“Happy birthday dear Gopal” my sister was the first person to call me on the morning of 19th March 2010. I was happily relishing my birthday moments, then a thought crossed my mind and my smiling face turned a little gloomy. It’s my 29th birthday and I was still ‘single’. Few days back I had read the news that a 14 year old (less than half of my age) boy in Britain had become a father. I felt ashamed on my backwardness and passed a stern resolution, first time in my life. I would be a married person on my next birthday.
I identified tools like newspaper, matrimonial sites and relative’s network, which could help me successfully meeting my resolution. I marked my office, neighbouring library, sports complex as possible ‘treasure’ hunt spots. Now I was firm to get married; let it be arranged, love, forced love or compromised love. But I found internet the most convenient and handy tool to enter into the arena of ‘Treasure Hunting’. I took out my best photo for making my profile on the matrimonial site. It was the best because it did not show my receding hair line, it was pimple free, my weight was under the obese category and most importantly I was smiling in that photo. These days smiling face is in high demand. It sells like a hot cake.
It’s affordable to have one or two tooth less or have a dark complexion but without a smiling face getting a girl is next to impossible. My best friend had once confided in me this ‘top secret’. I wrote all the adjectives which I had learnt so far in my life but didn’t possess, in ‘About Me’ section of the profile. Some of the golden decorative adjectives were charming, loyal, down to earth, cultured, friendly etc. My preference for the bride was “her age should be between 21-24 years”, “she should be fair( the most important) “,”preferably working” and all other well-known attributes expected from an Indian bride like homely, religious, good in cooking, good in singing and a lot more.
Checking profile daily became part of my job, even more than that. No contacts, no interests were shown by anyone for a month. Then I thought to revisit my preference list as currently it was very near to ‘Six Sigma’. So I decided to make few adjustments in that. I pushed preferable upper age limit to 25 and left working status of bride blank. I also deleted some of the typical bride attributes I had earlier mentioned, like religious and expert cook. After these changes, I was quite sure of success. I kept on checking my profile religiously everyday but success was still elusive to me. Another month passed. But in these months, matrimonial site kept on sending me their promotional offers for paid membership.
These offers looked bizarre to me like 100 contact numbers in just Rs 1500 as if they have exclusive hold on’ yellow pages’. I kept on turning blind eye to these offers as I was confident on my profile. Seeing no success, I thought to overhaul my profile. I took out my most stylish and modern photos with specs and luxury sedan of my neighbour in the background. I altered my salary slab and added new hobbies like photography, adventures, fishing and swimming which I had never tried in my life.
Two more months passed and with each passing day my curiosity and my resolve to get married faded away. Then one day I checked my profile and jumped with joy like a magic ball. Someone had shown interest in me. I didn’t know what fetched that long awaited ‘glory’. Was that altered salary slab or my photo with black spec s or swimming?? I opened her profile. Her face raised my thick black eyebrows two centimeters high and my teeth responded with grin. I consoled my heart with these words “what lies in face, go to details”. Few lines of her profile were, “I am an innocent girl” as if she had been summoned in court. “I want life time relationship”; I was also not for part time relationship. ” I get emotional on small things”; I thought what would happen on big things.
I thought to continue with my wait with the hope of getting a better option. Within a week, I got one more jackpot. A new interest arrived in my profile. I opened her profile. It had no photo. It’s big turnoff to start. I started reading ‘About Me’ section of her. “I am an independent girl”; I wondered either she born on 15th august 1947 or I were slave to someone. “I am a big Sharukh Khan fan”. That was enough for me to close the browser and put my hands over my head. I thought could being someone’s fan a description of someone?? Is being a Sharukh’s fan, a special quality for a girl or they become some different kind of female species??
Next Part of Gopal’s Treasure Hunt will be published soon.
congrats gopal for this wonderful article.