Kitna Deti Hai?

Whenever a new vehicle is bought, the question that pops up first is about the mileage. It does not matter if you have purchased a Prius or a Saturn V. The purchase price comes a close, but nevertheless, second. Once the question is dispensed off with, the usual ear-biting and tongue wagging starts.

A vehicle, you see,  isn’t just something that transports you from point A to point B. It is something that transmutes you social standing, which as it happens is directly proportional to the length of the car. A car is also something that measures how macho the owner is, or if the owner is a woman, how macho the husband / the father / any other man associated with the owner, is. (Women, you see, clearly cannot buy cars. Whatever a woman has achieved is because her in-laws have graciously ‘allowed’ her to do so.) It is a yard-stick based on which weddings take place. It is a tool based on which business deals are struck. The kind of the car you drive will ultimately decide, in the society’s eyes, where and how you end up in life.

Clearly then, quite a few of the hair-loom centres down where I live owe their existence to all the car companies that collectively cause societal baldness in otherwise virile men. Buying a car, to an unmarried man, is as close as it can get to getting married. The only difference is, when you buy a car, you don’t get the guillotine.

Having niftily brought the topic to weddings, it is time for some eye-openers. A wedding, owing to the protracted involvement of two families where love plays as much the part Satan would play at the christening of God, takes on proportions that a worst night mare would weep to attain.

The first thing anyone who would want to get married to a bloke down South should understand is it isn’t a wedding as much as it is a purchase deal. And the only brides are those with hair that is long, black, and silky and possessing complexions that gives a baby’s bottoms  complexes. Not to forget copious amount of Dowry.  Any mention of dowry being illegal will be met with as much nonchalance as a law banning conjugal sex would. Once the law is taken out of the equation by being offered two hoots, things are ready to set sail.

Grooms, much like brooms these days, are by no means inexpensive and good ones are equally hard to get. While it is possible to get a good broom with a little bit of perspicuity, the chances of getting a good groom are right next to chances of a Tollywood hero’s facial features being original. If you however still want to shoot yourself in the foot, here is a guide.

The prices vary. For us here, Airtel is another phone company whose 10-rupee recharges are available in ‘kirana’ stores. If you have to choose between the CMD of Airtel (even without a full shock of hair) and an Intern at Microsoft, choose the former, not because it is common sense, but because it will be cheaper. If your prospective husband drives around in an M800 or a Tata Indica – he is impotent and you might just as well have the phrase ‘I am a Bastard’ tattooed on your unborn children’s foreheads.

Libido, at least down south, is directly proportional to how much ‘videshi’ you have in you. Airtel, Tata, and Maruti are all desi. That Airtel is among the largest companies in India, that Tata Motors now owns Jaguar-Land Rover, and Maruti is run by Suzuki is stuff that all those brown papers talk about.

Any foreign trips that are taken as a part of an FMCG job are ‘camps’ – a word with which all the respect due to penurious nomads goes hand in hand. A similar trip as a part of a software job is quickly accompanied with imagination that walks in and out of limousines and suites while being dressed slick suits and leather shoes and carrying black, important-looking briefcases. Any other business and the imagination quickly scampers to the staff entry of the nearest McDonald’s and changes into a dish-washing overall.

The pecking order then is set. The top marks go to a software professional in the United States. What company he works for, what he earns are all secondary to the Absolute status the job endows him with. The only way to have one up over your neighbour who managed such a groom in under INR 75,00,000 would be to find a groom with the two aforesaid qualities, whose parents or at the very least one parent is a Doctor.

If fate has smirked upon you, leaving you with two neighbours both of whom have successfully purchased the varieties of grooms mentioned, the easiest way to go one up is to find one who is a doctor, whose parent(s) is(are) also in the profession. If the groom also happens to be in the UK or the USA the only thing that could possibly separate you from permanent glory is (in the order of importance): a. a bank balance short of INR 100,00,000. b. not having an unmarried daughter or c. not having a daughter at all.

If you can manage none of these things, you are left with the options of grooms lounging a rung below, and commanding a lesser price. The options would include (again in the order of importance) 1. an IIM graduate. ( IITs, MITs all play second fiddle to the IIM brandname and Kellogs is just cornflakes) 2. Top level executives in companies that have Swanky offices in places with videsi names. (Whitefield, Cyber Towers, you get the drift) 3. Software professionals in India. 4. Owners of obscene amounts of land and/or gold. 5. Owners of very long cars with equally long price tags.  6. God.

Any prospective grooms who do not fit these descriptions are clearly either a. ineligible for conjugal sex or b. a woman.

Once these details are sorted out, comes the affair of fine-tuning the dowry. Too much, and it is clear that the bride is defective. Too little and it is Groom’s virility that comes into question.  Anything in the wrong proportion of paper and precious metals will question that bargaining power of the women of the family and thereby – their abilities to properly run a household.

If the bride does not have long, black, and silky hair or flawless complexion the offer will be more gold. If the groom is impotent – he goes for free (and along comes his property). If the bride cannot cook or sing – there is a two BHK in a posh locality waiting in the wings. If the bride (who possesses all the other qualities but) does not hold a job – then a car should be offered in balance. If the bride is the only child and the parents are reasonably well-off any one of these would be waived – depending on the munificence of the groom’s parents and at the social cost of the groom’s perceived virility.

If you are not a South-Indian, and if you are not specifically born in Andhra Pradesh and if this still made sense to you – please re-check your lineage. If you are not a South-Indian, and not specifically born in AP and you still get a drift of all this – you have a South-Indian boyfriend. If you have a South-Indian boyfriend and still do not get the drift, you should hand this piece of text over to your parents. If you have a South-Indian boy-friend who shows this to you but tells you all this does not matter, he is either a. impotent, b. does not qualify to be a groom in the above categories, or worse c. he does not have a moustache.