Gaata Rahe Mera Dil

I’ve been listening to this song over and over again ..i find it incredibly sweet and cute and inspiring :

Movie Name: Guide (1965)
Singer: Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar
Music Director: Burman S D
Lyrics: Shailendra
Year: 1965
Producer: Dev Anand
Director: Vijay Anand
Actors: Anwar Husain, Dev Anand, Jagirdar, Kishore Sahu, Rashid Khan, Ulhas, Waheeda Rehman
Theme: Love

Gaata rahe mera dil, tuhi meri manzil
kahin beete na yeh raaten kahin beete na yeh din
Gaata rahe ...

pyaar karne waale, are pyaar hi karenge
jalne waale chaahe jal jal marenge
pyaar karne waale, are pyaar hi karenge
jalne waale chaahe jal jal marenge
dil se jo dhadke hai woh, dil hardam yeh kahenge
kahin beete na ..

o mere hamrahi, meri baahon thame chalna
badle duniya saari tum na badalna
pyaar humne yeh sikhaladega, gardhish men sambhalna
kahin beete na ...

dooriyan ab kaisi, are shaam jaa rahi hai
humko dalthe dalthe samaja rahi hai
aati jaati saans jaane, kab se gaa rahi hai,
kahin beete na ...

Having said that ..lately ( like since this past weekend)..I’ve been thinking I’ve over romanticized everything, that arranged marriages aren’t all that bad ,and involve a deep form of love as well……....

................ The love you have for your parents …………………

Modal wives and why it is hard to marry well...

Modal Husbands???!??? !!? Heck no!!!!! Or wait, I wonder how this links to the soulmate /kindred spirit concept???

I was browsing through the Marginal Revolution Philosophy archives and found this…..

Modal wives and why it is hard to marry well
I define a modal wife (or husband) as a person you would have married (could have married?) had you met them at the right time, unattached, and under normal life conditions. The number of modal wives is typically greater than or equal to the number of real wives, although clever philosophers will recognize possible [sic] counterexamples.
Under one view, you have hundreds or thousands of modal wives, most of whom you never meet. (How many does the average person meet, how soon do you know when you meet one, and how confused would you be if they were all in the same room at once?) Your correct dating strategy is to cast your net very widely, and hope to find and marry one of these people.
Under another view, modal wives are no big deal. Your so-called "modal wives" are no better for you than, say, the best woman you could pick out of a lot of thirty eligibles. The key inputs for a good marriage are attitude and a minimum degree of compatibility, not search and discovery.
If this is true, searching for modal wives, or perhaps even thinking about the concept, can make you worse off. The quest for the perfect mate makes it harder to come to terms with what is otherwise a compatible marriage. Which perhaps is all you are going to get anyway. Marriage is good for you, and don't be too fussy, this is not iTunes. Too much choice, or too much perceived choice, is problematic.
The two views offer directly conflicting advice (TC: My views are closer to the first position, although attitude remains all-important). Yet we may be uncertain which view applies to us and to what extent. You could put all your eggs in one basket and pursue just one strategy, but what a risk if you are wrong. You could act upon some weighted average of the two views; I suspect this is what most people do. But then the two strategies are constantly undercutting each other.
That is one reason why it is hard to marry well.
.

Also the comments are good so please read

The Girl With the Apple

I love this story..must have read it in a chicken soup for the soul… just found it in Beleifnet…..

The Girl With the Apple
One of the world's most incredible--but true--love stories began in the worst place imaginable.


By Herman Rosenblat
Reprinted with permission from Guideposts

August, 1942. Piotrkow, Poland. The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women, and children of Piotrkow’s Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated. “Whatever you do,” Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, “don’t tell them your age. Say you’re sixteen.” I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker. An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, then asked my age.

“Sixteen,” I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.
My mother was motioned to the right—with the other women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Isidore, “Why?” He didn’t answer. I ran to Mama’s side and said I wanted to stay with her. “No,” she said sternly. “Get away. Don’t be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.” She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.

My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barracks. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers. “Don’t call me Herman anymore,” I said to my brothers. “Call me 94983.” I was put to work in the camp’s crematorium, loading the dead onto a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened. I had become a number. Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald’s sub-camps near Berlin. One morning I thought I heard my mother’s voice. Son, she said softly but clearly, I am sending you an angel. Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.

A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, behind the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone —a young girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German, “Do you have something to eat?” She didn’t understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I didn’t believe she would come back. It was much too dangerous. But I returned anyway, the same time the next day. And there she was. The same girl. She moved tentatively from behind the tree, and once again threw something over the fence. This time, a small hunk of bread wrapped around a stone. I ate the bread, gratefully and ravenously, wishing there had been enough to share with my brothers. When I looked up the girl was gone.

I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat—a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn’t dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn’t know anything about her—just a kind farm girl—except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.

Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia. “Don’t return,” I told the girl that day. “We’re leaving.” I turned toward the barracks and didn’t look back, didn’t even say good-bye to the girl whose name I’d never learned, the girl with the apples.
We were at Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 A.M. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I’d survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited. At 8:00 A.M., there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I’m not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person’s goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
Eventually, I made my way to England, where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I’d opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.

One day, my friend Sid—whom I knew from England—called me. “I’ve got a date. She’s got a Polish friend. Let’s double date.”

A blind date? Nah, that wasn’t for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn’t so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.

The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn’t remember having a better time.

We piled back into Sid’s car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject. “Where were you,” she asked softly, “during the war?”

“The camps,” I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you never forget.

She nodded. “My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin,” she told me. “My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.” I imagined how she must have suffered too—fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were, both survivors, in a new world. “There was a camp next to the farm,” Roma continued. “I saw a boy there, and I would throw him apples every day.”

What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. “What did he look like?” I asked.
“He was tall. Skinny. Hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months.”

My heart was racing. I couldn’t believe it…this couldn’t be.… “Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?”

