Girls are strange and when emotionally provoked, they can behave even more strangely. They are seldom searching for solutions to their problems. More often than not, they are searching for a shoulder to cry on rather than an advise about how to solve their problems. The minds of boys on the other hand, run on a single track i.e. finding the optimal solution to every problem. Whenever a girl is crying about something and you try to solve the problem, you will realize that that is not what she expects. That's why its said that a girl is a girl's best friend. A girl can be all ears to other girl's problems and sympathize with her without actually thinking about the solution (something which girls expect boys to do).
Things are simple when you are in the same college (or can meet once a day or so). In such a situation, you may not be all ears to her problems but your physical presence is enough to comfort her. The touch of your hand on her shoulders makes her feel that someone is there for her. And, you can almost always provide a shoulder to cry on. The real complication comes when you have to maintain a long distance relationship. In a long distance relationship, you cannot provide her comfort with your physical presence. All that is left at your disposal is internet and mobile phone. Plus some extra factors like possessiveness pitch in. Now its not like boys are not possessive when they live next to their girl but the possessiveness takes a whole new meaning once they are in a long distance relationship.
Knowing that long distance relationship has not worked for many of your friends makes you even more uncomfortable. The fear of losing the loved one amplifies by powers of ten (<>0). All objectivity is over-shadowed by this fear. There is a strong interplay between objectivity and possessiveness. If you are not objective in multiple cases, the chances of losing your loved one increase but possessiveness is inbuilt and there is little you can do about it. The lesser objective you become, the more you know that you are about to lose her and your possessiveness increases; its a vicious cycle.
So whats the solution. To begin with, its good to be friends with all of your girlfriend's friends (and vice versa). Believe me on this, it is in-built in boys that they can identify other boys' motives just by talking to them for some time and watching how they behave (same may be true vice-versa). This first meeting itself will let you know the kind of company she is keeping. You can discuss with her on the levels of openness she can exercise with each of her friends (and vice versa). This makes the boy feel that he has the situation under control and will definitely reduce the incidents of irrational behavior (due to possessiveness). Also, whenever you have a fight, you can request her friends to give her some comfort by talking to her and helping her understand your perspective (or letting you understand her perspective). Giving each other proper time on a weekly basis is another factor which works for the relationship. No matter how busy you are, its always a good idea to block some time for your gf / bf in a week. It is also not a bad idea to let your bf/gf know about any parties etc you are attending. Nobody is going to stop you from attending those parties (think rationally, a person sitting miles above cannot stop you) but this gives your partner a feeling of control at no cost :). All these are very simple things and can greatly help in a long distance relationship. Afterall, a long distance relationship is all about faith in your partner and all these steps greatly help in increasing faith in each other and faith in relationship.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Countdown to Engagement begins :)
In my last blog, somebody pointed out that a person, who has had a steady girlfriend for God knows how long, is writing such a blog. That indeed is true (I have no first-hand experience of this bride hunting spree. The whole blog is based on vicarious experiences but original thought process). So I thought I will write something about first hand experience.
In July 2003, our sessions began at IIT Kanpur for first year of engineering study. Like almost all students, I was also very satisfied with the success I got in IITJEE and my next aim was to do good in IIT (yeah...it was, for the initial few days :P). My secondary aim was to find a girlfriend but when I came to know that we have just 22 girls our of 414 students, my statistical mind calculated the probability of having a girlfriend (=0.005; plz don't ask for the exact calculation now :P) and concluded the chances to be next to zero. So, I thought its better to concentrate on primary objective.
