge family and the whole crowd get together on some occasion like a marriage or an anniversary or something of the sort. The frequency of such occasions is quite high courtesy the numbers.
By family, I meant parents, their siblings, cousins, siblings’ kids, cousins’ kids, and their kids and so on… There always is somebody meeting somebody else for the first time in his or her respective lives.

There was one such function recently and I was a part of it. This time around, I tried my hand at looking at things in the clichéd corny way that most aunts seem to possess by nature. I was forced into it actually.
Like they say, join the system to beat the system.

It all started off with an aunt trying to set me up with a sweet, blushing college chick. That can easily be the most annoying thing to happen to you (the entire process, not the chick), believe me. They introduce you and then hide behind doors or sofas or tables in some cases and see how the two of you are getting along.

Don’t you dare saying something funny then. The girl’s generally either shy and taking in all this nonsense much worse as compared to you or big time annoyed with having to go through this again. Now when somebody’s all strung up because of something, it isn’t wise to go about your wisecracks. They generally wouldn’t understand the humor there and (if you’re sarcastic enough) might take offence or start wondering about your mental stability.

It’s even worse if the girl’s neither shy nor annoyed, she might laugh at your joke. Now that’s a killer. There’d be a lot of rejoicing and other such stuff going on behind doors, sofa sets, tables, vases, bushes and other such.

So, to cut things short, no jokes, in fact, nothing funny. Try something drab, like the relationship between OBCs, Led Zep and the Bombay locals. Keep it serious though. The deal with the bizarre topic is she’ll figure out that you’re nervous too, that helps some people who seem to get intimidated at the drop of a hat.

Anyways, getting back to the topic at hand, the girl I was introduced to, was neither the shy nor the annoyed kinds. She wasn’t intimidated either.
Worse, she laughed.

And yeah all the advising is courtesy the wisdom I acquired POST the damn intro. I walked in all naïve to the house after the conversation (we got introduced in an apartment balcony of all the places in the world), and out popped aunt charming from under the TV set (honest). She goes… “So how’s she? How did you two get along? How do you like her? even she’s tall no? She’s very intelligent, and very nice.”

Now, I could answer the fourth question quite easily. She definitely was tall (we wouldn’t have been introduced if she wasn’t… cheap but true).

How did you 2 get along? Well, nothing out of the ordinary, it was quite the usual. It was the first time we met for God’s sake. And if it wasn’t the usual, I wouldn’t have said so either.

How do I like her? Same answer.

The last part was said and not asked (thankfully). In all fairness, she seemed fairly intelligent as well, and had the skin tone and figure that’d turn my head anywhere any day (c’mon, I’m a man). But, how you gauge somebody’s intelligence in about 15 mins of uncomfortable conversation is beyond me.

As for the first question, how do you answer when somebody asks you that? An aunt of all people.

I was tempted to come out with a detailed description in hostel or soccer pitch lingo, but sanity prevailed and I refrained.
I came out with, “She’s quite nice actually, nice kid ”
She goes, “You and your rotten humor, she’s doing her engg, remember how you were in college, all grown and tall”
Me: “I love the way you avoided the ‘thin’ word in your description auntie, I’m touched. But what’s with height and age thing anyways?”
Aunt: “Oh don’t pretend, you’re blushing, I can see”

Now I wasn’t known as stone face in college for nothing!! I wasn’t blushing I know it.

To continue,

Me: “Oh auntie, you don’t miss a thing, but honestly, when I was in college, I kinda kept away from people in jobs, people my current age to be precise.”
Aunt: “What? You’re talking like you’re real old or something. Anyways, the boy always has to be elder than the girl. It always works out that way.”

So there, I got it from the horse’s mouth (she didn’t speak the words, but it was quite blatant). I’d known this girl for 20 minutes and they were planning on me spending the rest of my life with her. What’s more, even my parents didn’t know about it. Cool eh?

Continuing,

Me: “Auntie, there was a survey conducted a few years ago which says the average age of a man is 80 and that of a woman is 84… remember it?” (Might have been 78 for men and 84 for women, but Aunt wouldn’t have spotted it in 86 years)
Aunt: “Yeah I read… So?”
Me: “Marriage is generally about living your entire lives together right?”
Aunt (suspiciously): “Yeah, so” (most people who know me get suspicious when I ask two questions with obvious answers, in a row)
Me: “So, if the husband is elder and going by statistics, he’s bound to die earlier, that would leave the wife alone for a few years right?”
Aunt: “Oh God! You started your odd talk again. How can you talk about something holy like marriage and death at the same time” (cheap getaway when cornered)
Me: “No auntie, I was just being practical and concerned about the ladies in general, yeah the sentence was a bit off heh heh”
Aunt: “Oh you kids are all the same… weird concepts you carry, think you know everything”
Me: “Kids don’t marry…”
Aunt: “Shut up, I have to talk to (*mum’s name*) about this (giggle)”
Me: “true true” (mum doesn’t venture within a mile’s radius of me on such days)

At this point in time, an equally heckled cousin sis of mine turns up with a smile broad enough to accommodate a dolphin. Aunt, recognizing the signs of danger decided to scoot and on her way to the door met a cousin (brother this time, who was laughing at me all this while) and dragged him along to meet somebody else she knows.

Some people are relentless. Long live their tribe.