Roma looked at me in amazement. “Yes.”

“That was me!” I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn’t believe it. My angel. “I’m not letting you go,” I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn’t want to wait.

“You’re crazy!” she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I’d found her again, I could never let her go. That day, she said yes. And I kept my word: After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.

Love in time of War

Growing up we used to frequently visit to the neighborhood supermarket just in front of our building, I had a friend around 3 years older than I was ,the supermarket had a nice greeting card section that also stocked posters, my friend was always on the lookout for war time love posters ..at the time I preferred posters with the comic character Garfield on them ,and didn’t really get what the fuss was over black and white posters with the people doing nothing more exciting than running behind a departing train ( possibly an American lady saying goodbye to her love ,who was off to fight a war)…

But thinking back ..there was something to those stories ..imagine loved ones parting not sure if they’ll ever see each other again( when ‘I’ll never ever see you again’ meant just that… pre VOIP, Instant messaging , improved international travel ,and Orkut accounts.)…now when journeys around the world seem like no big deal;imagine the long sea journeys from one continent to the other to meet your loved one ….. love in the South Pacific, survivors of the Holocaust falling in love ;reuniting with their loved ones, or others who fell in love with their saviors;
The case where Anne Frank and Peter Van Daan could not explore their relationship further because a they passed away before their time , when in times of so much strife and tragedy people found time for love, when one of the sisters from fiddler in the roof (Jewish) fell in love with a Russian Non-Jew around the time of the Russian Revolution .. in the Sound of Music.. love happens at the time of impending Nazi occupation.


I know we have wars happening in the present age as well….but I feel right now it isn’t as encompassing and the effects are not felt directly by as many people as it was then…not that I’m asking folks to go to Iraq. I’m just thinking how lucky we are that right now when we are lucky enough to find true love ( which should probably should be in abundance given the war and relative tragedy free times we live in ), the reason we have for love not reaching fruition is “our parents will object”.. amongst others . I know the stories above are exceptions… and a lot more arranged marriages were happening at the time…..but even then…………………….

On a seperate note, as a child I used to imagine how it would be if I were born at another time in the past and in another place than I actually was…some of these time periods include… Prince Edward Island ,Canada at the beginning of the 20th century …just because my favorite books growing up.. Anne of Green Gables and the Avonlea series were based there………….. maybe as a cowgirl in the American Wild West….before the turn of the past century … I guess the United Kingdom fit in in my imaginings somewhere as well( more fictional though, based on my Enid Blytons’).
As you can see I was rather influenced by the books and TV programs I watched at the time .I have to confess I never wanted to be born a 100 years ago in my native place in India …some how the thought of child/baby marriage doesn’t particularly appeal to me…I’m quite happy being an Indian woman born the time I was…

Some more thoughts....

A Soulmate

A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we're two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.

Richard Bach


Relationships are Hard

Relationships are hard. It's like a full-time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice.
There should be severance pay, and before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp.

Bob Ettinger

Marriage

Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?"
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together;
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Khalil Gibran

Where Does Love Begin?

It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know it has begun. A thousand heralds proclaim it to the listening air, a thousand messengers betray it to the eye. Tone, act, attitude and look, the signals upon the countenance, the electric telegraph of touch - all these betray the yielding citadel before the word itself is uttered, which, like the key surrendered, opens every avenue and gate of entrance, and renders retreat impossible.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow



Nothing is Random
Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishingly frigid winter after another.
Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one can be certain.
And yet there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple.
Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion, piece by piece. Time, however, can be easily overcome; not by chasing light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once.
The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful.
In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but as something that is.
Mark Helprin

Dulcinea
I have dreamed thee too long
Never seen thee or touched thee
but known thee with all of my heart
Half a prayer, half a song
Thou hast always been with me though
we have been always apart
Joe Darion
Dulcinea, from the musical "Man Of La Mancha"

Some more Wisdom...

Long one …but worth the read( i hope!!!)…………………………..

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you But in your dreams whatever they be Dream a little dream of me.
-- The Mamas and The Papas


Dans les forets noir je vais les soirs, les belles etoiles sont au-dessus, je pense que dans leur lumineres, je voir les yeu des ceux qui m'aiment (In dark forests I go by night, the beautiful stars are up above, I think that in their lights, I see the eyes of those who love me.)
-- Tanith Less

Everytime she sneezes I believe it's love.
-- The Counting Crows

You said that this is crazy, you're half a world away. And I'm sittin' there and I'm thinkin' but I didn't know what to say. So I said something I can't touch, I always want way too much anyway.
-- The Goo Goo Dolls

It is a good idea to be ambitious, to have goals, to want to be good at what you do, but it is a terrible mistake to let drive and ambition get in the way of treating people with kindness and decency. The point is not that they will then be nice to you. It is that you will feel better about yourself.
-- Robert Solow

I traveled half a world to forget her, but all I did was miss her.
-- Rulian F. E.

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.
-- Saint Augustine

Dare to be naive.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

There are many ways to love someone. Sometimes we want love so much, we're not too choosy about who we love. Other times, we make love such a pure and noble thing, no poor human can ever meet our vision. But for the most part, love is a recognition, an opportunity to say, "There is something about you I cherish." It doesn't entail marriage, or even physical love. There's love of parents, love of city or nation, love of life, and love of people. All different, all love.
-- Raymond E. Feist

When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream. How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
-- René Descartes

Once you start to romanticize something, it's usually over.
-- Prof. John von der Heide

I dream of no rules I dream of following no one I dream of flying I dream of freedom I dream of proving you wrong I dream of not being a doctor I dream that my dream never dies
-- Nike
Marriage. Don't be pressured into it. Is the fear of loneliness really greater than the fear of bondage?
-- Sumiko Tan

Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun.
-- Matt Groening

Two are born to cross their paths, their lives, their hearts. If by chance, one turns away, they are they forever lost.
-- Michael Timmins