So, for my physics tutorial, we were sitting in a small class and waiting for Prof. Harbola (he was the scariest prof of all for first year and was also our warden). We were given some assignment and the whole section was busy solving that assignment. Suddenly someone entered and the class went quite. I thought it must be the professor and so I stood up without looking up only to discover later that it was this sweet innocent (yeah...she looked innocent; don't ask me if she is or not :D) girl in pink suit. I must admit that I was stumped. Now the probability figure looked much better to give a try at least. I went the obvious way, I asked her for her physics notes (yeah....how stupid, I know). She did give me the notes and I tried my level best to understand her notes...it appeared as if it was written in Hebrew...damn I should have asked for her Eco notes. Physics was not my cup of tea. I was worst at Maths though (sucked badly at real number theory...managed to pull through with a C). So anyways, I returned her notes with a big thanks :). Next, I invited her to Deepshikha (hostel night on Diwali) but I was not the only one. She has double figure invites. She came on all the invites (yeah..that sucks) but I made it look as if she has come only on my invite. We had a great night (in pure veg terms :P). That day made way for much bigger things to come.
I have been in relation with this lovely girl for roughly 6 years now (3 years in same IIT and rest three on different continents :( ). We had our share of good times and bad times. We have fought zillions of times (not really zillion :P) and we have cried together but we have been besides each other most of the time. The initial times were very volatile and many a times, we thought we are not made for each other and should part our ways (thank god we didn't). So its not like the lovey-dovey love story that movies depict. Instead, it is one in which both of us changed ourselves a lot over time. Finally, when we were able to maintain healthy relationship even without seeing each other for an year or so at a stretch, we concluded that we are indeed made for each other.
So, we told our parents about our decision and given the fact that this was going to be an inter-caste marriage, we gave them sufficient time to make up their mind (Things are easier said than done). Finally, parents on both sides agreed and the date for engagement was finalized as 12th of December 2010. Unfortunately, this is the day my grandfather died 15 years ago. We lost someone very dear on this day and now we are inducting a new member into our family on this very day. May be this is God's way of maintaining love balance in my life and also reminding me of his presence. Welcome Rashmi Mehrotra :)
In July 2003, our sessions began at IIT Kanpur for first year of engineering study. Like almost all students, I was also very satisfied with the success I got in IITJEE and my next aim was to do good in IIT (yeah...it was, for the initial few days :P). My secondary aim was to find a girlfriend but when I came to know that we have just 22 girls our of 414 students, my statistical mind calculated the probability of having a girlfriend (=0.005; plz don't ask for the exact calculation now :P) and concluded the chances to be next to zero. So, I thought its better to concentrate on primary objective.
So, for my physics tutorial, we were sitting in a small class and waiting for Prof. Harbola (he was the scariest prof of all for first year and was also our warden). We were given some assignment and the whole section was busy solving that assignment. Suddenly someone entered and the class went quite. I thought it must be the professor and so I stood up without looking up only to discover later that it was this sweet innocent (yeah...she looked innocent; don't ask me if she is or not :D) girl in pink suit. I must admit that I was stumped. Now the probability figure looked much better to give a try at least. I went the obvious way, I asked her for her physics notes (yeah....how stupid, I know). She did give me the notes and I tried my level best to understand her notes...it appeared as if it was written in Hebrew...damn I should have asked for her Eco notes. Physics was not my cup of tea. I was worst at Maths though (sucked badly at real number theory...managed to pull through with a C). So anyways, I returned her notes with a big thanks :). Next, I invited her to Deepshikha (hostel night on Diwali) but I was not the only one. She has double figure invites. She came on all the invites (yeah..that sucks) but I made it look as if she has come only on my invite. We had a great night (in pure veg terms :P). That day made way for much bigger things to come.
I have been in relation with this lovely girl for roughly 6 years now (3 years in same IIT and rest three on different continents :( ). We had our share of good times and bad times. We have fought zillions of times (not really zillion :P) and we have cried together but we have been besides each other most of the time. The initial times were very volatile and many a times, we thought we are not made for each other and should part our ways (thank god we didn't). So its not like the lovey-dovey love story that movies depict. Instead, it is one in which both of us changed ourselves a lot over time. Finally, when we were able to maintain healthy relationship even without seeing each other for an year or so at a stretch, we concluded that we are indeed made for each other.
