Any Given Thursday

Every now and then, I go through bouts of maladroitness, by which, I mean, I do not have enough creative ideas to write about until something happens in my wife's family.

Critical Acclaim for my blog. Entirely fictional.

• The very blog I have been looking for most of my life...It represents virginal education, and all schools will be better places if they made this blog a part of their curriculum.
  
  
• I defy any reader to be bored by any of its contents. Genuinely enthralling. Unintentionally precise. Flamboyantly encyclopaedic. In toto, an imaginative and penetrating storyteller who dared to retell the Big Bang Theory.
  
  
• Gripping, utterly absorbing and leaves one gasping for many more. Seldom have I rooted so hard for a set of fictional individuals. I am in awe of his capacity for finding detail in nothing.
  
  
• I love this blog. Screamingly funny. I want to marry him.
  
  
• The first blog that looks at humor as a practice and as such should be necessary reading for everyone in the human gene pool.
  
  
• When I finally did get hold of the website, I was prepared to hate it. But I ended up loving it and reading it slow because I didn't want it to end.

Sometime ago, one of my wife's cousin decided it was his turn to do the saath pheras. Essentially, marriages around the world are divided into two categories: a) Love b) Ekta Kapoor. I chose the easier way out. I found the then girl of my dreams and changed it into naked reality. My folks were more than happy with my choice because they figured it was the easy way out for them too.

I have to admit, in a perverse way, marriage is like a garment store. You have great fits, great colors, expensive ones, cheap ones, defects and most importantly, way too many to choose from. Lately, you have seconds sales too. I chose mine when it was very dark. This guy decided to break the rules. He decided to marry someone of his parents' choice. Everyone appreciated his decision until my wife and I were also invited to see the girl(s).

I did not want to go to help my wife's cousin make a decision about his marriage. I was unwilling to influence his decision. After all, I was not going to live the rest of his life with her. My wife decided that we must accompany him and his family to check out the girls.

• The entourage consisted of my cousin's father, mother, two sisters, their two children, his grandmother, my wife's parents, my wife, me and several chauffeurs. My FIL also contemplated bringing his dog.
• Even as we left home, I had a bad feeling about this trip and by the time we reached their place, the feeling became real. I never knew my ex-girlfriend had a pretty little sister.
• The entire family seemed to display a certain amount of hostility as I walked in. When hostility is coupled with familiarity, its time for double whammy. Except for my ex-girlfriend, her mother, father, sister and my wife, none of the others present at the gathering were aware of my predicament, thankfully.
• I sat crosslegged, away from my ex-girlfriend's father while the entire place broke into a furor of activity. People were laughing, sherbats and knickkancks were being passed around, and conversations about preparation for the impending marriage being fervently discussed.
• Just when I thought everything was going okay, the attention suddenly shifted towards me. My ex-girlfriend's father broke my silence with a quick-fire questionnaire that included several unnecessary questions.
• I managed to answer most of his questions without raising too many eyebrows. I still suspect my FIL has his own doubts.

A few weeks later, my wife told me that her cousin is going through with the marriage and with a smirk said, We will be one happy family!

Yours woebegone.