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they may lead.
-- Louisa May Alcott

It is always a sad thing to understand those who were once obscured by the mystery and intangibility of the thoughtlessly loved.
-- Howard Spring

The best thing you ever did for me was to help me take life less seriously. It's only life after all.
-- Indigo Girls


The cure for anything is salt-water - sweat, tears or the sea.
-- Isak Dinesea

Hey, I've got a great compliment for you. I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you're the greatest woman on earth. I may be the only one who appreciates how you are in every single thing that you do; and how you are with Spencer, Spence, and in every single thought that you have and how you say what you mean and how you almost always mean something that's all about being straight and good. I think most people miss that about you. I watch them, how they can watch you bring their food and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. The fact that I get it, makes me feel good, about me.
-- Jack Nicholson

A man never knows how to say goodbye; a woman never knows when to say it.
-- Helen Rowland


Do you love me?' I asked him, seemingly out of the blue but in my own mind the question had been rolling off my lips for some time. He just looked at me with his head cocked to one side as if to say 'what on earth do you mean?'. I persisted 'Do you love me? It's a simple question Michael.' He paused, took a deep breath drawing words into his mouth. 'I do, yes. I love you Nathalie.' I think in any other mindset I would have ran into his arms and told him that he'd made me the happiest woman in the world, but it's a funny thing when the delusion wears off and you see someone in their truth for the first time... I was hardened, he was lying, nobody was wrong or right at this point and no matter how many 'I love you's would leave our lips, we had reached our end.
-- Elizabeth Barrett

If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again.
-- Flavia Weedn

Anything less than mad, passionate, extraordinary love is a waste of time. There are too many mediocre things in life to deal with, and love shouldn't be one of them.
-- Frankie

Maybe part of loving is learning to let go.
-- Fred Savage (Kevin Arnold)

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
-- Edgar Allan Poe


You've been in love with someone for a decade - someone who barely knows you're alive. You've done everything, tried everything to make this person see that you're a valuable, estimable person, and that your love is worth something. Then one day you open the paper and glance at the Personals column, and there you see that your loved one has placed an ad... seeking someone worthwhile to love and be loved by.
-- Daniel Quinn

Love is when two people who care for each other get confused.
-- Bob Schneider

To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be.
-- Anna Louise Strong

Heaven can wait, we're only watching the skies Hoping for the best But expecting the worst Are you gonna drop the bomb or not? . . . It's so hard to get old without a cause I don't want to perish like fading horse Youth's like diamonds in the sun And diamonds are forever So many adventures couldn't happen today So many songs we forgot to play So many dreams swinging out of the blue We'll let them come true
-- Alphaville

So many years come and gone And yet the memory is strong One word we never could learn Good-bye True love is frozen in time I'll be your champion and you'll be mine I will remember you
-- Amy Grant

Well, there ain't no luck in these loaded dice But baby if you give me just one more try We can pack up our old dreams and our old lives We'll find a place where the sun still shines
-- Bon Jovi

Oh - once in your life you find someone Who will turn your world around Bring you up when you're feelin' down Ya - nothin' could change what you mean to me Oh there's lots that I could say But just hold me now Cause our love will light the way
-- Bryan Adams


The sweetest song is silence that I've never heard Funny how your feet in dreams never touch the earth In a wood full of princes, freedom is a kiss But the prince hides his face From dreams in the mist.These dreams go on when I close my eyes Every second of the night I live another life These dreams that sleep when it's cold outside Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away
-- Heart

Dreams last so long Even after you're gone I know you love me And soon you will see You were meant for me And I was meant for youGo about my business, I'm doing fine Besides, what would I say if I had you on the line Same old story, not much to say Hearts are broken every dayI'm half alive but I feel mostly dead I try to tell myself it'll be all right I just shouldn't think anymore tonight
-- Jewel

This is my heart bleeding before you This is me down on my knees These foolish games are tearing me apart And your thoughtless words are breaking my heartExcuse me, think I've mistaken you for somebody else Somebody who gave a damn Somebody more like myself
-- Jewel

Oh Jesse, paint you pictures, 'bout how it's gonna be. By now I should know better, your dreams are never free. But tell me all about, our little trailer by the sea. Oh Jesse, you can always sell any dream to me.
-- Joshua Kadison

And all the roads we have to walk are winding And all the lights that lead us there are blinding There are many things that I would like to say to you But I don't know how
-- Oasis

...and like a fool who will never see the truth I keep thinking something's gonna changeThere's a danger in loving somebody too much And it's sad when you know it's your heart they can't touch There's a reason why people don't stay who they are Baby sometimes love's just ain't enough
-- Patty Smyth and Don Henley


Let's all meet up in the year 2000 Won't it be strange what we're all fully grown? Be there 2 o'clock by the fountain down the road I never knew that you'd get married I would be living down here on my own On that damp and lonely Thursday years ago
-- Pulp

I wonder why I feel so high Though I am not above the sorrow Heavy hearted Till you call my name And it sounds like church bells Or the whistle of a train On a summer evening I'll run to meet you Barefoot barely breathing
-- Sophie B. Hawkins

And then the bullhorn crackles, And the captain tackles, With the problems and the how's and why's And he can see no reasons Cos there are no reasons What reason do you need to die?Tell me why I don't like Mondays Tell me why I don't like Mondays Tell me why I don't like Mondays I wanna shoo-oo-oo-oo - oo - oot The whole day down.
-- The Boomtown Rats

Who's gonna pick you up when you fall? Who's gonna hang it up when you call? Who's gonna pay attention to your dreams? Who's gonna plug your ears when you scream?You can't go on think nothing's wrong Who's gonna drive you home tonight?
-- The Cars


The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
-- Elizabeth Taylor

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right.
-- Isaac Asimov

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton

A 'No' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
-- Martin Luther King

My spelling is wobbly. It's good spelling but it wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.
-- Winnie The Pooh ( A.A. Milne )

