The frenzied delight of the bride could not be dampened by the heady mix of the cosmetic show of my 'euphoric' enthusiasm and, as an antithesis, my feeling of genuine benevolent happiness for the young couple. The bridegroom was, of course, in an inebriated state of soporific somnambulence, thanks to the by-now eternal spell of show of effervescence , vacillating between gleeful grins and uproars of synthetic laughter. At this juncture, at the cost of sounding trite, I repeat two aspects of a much propounded theory. One - men, especially Indian men, love to believe and display that their threshold age for infectious and enthusiastic youth is pretty much lower than that of the members of the opposite sex. Two - Indian weddings, thanks to their long list of functions shooting off due to the 'globinidianazation' of rituals transcending all parochial demarcations ,leave the poor bridegroom exhausted much before the actual thing begins ! It's a different matter that the bride, in any case, is all perky and pepped up. I have a faint suspicion ,that this is the first bone of contention that the couple has to contend with.
Well, this in any case, is not what I wanted to talk about. Sorry about the digression, guys. Lemme focus . Mmm... When I did manage to catch the pretty girl in question, for a few hennaed moments, between the spells of rambunctious and hyperbolic giggles, we got to talking (she talking and I lending my ear !) about the honeymoon itinerary. A trifle moony-eyed, she waxed, if not eloquent, at least with commitment, about the 3 days that she had planned in Bali, following which was a sojourn in Australia and .... And that was it ??? My rhetorical outburst, as if shook her out of her ruminant reverie! She gave me a look that resembled a curious mix of pain caused by the memory of truncated bliss and irritation at having had her feet brutally planted on terra firma. As if on the defensive, she snapped," That's the max that I could manage to salvage for myself from my firm." Unfazed , and with a tint of sadistic sarcasm, I added, "What about all that bit about how much you count at your workplace and how much you are indispensable to your team ?" "I still do count. But there are others, all queued up waiting to be counted. Waiting to fill up the slot " she spat curtly, without adding the 'you moron',of course . As an epilogue, I added, " So it is yet another case of who needs whom more !" My sardonic best was getting the better of me. Severely cheesed off, she huffed and scurried back to her world of ephemereal euphoria!
Lest you guys have been let loose in a flummoxed space, wondering what that whole banter was about, I would like to lead you, with firm fingers around your unsure thumbs, to the day when we ( I and 'pretty girl' ) got into a seemingly unending argument. She had just got in as a rookie, fresh after her PGDBM, at this high-profile stock-broking firm. She had then, with subtle vanity ( if something like that is not an oxymoron !), hinted that she had to deal with a wide range of tasks including derivatives and 'evaluating' them. Much like others of her ilk, in the following meetings, her talks bordered around and then lingered on how much she 'mattered' and how much she felt elated about contributing to the growth of her firm. The long- drawn spells of verbal diarrhoea seemed, at that time to my defensive paranoid state of mind, a sermon on the virtues of linking with an established brand name, a stud-like corporate unit. The cost of being branded a' corporate slave' by 'holier-than-thou oldies' (that remark was added with a sly sideways glance at me! ) , was peanuts compared to the perks.Being a never-say-die champion of entrepeneurship, I bristled up and
not-so-subtly hinted that being one's own lord was not everyone's prerogative. And the pleasure, as well as the responsibility of taking up and owning up one's own decisions ! Not to speak of the pleasures of being on a, razor's edge doing a tightrope walk ! And the fuel that it adds to you self-efficacy drive, when you think that you can provide livelihoods to all who work with you . And what about the stupendous feeling of exhilaration you derive when your working unit gets stamped by your looming presence and personality? And if you create your own USP and your own market,rather than scramble for pre-ordained slots in an over-worked market. Wouldn't that be the final coup ?
But all my ecclesiastical pontification was patronisingly humoured by'pretty girl' then, thanks to her subscription to the exuberance of effervescent and optimistic youth, which periodically 'gets set to conquer the world'! I must admit, that at that juncture,even I got cowed down by it and felt like an inane mumbling-bumbling mambie-jambie !
But today, on this night laid heavy by the iridescence of a hundred twinkling lights and the beats of uncountable remixes, I felt a smug smile escaping my innards and getting trapped in my oral orifice, which lipsynched to 'sweet revenge' !
Well, this in any case, is not what I wanted to talk about. Sorry about the digression, guys. Lemme focus . Mmm... When I did manage to catch the pretty girl in question, for a few hennaed moments, between the spells of rambunctious and hyperbolic giggles, we got to talking (she talking and I lending my ear !) about the honeymoon itinerary. A trifle moony-eyed, she waxed, if not eloquent, at least with commitment, about the 3 days that she had planned in Bali, following which was a sojourn in Australia and .... And that was it ??? My rhetorical outburst, as if shook her out of her ruminant reverie! She gave me a look that resembled a curious mix of pain caused by the memory of truncated bliss and irritation at having had her feet brutally planted on terra firma. As if on the defensive, she snapped," That's the max that I could manage to salvage for myself from my firm." Unfazed , and with a tint of sadistic sarcasm, I added, "What about all that bit about how much you count at your workplace and how much you are indispensable to your team ?" "I still do count. But there are others, all queued up waiting to be counted. Waiting to fill up the slot " she spat curtly, without adding the 'you moron',of course . As an epilogue, I added, " So it is yet another case of who needs whom more !" My sardonic best was getting the better of me. Severely cheesed off, she huffed and scurried back to her world of ephemereal euphoria!
Lest you guys have been let loose in a flummoxed space, wondering what that whole banter was about, I would like to lead you, with firm fingers around your unsure thumbs, to the day when we ( I and 'pretty girl' ) got into a seemingly unending argument. She had just got in as a rookie, fresh after her PGDBM, at this high-profile stock-broking firm. She had then, with subtle vanity ( if something like that is not an oxymoron !), hinted that she had to deal with a wide range of tasks including derivatives and 'evaluating' them. Much like others of her ilk, in the following meetings, her talks bordered around and then lingered on how much she 'mattered' and how much she felt elated about contributing to the growth of her firm. The long- drawn spells of verbal diarrhoea seemed, at that time to my defensive paranoid state of mind, a sermon on the virtues of linking with an established brand name, a stud-like corporate unit. The cost of being branded a' corporate slave' by 'holier-than-thou oldies' (that remark was added with a sly sideways glance at me! ) , was peanuts compared to the perks.Being a never-say-die champion of entrepeneurship, I bristled up and
not-so-subtly hinted that being one's own lord was not everyone's prerogative. And the pleasure, as well as the responsibility of taking up and owning up one's own decisions ! Not to speak of the pleasures of being on a, razor's edge doing a tightrope walk ! And the fuel that it adds to you self-efficacy drive, when you think that you can provide livelihoods to all who work with you . And what about the stupendous feeling of exhilaration you derive when your working unit gets stamped by your looming presence and personality? And if you create your own USP and your own market,rather than scramble for pre-ordained slots in an over-worked market. Wouldn't that be the final coup ?
But all my ecclesiastical pontification was patronisingly humoured by'pretty girl' then, thanks to her subscription to the exuberance of effervescent and optimistic youth, which periodically 'gets set to conquer the world'! I must admit, that at that juncture,even I got cowed down by it and felt like an inane mumbling-bumbling mambie-jambie !
But today, on this night laid heavy by the iridescence of a hundred twinkling lights and the beats of uncountable remixes, I felt a smug smile escaping my innards and getting trapped in my oral orifice, which lipsynched to 'sweet revenge' !
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