Crossing the bridge????....not yet.

8 new IITs and 6 new IIMs to be set up (in response to my earlier post)

Tata buys Jaguar and Land Rover opening up the wonderful possibility of owning an Indian car in the US

We have riots in Tibet followed by the violent crackdown by the government of China.

Bear and Stearns the fifth largest i-bank in US went down

Sensex lost 25% value YTD

Clinton and Obama are still fighting it over the democratic presidential candidacy

Pakistan have a democratically elected Prime Minister...well almost

Sehwag scores the fastest triple century and does to Proteas what they did unto Bangladesh

All of these were very worthy news for my blog. But for the benefit of Mankind and the rest of animalkind I have to use this blogpost to get this clear and out

I AM NOT GETTING ENGAGED*

Please do notice the asterisk. You have to read the fine print, I work in marketing strategy for a credit card company.

For those of you who don't know, I am going back to India next month for vacation. One of my cousins will be getting married and it would be good fun will all the family there. But thanks to the precedent set by lots of dear single desi's who went to India and got back successfully engaged, the first question when I tell somebody that I am going to India is if I am getting engaged/married.

This is how a typical day in my life goes:
I get up early in the morning. Call up home to talk to parents. After some customary talk about the health and weather, Mom tells me that she went to one of my classmate's(from high school) wedding the other day (In a place like Warangal, a good % of your classmates will be your distant cousins). "Good for her", I say to myself and make a mental note to congratulate her. Then Mom tells me that one of her uncle's got a prospective bride for me. Awesome, it feels great to be wanted. Initially when somebody told me such news, it would give me a huge ego boost, making me feel important and on top of the world. As one of my friends suggested , I should probably ask for the photos of all these girls and paste them over the wall in my room and claim that they are all the girls who are dying to marry me. Eventually though as it becomes more frequent, it becomes less of a joke and more of nagging. It is probably a subtle reminder of my duties towards evolution and survival of the human race.

Having done with the call, I have my favorite honey roasted cereal with almonds for breakfast and head to work. One of the advantages of getting married would be availability of Idlis and dosas for breakfast. But what the hell, I love my honey roasted cereal with almonds. They taste awesome and the only effort I need to put is in getting a clean bowl to serve myself. So, I don't care about the idlis and dosas , I am happy with my honey roasted cereal with almonds.

After recahing the office, on the way from the parking lot to the building, I try to make a conversation with another young analyst. We have some insightful discussion on the weather in Richmond, compare it the weather back home in India and China respectively. And then I tell him that I am going to India next month.

"Ooh! so are you going to get married?"

That's not the first time I had that question. But I still haven't found a sophisticated answer.

"No... not exactly....I'll be going to attend a marriage though. One fo my cousin's is getting married"

Thankfully, the parking lot only allows for so much conversation as he hits his cube and I head to mine.

Later in the day I am in a meeting and before we start...

" Hey do you know XYZ...he went to India last month and now he is back, engaged"

Very nice. The Vedas should soon be updated to include this highly regular phenomenon and make it a ritual. Every single Hindu boy should make a holy trip to India before he is 30. Research is still being done on what the most optimal age would be. 30 is just a temporary placeholder. So yup he did go to India and get engaged. And I agree there is very high probability than an Indian analyst visiting home is either gonna get engaged or married. Very high...not 100%.

At lunch, I am with a bunch of friends in the capital yum.

"I will be out next month as I am going to India"

"Ooh so you are going to get engaged this time..."

Well, thats a very good analytical deduction, especially given your sample data set which was unmistakably pointing towards it. But sorry to disappoint you, no not yet. I am an outlier you want to ignore for your analysis for now.

After work we have a team happy hour and I see a girl who got engaged recently. She looked super happy and tells me "I used to say that too. 'What! me getting engaged!!! No way'....but I got back with this" pointing to the ring on the appropriate finger. With her "been there done that" stance, I had no defence. I sip the beer......and realize it wasn't what I ordered. Tough day.

Come back home and I find one of my good undergrad friends online and ping him to inquire about his MBA interviews. Once I am done with my inquiries our man starts with his, on the objectives of my India trip. I assure him that my risk appetite currently is zero and would like Status Quo for a while .

Since there is so much speculation out there on the objectives of my India trip I have to come out openly to establish the facts. For the benefit of all the concerned parties I am laying out the chief objectives of the trip in no particular order

• Be there at cousin's wedding and meet up with the larger family
• Eat fine biryani at Bawarchi and Paradise and if time permits the Hyderabadi house
• Eat lots of Mangoes...btw, believe it or not, the mango trees are also gonna get married, that would be fun, especially the goat that gets sacrificed on such occasions
  
• Get passport stamped with appropriate visa
• Meet some old friends, its already 10 years since I graduated from high school
• Watch IPL...go Hyderabad...I pity Bangalore
• Check out the library in our village school. If you remember I mentioned in one of my previous blogs sponsoring a library for RLF. We got it started.
  
• Watch gult movies and gult channels...some of my high quality summer afternoons will be spent watching Shoban babu movies on Teja TV
  
• Eat lots of homemade food and gain back the 10 pounds I lost by working out for more than a year
  
• Have Idlis and Dosas for breakfast

I hope I've cleared any ambiguity around this. I will cross the bridge when I have to. But until then lets make fun of it.

One of the constant feedbacks I have been getting on my posts is that they never give any insights into my life. I have actually tried hard to keep it that way 'cos my life isn't entertaining enough. So yeah I'll back back to more mundane topics like the ones mentioned at the beginning of the blog, once we get this important stuff out of our way.


*Does not apply if a super hot rich girl hits on me. Super hot rich girls are always exceptions.