The wonderful thing about tiggers, is that tiggers are wonderful things. They're tops are made out of rubber, they're bottoms are made out of spring. They're bouncy, flouncy, trouncy, flouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. The wonderful thing about tiggers, is that I'm the only one :)
-- Tigger ( A.A. Milne )

It's not easy being green :)
-- Kermit the frog

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
-- Think Different

Life is both sad and solemn. We are let into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other - and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.
-unknown

One man scorned and covered with scars still strive with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.
-Unknown

Knock on the sky and listen to the sound.
-Unknown

There are mysteries about our love. Things that neither one of us may ever understand because love is an emotion without limit and understanding. We know we love each other but we could never explain completely as WHY we love each other. Love is not a clock. You simply cannot take it apart just to see what makes it tick, and even if you could, you probably could never get it back together again.
-Unknown

Natasha, to love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness, I hope you're getting this down.
-- Woody Allen

From Extreme Bartending!!!

What should Yohanna do???? Like she even needs to ask!!!!

Tagged : Personal( actually is this personal???!! well i'm kinda ambivalent about this so dont mind spilling the beans.... hopefully this will be read by people who "i hope" dont beleive marriage is the be all end all of everything...)
For all the Yohanna’s out there ………………………………


OK… this is verrry verrry fast starting to look like shaadi.blog………….but absolute last one I promise…..
Yohanna is a girl, 25 years of age , most of her peers and those younger are married or committed ( she is verrry happy for all of them btw!!!) , Yohanna has no significant relationship to tell her parents and play the love marriage angle ……………. Yohanna has a younger sister who is not much younger to her, and her sister’s friends have also started getting married …. Yohanna’s parents are worried her sell by date is fast approaching, that compounded by the fact that she’s too tall and doesn’t look like Aishwarya Rai ….. Yohanna going by past experience knows that she isn’t the most intelligent person when it comes to the love scene ,and having graduated from undergrad and school “singly” ( the places where you typically get love marriaged ) , she doesn’t at all believe things are going to be any different later.

Before Yohanna used to think 24 was a good time to get married ..now she thinks more like 35 or never……….. she loves her parents and they love her , but she risks being called selfish by everyone else, she doesn’t have too many hopes from arranged marriages and doesn’t get the point where she has to interact with the guy previously “flirt??”” ,she wasn’t allowed to do that before!!!! Now her whole family is telling her to!!


She wouldn’t mind if it meant the guy would commit or something , but the guy is in fact scoping …. So its more like the guy gets to flirt a lot before committing , is she wrong to think this is a bit unfair … anyway whatever…Yohanna has a massive headache.

Does she tell her parents to leave her be and not think about her marriage, she’s busy getting to know herself and living the single life , she is also wondering about her “soulmate” (well not really ), going by her luck she never will find him, but the thought of giving up on Mr S , just so that the first person , whose background seems good ( because lots of other aunties were trying for their daughters ( so what makes you think Yohanna’s going to get lucky”?) and isn’t taking dowry ( what a catch!!!) I really admire the guys civic sense but you know , Yohanna cant get married just because of that!!!!!

So should Yohanna tell her mom “Mummy , you know why don’t you just stop looking ; I don’t believe in arranged marriage, I’m debating marriage even!!! right now..i think I’m kinda happy the way I am … I think I need to see if my soulmate is out there…no I haven’t found him , he probably doesn’t exist …”

And because we’re in America…… Yohanna is STRAIGHT !!!!


What should Yohanna do????? Anonymous comments welcome!!! It’s ok Yohanna won’t curse you if you tell her to go in for the arranged marriage, she’ll probably have to go in for it anyway!!!

Marriage article links

There’s really a lot of Shaadi stuff in this blog, at this point it isn’t even me putting up what’s happening in my personal life, I would like to say it's an issue that I have interest in , that is proving to be popular, that I’m looking at from the perspective of a neutral spectator ….(believe that if you will…). But yeah keep the comments coming and I will keep posting on the topic as and when ‘inspiration’ strikes……

This is a good essay on Marriage that Sharath gave me the link to, I’m sure it won’t be earth shattering for most people and I assume many people feel like the author , but nonetheless give it a read,I do have concerns with regards to “’keeping things as they are” and that ‘most age old traditions are there for a reason’ , but the comments section is insightful in this case

Jane Galt on Marriage


And t-towners… Tuscaloosa is mentioned ‘marginally’ …. some where in the beginning........
Also I can’t believe Rashmi Bansal is writing about marriage now, it's pretty much the same old argument , matrimonial ad’s , the question about whether girls were pressurized to get married etc etc ,(I admit I haven’t witnessed any terrible ,terrible marriages, only happy ones )….. some people think girls sound like people out to “lootofy” their husbands, you know I wish I could sympathize with the guys , I’m trying hard to , but when you have been conditioned pretty much your whole life to get married ,is it too much to ask for this person you get married to ,to solve all your problems??? I know it’s a lot of stress, but life’s stressful deal with it!!! Also , for all those guys who are scared of being duped; a person who looks after you, your children , your parents , your siblings , your extended family, ( believe me all women I know do this , its ingrained and its conditioned ) is worth her weight in gold!!!!
Guys, You’re lucky to get married!!!!

Read the post here :
The Marriage Market

Also does questioning the "Status Quo" equate to "Rabid Feminism"??? Ratsss!!!!

Back to Marriage

I have been pondering over this for a while now…


The fact is that when I left India I felt as if I’d escaped the constant marriage questions and you can go abroad if you want to but promise us you will get married at 24 comments…..( I’m 25 now), so you can imagine that when I came to this new country I had a reasonable amount of cultural baggage with me, so imagine my shock when my non-indian gal pal said that in her home country getting married was terribly old fashioned ,many of her cousins and friends were not married, in fact she was in a serious, committed relationship with her boyfriend for the past 8 years , they lived together but were not married and were not aspiring to either, what shocked me at the time was the statement “ marriage has become old fashioned”. I mean how can marriage become old fashioned; it’s something you have to do right? Like you have to get up in the morning, have to breathe, have to drink water, have to brush your teeth, have to get married!!!!