So, we told our parents about our decision and given the fact that this was going to be an inter-caste marriage, we gave them sufficient time to make up their mind (Things are easier said than done). Finally, parents on both sides agreed and the date for engagement was finalized as 12th of December 2010. Unfortunately, this is the day my grandfather died 15 years ago. We lost someone very dear on this day and now we are inducting a new member into our family on this very day. May be this is God's way of maintaining love balance in my life and also reminding me of his presence. Welcome Rashmi Mehrotra :)
Friday, November 26, 2010
The season of marriages
Now-a-days, whenever I check status messages of my friends, alteast one new friend has updated his/her status to "xx-days to go". Its not hard to guess what this means, this is a season of marriages and all of them are going to have their D-days this year. This list is ever-growing but for now includes Adi (Aditya), Nishu (Nishtha), Nivedita, Parul and Rachna. Except for one case, all others are typical arrange marriages, the strangest reality in today's time. Tell it to an American or an English guy and see how his jaws drop in awe. How can two people decide to spend their lives together just because their parents thought so...they hardly know each other. they do, this is INDIA.My heart goes out to all those who take up this challenge and give their best effort to prove their parents correct (and most of the times they are successful in doing that too...unbelievable :O).
We are also seeing the emergence of a third kind of marriage in India. The boy/girl finds his/her partner (usually from his/her own caste) and tell his/her parents to get done with the formalities. It sounds as if its love marriage, but its not. It is another type of arrange marriage where you meet your prospective partner with the help of sites like shaadi.com (and sometimes even orkut/facebook :P... atleast adi will agree). You talk to that person, take your time and let your parents know once you have found the right person. The period of interaction is much smaller than love marriage but larger than the traditional arrange marriage.
I feel happy for those who have found their life partners this way. To find the right person is becoming an increasingly difficult task now-a-days and its not very hard to see why (naah, I am not even talking about the skewed sex ratio). The search for Mr. Perfect (or miss Perfect) is the most daunting task just for this one word....Perfect. Every person looking for a bride (or a groom) carries a list of "expected qualities" and almost always, no single person satisfies all the criteria and hence the search goes on and on.
Lets take for instance, the list of a boy searching for a bride. The list almost always has these qualities listed:
1. must be beautiful (implied meaning: fair and with good features)
2. must be well educated (implied meaning: engineer / doctor / CA...gone are the days of BAs and MAs)
3. must be working (more often than not its there on the list)
4. must be homely and a good homemaker (implied meaning: should be good at cooking etc)
5. must take good care of parents
6. must be of my caste (a very important criteria to begin with but the importance decreases with increasing age :P....once the age closes on 30 and the search has been on for 3-4 years...this criteria goes away :D)
Now quite generally, atleast in the present generation, either the girl will be a good homemaker (as per the definition given above) or working. If she has both the qualities, she may not be that beautiful. And if she poses all the qualities given above, she will either have a boyfriend (and a prospective groom) or she will have an even bigger list and the boy will almost certainly not satisfy all the conditions in her list. This reminds me of one Akshay kumar dialogue " Jo hume chahiyen, unhe hum nahi chahiyen aur jinhe hum chahiyen wo kisko chahiyen". This is the condition of most of the people looking for partners in my age group.
So what is the solution. Shall we through all our lists out of the window and marry the next guy / girl we meet? No, certainly not. Who said so. The solution lies in observing the selection process of MBA schools (I am not joking). The process is similar though the set of qualities and the outcome expected are different. Watch how they have differential weightages of different qualities and look at the person as a whole rather than individual qualities. We can also do so. Now, we also need to be objective while giving weightages to qualities. So for example, I see youngsters give highest priority to external beauty and most of them justify their thought process. I have different point of view on this aspect. The perception of beauty changes over time (and actually, so do the physical attributes). Once you are in relation we somebody, that person will look beautiful to you (I am not even talking about internal beauty). And if you are going to get tied to a girl / boy for life...internal beauty will matter more after two years (as my parents say it). So just make sure the person is internally beautiful. Even if you have to compromise on external beauty for that, its acceptable. Remember that the best aunt, uncle that you have, are not the best because they are most beautiful but because they are good at heart.
