Relationships and Thoughts

I guess this must come as a bit of a surprise, but then again most things in life are that way. Yes it’s me here; again...

For years now, ever since I became of a marriageable age, I have had this question posed to me at every possible social occasion. Yes I am Indian, and yes most Indians find this a perfectly justified question to ask just about anyone they've known for longer than 20 seconds.

"So when are you getting married?"

For a rebel like me, that’s a particularly tough one to answer without offending the blatant in-sensibilities of the person asking such a stupid question. If I had an answer to that, wouldn't you already know? Or better yet, wouldn't I already be married?
Well most times I answer with an "I don't know", but this open ended answer only leaves space for the next logical question...

"So what kind of a girl do you want?"

As if I just got back from the supermarket and didn't find anything I liked.
But while thinking up ways to elude this natural progression of questions, I did actually get to wondering about the kind of girl I wanted. To prime my knowledge about the kind of girls there are in the world, I promptly went to one of the matrimony sites. Yes whiteys, this is one of the places Indians go to get married... it’s called an arranged marriage, now go laugh yourselves to sleep.

Coming back to the point, I looked at the profiles that parents had put up for their daughters and in some cases the daughters themselves did it. Here are a few sample self-descriptions used freely by most:
• Down to earth (the rest of us are apparently on Jupiter),
• Homely (compared to what? homeless?),
• Fair (yes we are the most racist people on the planet and we might as well admit it)
• Decent (I thank them for specifying this most important criteria, leaves less space for doubt now that you specifically mention it)
• Convent Educated (Apparently that makes them purer?)
• And the one that takes the cake “Simple living, High thinking”. I always wonder if this means that you want the world but are also ready to live in a 2x2 hut.

Here are my thoughts on the kind of girl I want: none of the above!

I believe that with 6 billion of us on this planet uniqueness was the first to go out the window. So although I do believe in soulmates, I also believe that there is possibly more than one person that exactly fits the bill.

I want someone that’s human. I want the words ‘I goofed up!’ to be part of her vocabulary.
That brings us to the next point; I’d like her to have a vocabulary, both verbal and non verbal. I want to know the quirks that are uniquely hers, the sounds she makes when she likes my ideas

I want her to get uncomfortable when people ask her if she can cook. But I also want awesome food fights in the kitchen.

And I want her to laugh uncontrollably at times, with such ferocity that her whole body shudders with orgasmic relief.

I want her to not keep me grounded. I want her to fly with me to the highs and dive with me into the lows. I’m like that professional diver who goes for a walk on the seafloor with a very very loose rope tied to his hips. The rope doesn’t pull him back but it’s there to remind him of home with a little tug in case he ventures too far from the mothership. Also think spacewalks!

But more than the person that I want to spend the rest of my life with, I continually keep coming to the kind of relationship I want to have with her. Because I seem to think that’s the essence of life and yes you can call me corny for thinking that.

Now before we start talking relationships, we need to set right a few facts about me. These are probably the reasons I am writing about relationships and not the kind of women I want in my life.
• I do not get particularly attracted to girls for their looks. I know this sounds clichéd but the connection I make with women very rarely has anything to do with physical appearance. Now I confess that in my previous life, I have tried to behave like a jerk and thought I could get the hottest girls around; but there was a little problem with that theory. I realized there wasn’t much I wanted to do with those girls once I did get them. You can’t have a quiet cup of coffee or stimulating conversation with them once you do what you set out to do in the first place (yes you know what I mean)

• I know how to create attraction. I am familiar with all the tricks of the trade and can give mystery and style a run for their money. But unlike them, I realized early that manipulating girls into bed isn’t a particularly great achievement. I play the game now, but it’s only to create the spark. The rest is my personality. Few girls ever believe it, but it’s true. Many people call this being dishonest and devious. Well if you really want something, is preparing to get it called being dishonest? How about your graduation exam then? Did you prepare for it?

Okay so here’s how I think my ideal relationship would be:
1. I don’t believe that a relationship merges two people into one entity. I think it’s very important to have individualistic traits in the relationship. This keeps balance. Yin-yang etc. So I would appreciate it if my partner retained all the trademark stuff that makes her, her.

2. All my life I have heard people saying that there always has to be some sort of a compromise in every relationship. I refuse to accept a compromise. I value myself highly and so should my partner. Every difficult situation has a work around and not every work around culminates in someone having to compromise. There are win-win solutions; we just need to find them.

3. Every individual in a relationship needs his own space to grow. People think that this makes the relationship weak. But on the contrary, this is the only reason relationships endure. It’s only when you know what to do with yourself when you are alone, can you invest value into a relationship. How many relationships have been wrecked because of a needy or an insecure partner? I would love to learn that my partner decided to spend a night out on the town with her friends. This isn’t a very Indian trait but I promise to fight the system for her right to do this.

4. Time does not have to adversely affect a relationship. Relationships, like everything else in life, need work. Just because you have achieved a relationship with someone doesn’t mean the job is done. With a little care and attention, I believe that a relationship can stay fresh and exciting enough to endure the banalities of life.

5. And lastly the relationship has to be built on strong foundations of all four pillars equally: love, lust, trust and respect. Even if a relationship is casual and you don’t know where it is leading, the very fact that you are in a relationship is enough to merit these four things. Without these, there is very little basis for a relationship to exist.