Anyway I thought it was a cultural thing, my friend’s German .A few days later, in my hostel the topic of conversation veered towards marriage “So you’re going to let your parents find a guy for you??” ,my Vietnamese friend asked, “Well yea, all my friends have done the same thing, so have my parents ,and yeah seems like a good idea!!” ,I replied.

“Yea , maybe my parents or grandparents had arranged marriages , but now a days lots of girls in China prefer to stay single, or put off marriage” ,a Chinese guy volunteered , “Happily??” I asked , “ Yes , Happily!!!” he said .

So you have the seemingly anti –soulmatistic concept of arranged marriage, maybe it isn’t anti-soulmatistic( I made up the word btw!!!) but the concept that arranged marriage is the only way the universe would get your other half to meet you is stretching it a bit too far.. I mean your other half that you’ve been searching from the beginning of time for and your parents like him???… before you???…. And he’s part of the narrow pool your parents are searching in doesn’t quite gel ..but maybe the universe is smart enough to want it to happen for sure; that it makes sure your soulmate is precisely the one your folks like first.

Anyway so I started feeling marriage was overrated, not romantic at all, just a legal contract, so that society acknowledges two people as a couple …no wonder we have people going against it , my convictions were validated further when I read an article two weeks back in the Times of India about couples who lived together who were having custody battles over their kids when they split up. Again I was shocked.. people not married to each other and having children.... in India???. I know maybe it’s not the mainstream, and might be prevalent only amongst the elite, but still it was different….

Then I read this article via one of Sharath’s posts it was about people who were married but planned on staying in different homes, in this case the couple found it just too inconvenient to stay together, so in one hand you have live-in relationships (where people move in together )on the other you hand you have married people who choose not to live together…. Oh well!!!

I’d pretty much lost faith in the whole process when this article bought back some hope. …..So what if us straight people had screwed it up ,didn’t value marriage and most of us bring it down to a contract of convenience of the first one that clicks….. Gay folks certainly are fighting for their right to marry, not something I see us hetro’s doing, we may want to get married , but not passionately, not so much for love it seems …

It wasn’t a legal wedding. Even so, it made me think the Right is correct in fearing same-sex unions. There is such power in this kind of brave and naked love that it may make the walls of Jericho come tumbling down.

So I thought Yes!!! there is hope for the world. A section of society does fight oppression and get married to the love of their life, and for a while I was alright, then I found this out…

Lance Bass from N’Sync was Gay, OK fine ,always kind off.. could guess that, so who was his love ??the partial reason for which he outed himself ???Reichen Lehmkuhl!!!OMG!!!
I knew Reichen , he and his then “husband” Chip came first in the only Amazing Race season I watched completely, back home in India , what struck me about the guys was that they were really intelligent ,sensitive, good looking and also looked very committed to each other ,and yes the couple won the race beating the other straight teams, I now found out that soon after the show they split up, and Reichen became a minor celebrity and started dating Lance Bass…..it isn’t my place to say this. .but Chip was better!! They;i.e. Chip and Reichen remain friends however it seems.

Any way so straight or not …everyone’s pretty much messed up the love concept!!

Found this blog on American Marriage …check out the latest entry…I bet you didn’t know what Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna was about !!!

Confidant Crisis

To my friends… Thanks for being there….

The New York Times
July 16, 2006
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
Confidant Crisis
By ANN HULBERT