So if you assign such differential weightages to various qualities a person objectively and evaluate them on these, you might still not end up with Mr. Perfect (or miss perfect) but we will certainly get a good match (as we say in statistics). Also remember, your parents are also not perfect but still they are the best because you believe they are best. So will be your partner, if you believe in him / her. Half of the qualities which you are looking for, can be developed in a person over time and believe me, he or she will try her level best to develop these if you give him / her your best. :)
P.S.: Those who have boyfriends / girlfriends, don't even think to use this differential scoring of qualities otherwise you will be having a tough time (if your partner comes to know of it) :P
We are also seeing the emergence of a third kind of marriage in India. The boy/girl finds his/her partner (usually from his/her own caste) and tell his/her parents to get done with the formalities. It sounds as if its love marriage, but its not. It is another type of arrange marriage where you meet your prospective partner with the help of sites like shaadi.com (and sometimes even orkut/facebook :P... atleast adi will agree). You talk to that person, take your time and let your parents know once you have found the right person. The period of interaction is much smaller than love marriage but larger than the traditional arrange marriage.
I feel happy for those who have found their life partners this way. To find the right person is becoming an increasingly difficult task now-a-days and its not very hard to see why (naah, I am not even talking about the skewed sex ratio). The search for Mr. Perfect (or miss Perfect) is the most daunting task just for this one word....Perfect. Every person looking for a bride (or a groom) carries a list of "expected qualities" and almost always, no single person satisfies all the criteria and hence the search goes on and on.
Lets take for instance, the list of a boy searching for a bride. The list almost always has these qualities listed:
1. must be beautiful (implied meaning: fair and with good features)
2. must be well educated (implied meaning: engineer / doctor / CA...gone are the days of BAs and MAs)
3. must be working (more often than not its there on the list)
4. must be homely and a good homemaker (implied meaning: should be good at cooking etc)
5. must take good care of parents
6. must be of my caste (a very important criteria to begin with but the importance decreases with increasing age :P....once the age closes on 30 and the search has been on for 3-4 years...this criteria goes away :D)
Now quite generally, atleast in the present generation, either the girl will be a good homemaker (as per the definition given above) or working. If she has both the qualities, she may not be that beautiful. And if she poses all the qualities given above, she will either have a boyfriend (and a prospective groom) or she will have an even bigger list and the boy will almost certainly not satisfy all the conditions in her list. This reminds me of one Akshay kumar dialogue " Jo hume chahiyen, unhe hum nahi chahiyen aur jinhe hum chahiyen wo kisko chahiyen". This is the condition of most of the people looking for partners in my age group.
So what is the solution. Shall we through all our lists out of the window and marry the next guy / girl we meet? No, certainly not. Who said so. The solution lies in observing the selection process of MBA schools (I am not joking). The process is similar though the set of qualities and the outcome expected are different. Watch how they have differential weightages of different qualities and look at the person as a whole rather than individual qualities. We can also do so. Now, we also need to be objective while giving weightages to qualities. So for example, I see youngsters give highest priority to external beauty and most of them justify their thought process. I have different point of view on this aspect. The perception of beauty changes over time (and actually, so do the physical attributes). Once you are in relation we somebody, that person will look beautiful to you (I am not even talking about internal beauty). And if you are going to get tied to a girl / boy for life...internal beauty will matter more after two years (as my parents say it). So just make sure the person is internally beautiful. Even if you have to compromise on external beauty for that, its acceptable. Remember that the best aunt, uncle that you have, are not the best because they are most beautiful but because they are good at heart.
So if you assign such differential weightages to various qualities a person objectively and evaluate them on these, you might still not end up with Mr. Perfect (or miss perfect) but we will certainly get a good match (as we say in statistics). Also remember, your parents are also not perfect but still they are the best because you believe they are best. So will be your partner, if you believe in him / her. Half of the qualities which you are looking for, can be developed in a person over time and believe me, he or she will try her level best to develop these if you give him / her your best. :)
P.S.: Those who have boyfriends / girlfriends, don't even think to use this differential scoring of qualities otherwise you will be having a tough time (if your partner comes to know of it) :P
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Another suicide@IITK
Two things have the highest frequency in IIT Kanpur during this decade; one is the construction of newer, better and costlier hostels and the other one is suicides. Hardly is there any batch post Y2 (the batch that got admitted in 2002) which has not noticed a suicide. Some batches have seen multiple suicides by their batchmates.