By now, I bet almost everybody knows somebody who has joined a social networking Web site like MySpace.com, with more than 90 million members, or Facebook.com, a college-based Web site that has become a high-school favorite, too. That means most people probably also know that “friend” is no longer just a noun, but a verb, one that entails minimal exertion: “to friend” a person involves an exchange of mouse clicks, one to request a spot on someone’s (often very lengthy) list of people granted access to his or her online profile, and a click in response to accept the petitioner. If you’re too old and busy to be logging on obsessively to this Internet social scene, you’re doubtless enmeshed in your own way, e-mailing far-flung acquaintances or anticipating the spread of free Internet telephone service.
Americans, in other words, aren’t exactly suffering from anomie. If anything, a surfeit of connectivity is the curse of the moment. (Take a trip in a nonquiet Amtrak car if you want vivid evidence.) No wonder a recent study, “Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks Over Two Decades,” published in the latest American Sociological Review, made it into the headlines and onto “Good Morning America.” Here was surprising news that touched a nerve. Who would have guessed, in our gabby tell-all culture, that people interviewed in the 2004 General Social Survey would report an average of only two “core” confidants with whom they “discuss important matters,” down from the mean of three close ties elicited by the same question in 1985? Just as startling, given an ever more interwoven world, was the decline in the percentage of Americans — to 57 percent from 80 percent — who named at least one non-kin person as part of this inner circle.
The media, predictably enough, were spooked by the specter of “social isolation”: though we may bowl alone, we’re always ready to join a chorus of concern about fraying communities. But before rushing to conclude that Americans have simply gotten lonelier and more insular, why not consider another possibility? Perhaps, as the study’s authors themselves hint at one point, we’ve also gotten better at demarcating what constitutes truly intimate communing — expecting more of our confidants, we have, in effect, defined intimacy up. That is not exactly what you would expect in an era of constant communicating. Yet could it be precisely because we’re more plugged in to a disparate array of people who supply us with information when we need it, offer advice and keep us intermittent company, that our standard of genuine closeness has become more exacting? It’s not just that we’re too busy for more than a select few confidants. We may be choosier too.
Look at Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics,” or at junior-high-school cliques, and it’s clear that discriminating among degrees of friendship can be a daunting task. The most tenacious of taxonomists, Aristotle thought pleasure and utility counted for less than the rare commingling of virtuous character as the basis for friendship. Centuries of varying ideals and fears ensued. Are our close ties becoming shallower and more instrumental? How many are too many, and what is enough? Is friendship a matter of spontaneous sincerity, heartfelt reciprocity, mutual understanding, deep loyalty, moral obligation or shared passion — and can it last? In his new book, “Friendship: An Exposé,” Joseph Epstein quotes the German sociologist Georg Simmel already worrying a century ago that we moderns are destined to drift among “differentiated friendships,” missing out on an all-encompassing connection.
Turn from philosophizers to recent empirical surveys, and it’s clear the challenge of categorizing confidants remains as complex as ever. In January, just five months before the General Social Survey appeared, a phone survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project set out to assess the impact of Web involvement on real-world social networks. The study emerged with a notably big figure for what it termed “core ties”: a median number of 15 people with whom respondents said they had discussed important matters, with whom they were in frequent touch or from whom they got substantial help. Here was a three-pronged conception of core ties that roped in friendships across the Aristotelian spectrum, from the useful to the pleasurable and beyond, rather than distilling out just soul mates. Add in the median number of 16 weaker yet still “significant ties” that the Pew survey also counted, and the findings left Americans looking anything but socially isolated.
And now consider the fact that the General Social Survey finds that on average, individuals have only two close confidants. As we puzzle over what the decline means, perhaps we should be reassured that Americans seem clear-eyed about their connections. The study’s low figures may be stark testament that we value a deep bond when we find it and aren’t fooled when we don’t. When one-dimensional, functional relationships are ever more accessible, the desire to be known and to know another from all sides and from inside out may be lodged even deeper — and may thrive closer to home. A century ago, another philosopher surveying a modernizing world, George Santayana, had already concluded that “the tie that in contemporary society most nearly resembles the ancient ideal of friendship is a well-assorted marriage.” The General Social Survey data suggest an inner core that isn’t oppressively clannish but invites rising equality and diversity, narrow though it is. The percentage of people who include a spouse in their circle of closest confidants went from 30 percent in 1985 to almost 40 percent two decades later. And in 2004, 15 percent reported at least one confidant of another race, up from 9 percent in 1985. While to friend has become a frivolous verb, to bond might prove to be one that Americans are taking, if anything, more to heart than ever.

Ann Hulbert, a contributing writer, is the author of “Raising America: Experts, Parents and a Century of Advice About Children.”

So Happy You Are Mine

First looked up this article forwarded by Sharath from the India Uncut blog..

SO HAPPY YOU ARE MINE

Reader Shyam Nunley writes me a mail regarding my post on freedom and feminism, in which she explains why she chose to change her name after marriage. She writes:

When I became engaged several years ago I had several people ask me why I would ever take another person's name. My answer was and always will be: "My maiden name is not my own. It is my father's father's father's name. My first and middle name are not my own either, they were given to me by my parents. What difference does it make whether I keep the patriarchal name I received at birth or I choose to take the legal name of the person I now share an address with? Everyone has been given someone else's name. Wives are the only ones given an option of changing our names or not. Men are saddled with a name which carries all the weight of their fathers since the beginning of the family. Seems to me I am the one with more social options than my love.",

My personal stance , I’ve got a rare surname , my dad’s the last male in our line having the surname , so yeah I’m attached to it .. might hold on to it , might hyphenate it or ... might just change it !!!!

And just at the time when I begin to wonder how a lady can have a name like 'Shyam,' she explains:


As a post script I feel inclined to say that my real first name is Shyam, however it is not an Indian name. I only mention this because others have been confused and on occasion insulted when they find out I am an American. My parents were "free spirits" and when my father had to join the military to support his pregnant wife he often wrote to her while away. Every letter he signed S.H.Y.A.M. This stood for So Happy You Are Mine. When I was born my mother graced me with that name never having heard it before. It was not until years later, when my circle of friends widened, that I started to hear it as an Indian name.Wow.

Then saw the latest post in the blog linking to this :
Top 10 pick-up lines in the WORLD!!

My personal favourite from the article…..( I just like it ; not that I get it a lot!!)
"You must be tired because you've been running through my mind all day."
LOLLOLLOL!!! :))

Modern Love

Ok, inspired by a comment made by Vivek on why had I not included a Wiki Definition in my previous post on marriage ? , Well the answer is I assume EVERYONE knew what the definition of marriage is !! Just Kidding , I did look up Marriage and Arranged Marriage out of curiosity, any way a link on the arranged marriage Wiki, lead me to this Modern Love article in the New York Times ( I really like this section of the NYT , the few times I get to read it…. usually if someone send me a link to an article:))
I think I’ll just copy/paste the story…( I hope a few people out there haven't read it already !!!).

May 28, 2006
Modern Love
Mom, Dad, Let Me Find My Own Husband
By SARITA JAMES


MY Suitable Boy was seven years older than I with a gentle Superman wave of hair at his forehead and broad shoulders that defied the reedy build of our South Indian heritage. The son of a family friend, he often visited us in our northeast Indiana town, a few miles east of the Dan Quayle museum. Affable with dinner guests and handy with sports scores, he was adored by my parents. And I realized quickly, despite my parents' denials, that they wanted me to marry him.
"Did you see what a fine job he's done dicing my tomatoes?" my mother would say, tilting the cutting board until the juice began to drip.
"Suitable boy" is a term used by Indian families to describe a strong marriage candidate — someone who comes from the right religion, region, community and family background. Within my circle of American-born cousins, however, we used the term only to tease each other about our parents' marriage schemes.
Our family was both Indian and Catholic, which was a rarity anywhere, much less in the American Middle West. I was still in high school but, given the scarcity of suitable boys, my parents wanted to start their search. And yet, rare as my suitable boy may have been, I did not want to marry him. I found him to be boring and close-minded — he read very little, claimed he could never have a gay friend and did not see why Indian wedding dowries were problematic. Because I felt my family's quiet pressure in his presence, I questioned his perennial attendance at our gatherings.
Do you think we could have just the family visit for Thanksgiving this year?" I asked my mother after two years of his visits.
"But he's a bachelor," she said. "It's our duty to host him." And again he came.
When I was a sophomore in college, I happened to be home when my suitable boy called with big news: he was leaving for India in a month to get married. His parents had located two young women for him — an engineer and a fashion designer — and had booked the church hall to celebrate the union of his choice.
AFTER the call, I began skipping around my mother's bedroom with the thrill of emancipation.
"If you had been friendlier on his last visit, he might have married you!" my mother scolded. "You should have come tobogganing with us! You're such a foolish girl."
My mother's resentment made me stop skipping. When my father came home from work, he also looked disappointed.
Were they right? Had I thrown away my future by studying for final exams instead of tobogganing with my suitable boy? I did find him immediately more likable once my parents broke their lengthy silence on their intentions for us. And it was true that he had adapted well to my family over the years, cheerfully participating in our misguided activities.
One summer weekend he had come along with us on a fishing derby. It was a hot afternoon, and we waded through muddy, mosquito-infested waters to reel in hundreds of little fish. We realized only at the awards ceremony that prizes were given based on the total weight, not the number, of fish. While my mother continued to look wistfully at the first-prize motorboat, my suitable boy and I laughed and released our little catches.
"I imagine I would like to move back to India someday," he said to me as we were walking back to the car. "Could you see yourself ever living there?"
"I'm not sure," I said. From my summer visits there, I remembered first my grandparents' friendly faces, but then also the pollution and the helpless feeling of being a foreigner. I looked at his eager face. "Perhaps."
At Harvard, men were starting to ask me out on dates but I demurely refused. My parents had warned me that the dating scene was full of bad men who would marry and then divorce me. I doubted that the situation was really that grim but was unsure of myself. And now the only eligible Indian Catholic in the Midwest was getting married to someone else.
The next week we unexpectedly saw him at a graduation party for one of my Ohio cousins, and he confided his anxieties surrounding his upcoming wedding. When I walked into the kitchen, my aunts were discussing his marriage plans and bemoaning their daughters' lost opportunities.
As we were leaving, I ate one last chocolate-covered strawberry and looked up to notice him watching me attentively. I smiled back. Before we climbed into the car, I saw my father put his hand on my suitable boy's shoulder, and I experienced a sudden regret.
When we arrived home, I told my parents that I would marry him. My parents were startled and pleased by my announcement but concerned that it was too late. I felt confident; after all, the wedding invitations could not have been sent without the name of his selected bride.
My parents called my suitable boy that night to propose, and, after quickly checking with his parents, he gave me his answer: he would love to marry me. His parents asked only that he see the other two women, as a formality to avoid offending their families. In the meantime we could start getting to know each other and planning for our future.
I called him every day from a pay phone outside the cafeteria at Caltech, where I had begun a summer research internship. It was the start of our relationship. He was 26 and I was 19.
"I should tell you about this girl I once liked," he began tentatively. He had bought a college classmate gifts and lent her money, but she had turned him away.
"I've been kissed before," I volunteered.
"You?" he teased. "Who did you find in Indiana?"
I told him about Paul, who had kissed me good-bye on the rooftop of the San Francisco Hilton after a high school science convention. I explained that I'd been too surprised by Paul's French kiss to move my own tongue. I suspected my suitable boy wasn't zealously conservative, but I hadn't been sure; I was relieved when he laughed.
After a week of daily calls, I began to imagine our married life together. Would I be ready to trade in a graduate degree for motherhood if required?
On a more pressing note, would we really sleep with each other for the first time on our wedding night? It seemed quite drastic for two people who barely knew each other, although I knew my parents had met on the day of their arranged marriage and that my brother had been born within the year.
Before my suitable boy left for India, he promised to give me a call when he arrived. As I warned him to be careful riding his motorcycle through Bangalore's dangerous traffic, I felt the thrill of playing the romantic lead in a school play.
I anticipated introducing him to Matt, one of my witty gay friends in Cambridge, and thought how they would become instant pals before I revealed Matt's sexual orientation. At that point, my suitable boy would feel deep shame and admit in a rousing soliloquy that his homophobia had been wrong. I was excited and poised to fall in love.
But my suitable boy didn't call me when he arrived. In fact, neither my parents nor I heard from him or his family until a week later, when his parents notified us by phone that he was engaged to the engineer. I was stunned. Instead of calling me to explain, he e-mailed me:
Dear Sarita,
I am so sorry for what happened. I wish I had gotten married to you. Matters were taken out of my control. I want to apologize profusely both to you and your family. Unfortunately, I can never explain what happened.
A second e-mail message, posted five minutes later, read:
Dear Sarita,
I regret my indiscretion in that first e-mail. Could you please delete it? Please trust that my apologies are sincere.
I FELT a deep emptiness that I had difficulty explaining. I cared about him but I had not been in love. I knew my vision for our shared future had been naïvely optimistic. What hurt most, I realized, was my broken trust in my parents' guidance.
A few years later, I learned that a large dowry had been exchanged as part of his wedding. Most of it had been passed along to his sister's bridegroom when she was married the same year. Not only had the suitable boy let me down, he had also perpetuated the injustices of the dowry system.
"If only his parents had known we would have gladly paid a dowry," my mother lamented, to my irritation.
Over time our two families, which had been close for generations in India, began an awkward reconciliation. One year, my suitable boy's father sent a Christmas card. The next year, my father sent one without receiving a reply. But I never saw my suitable boy again.
My junior and senior years of college passed quietly. Immersed in my academics and extracurricular activities, I chose not to explore relationships with the men I met, and my parents, too, left it alone.
Once I graduated, however, my marriage returned as a family priority.
"I met this recruiter from Microsoft who's going to call you," my mother said one evening.
"Recruiter? But I already have a job, Mom."
"Well, you may have a job but you don't have a husband! He's Indian Catholic, so please just have a career chat and see where it goes."
My parents continued their husband hunt for another year, culminating in a marital ad they secretly ran in a major Indian newspaper. It included my vital statistics — "5-foot-6, 22 years old, slim, pretty, Ivy League-educated girl" — along with their personal e-mail address for responses.
When one of my cousins recognized the e-mail address and tipped me off, I called my mother in frustration. I was impressed by my parents' audacity, but I asked my mother to take down the ad and call off the search.
I couldn't let my parents arrange my Indian marriage from Indiana. I would have to find my own suitable boy. Or perhaps even an unsuitable one.