Unarguably it is troubling. Whats more troubling is the fact that immediately after the suicide, two prime activities start; finger pointing by various parties (students Vs. profs) about whose fault it is ultimately and attempt to somehow use these suicides as a means of getting better grades.
If you consider the first one, it seems quite obvious that whenever some such incident happens, people will try to search out for a reason and may be it starts with that. However, the fate of all such discussions are sealed and ultimately they turn out destructive rather than constructive discussions. Both parties start blaming each other. Students say its the academic load and the ill-behaved professors (in some cases) which led to this suicide which is partially true. The professors say its because the student bunked classes because he/she was probably using internet over the night and that he/she had cut himself/herself off from rest of the students. This resulted in lack of good grades (or F grades ) and destruction of social support networks to cool the student down. Again, partially correct. Nobody tries to understand the complete picture. This blame game goes on for few days and after that everyone forgets the student.
Almost all the suicides have one thing in common; the person who commits suicide is cut-off from his/her batch and wing and becomes more of a loner. Where were these so called protagonists who are trying so hard to get him/her justice now (as they say). Some of these are the guys who actually cornered this person and now they want to blame it purely on acads to lower their own sense of guilty.
The worst part, however, is the efforts by a section of students to try and use such suicides to their own advantage and pressurize the professors to not give them low grades (including F grades) by writing mails (or letting professor know through friends) to professors telling them how stressed out they are about their results and how important a good grade in that course is for them...On 99 counts out of 100, professors give in to such tactics because they cannot know for sure whether the person is serious or he is bluffing (they are always bluffing) and they certainly cannot take the chance. Prof. A.K. Mallik (one of the best professors of all time that IITK had) stopped taking undergraduate courses because he was blackmailed like this by one of my batchmates soon after a suicide happened in IITK. Even worse, such cases of taking advantage of suicides have been reported from almost all IITs.
Sometimes I think I should be proud of being an IITian or should I be ashamed. The doubt prevails.....
Unarguably it is troubling. Whats more troubling is the fact that immediately after the suicide, two prime activities start; finger pointing by various parties (students Vs. profs) about whose fault it is ultimately and attempt to somehow use these suicides as a means of getting better grades.
If you consider the first one, it seems quite obvious that whenever some such incident happens, people will try to search out for a reason and may be it starts with that. However, the fate of all such discussions are sealed and ultimately they turn out destructive rather than constructive discussions. Both parties start blaming each other. Students say its the academic load and the ill-behaved professors (in some cases) which led to this suicide which is partially true. The professors say its because the student bunked classes because he/she was probably using internet over the night and that he/she had cut himself/herself off from rest of the students. This resulted in lack of good grades (or F grades ) and destruction of social support networks to cool the student down. Again, partially correct. Nobody tries to understand the complete picture. This blame game goes on for few days and after that everyone forgets the student.
Almost all the suicides have one thing in common; the person who commits suicide is cut-off from his/her batch and wing and becomes more of a loner. Where were these so called protagonists who are trying so hard to get him/her justice now (as they say). Some of these are the guys who actually cornered this person and now they want to blame it purely on acads to lower their own sense of guilty.
The worst part, however, is the efforts by a section of students to try and use such suicides to their own advantage and pressurize the professors to not give them low grades (including F grades) by writing mails (or letting professor know through friends) to professors telling them how stressed out they are about their results and how important a good grade in that course is for them...On 99 counts out of 100, professors give in to such tactics because they cannot know for sure whether the person is serious or he is bluffing (they are always bluffing) and they certainly cannot take the chance. Prof. A.K. Mallik (one of the best professors of all time that IITK had) stopped taking undergraduate courses because he was blackmailed like this by one of my batchmates soon after a suicide happened in IITK. Even worse, such cases of taking advantage of suicides have been reported from almost all IITs.
Sometimes I think I should be proud of being an IITian or should I be ashamed. The doubt prevails.....
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