Sarita James is a freelance writer and strategy consultant in New York.

On Marriage

Because a lot of work is due this weekend, and because I blog only when I have piles of other work to be done… I thought it would be a good time to post……

I’ve made a conscious attempt not to post on marriage, I have to look back ;but I’m quite sure I haven’t posted, I post on love often ,yea, but not marriage( or rather the state of possible impending marriage ), the reasons being :
1) It’s the single most depressing topic I think I can blog about.
2) So many other folks I know have written much better about it than I possibly could…

Anyway ever since I graduated from under grad , the topic of marriage was always ominously looming , but I think I fully got into all this matrimonial ickyness only recently , maybe I’m in the race too late, but that’s totally my fault because I wasn’t open to getting married till about six months ago, and I think my parents were chill because I was , but when seven of my friends got hitched in the same week ,it was a bit too much to take ( you know all that peer pressure stuff).

Anyway so I was thinking, there’s so much pressure to get married , not so much from my parents , but we get it on all sides from family and friends .

Let me clear at the outset that a vast majority of the marriages I know off are very happy ones ,that's precisely the problem for me as a girl , because , in the pool of eligible matches ,all the good guys are taken or Gay, but in India , even the Gay guys are taken !

I’m the first admit it’s not as if I have a long line of guys waiting outside my door waiting to get married to me!!! But all this marketing stuff really gets to me , I mean who was that who said the ratio of women to men in India was low ,sure doesn’t seem like that!!!

So what are the marketing strategies I’ve personally had to deal with in search of that “one proposal that works!!”,( as an aside isn’t it the scariest thing in the world getting married to a stranger…I mean parents do background check and all , but I’ve seen some real loons get married , poor girl!!):

1) Being able to pay heaploads of dowry, if you can do that the rest of the stuff below doesn’t matter .

2) I don’t know what happened to chivalry, it certainly is dead amongst some Indian men , I mean when my parents ask if a certain guy who they’ve passed on my number to, who I’m not extremely interested in but my parents are fixated on, has called and I tell them he hasn’t ,they suggest that maybe I should email him, suggesting that the guys mum says that “He’s shy and cant really call up girls” ..well first of all I certainly don’t buy that , and second of all, “OK Aunty ,your son is shy, even I am shy”, I don’t know who the onus goes to in our supposed “male dominated society”, to make that call ..ofcourse it is another thing if he doesn’t want to call…


3) I don’t have much of a past, but it seems having one certainly brings down your chances of getting married , I don’t know when India will reach a point where you marry a person for who they are and not for what you think is their lack of life experiences, of course if you satisfy the dowry criteria all this really doesn’t matter, (seriously dowry, the fact that parents have to save their entire lives to marry of their daughters , I really don’t wonder why the status of women is what it is .)

4) See I’m a traditionalist , I don’t use the internet to date guys , I prefer to meet them or use traditional sources, so when people who personally haven’t used the internet to marry off their kids suggest that I should use the internet, I get more than a little irritated , why didn’t they start the revolution and marry off their kids that way?


5) I don’t know how guys can scope out so many girls , like they are buying a car or something ..this is what makes me sad , I mean really sad , like literally my heart is weeping, because in essence the same thing is going to happen to me ….so I hear of this guy , that after rejecting a dozen or so girls because she was (insert suitable adjective) too ( short, tall, dark ,fair , fat , thin , uneducated, educated , fast, slow, astrologically incompatible…..), the guy sees me fit for consideration, at the end of this ploy to promote a guys “popularity” , should I be happy for being bestowed such an honor , feel bad for the girls who have a total strangers sympathy for not getting married to some one, or feel like punching the said guy in the face!!!


And in the end what is all this for ???

Even after people get married they’re happy 95% of the time but for 5% of the time the keep groaning for the rest off their lives over there “fate” , all this lamenting seriously puts me off marriage all together…..who told them to get married in the first place , no way I want to end up like that, people should hold some responsibility for how their lives are!!!

I guess the problem lies because we Indians are conditioned to believe that marriage is the end of all your problems , the way I see it , I have my own set of problems , a guy has his, if we get married that just doubles the number of problems in life , unless you have something strong to pull you through all this , it’s a bad situation to get into..

Well that’s my analysis so far, more as I get further into the process .I’m 'for' marriage no one wants to be alone….. but i'm also for being happily single forever if the other option was to get married to a totally wrong person.Gosh these problems are so uniquely indian , my Kiwi friends would probably think i'm mad for even considering these things, i'm not saying Alabama, because they are more tradional and "Indianlike" to some extent in the South.


To quote something my nineteen year old girl cousin posted in an Orkut forum:
" in desperate need of "decent,intellectually stimulating, non conservative!!! "enter community/caste name "!.. d only ---- guys i know hwo can keep up a good interesting ,, stimulatin n witty conversation in normal ENGLISH(no corny one liners pls) besides being decently good lookin( yes ,, ill admit .. i am a lilllll superficial..hehe) are my own cusin brothers!!!! anyone here or anywhere! who cud prove me worng???"

Not entirely true..but not entirely false either.....


I know lots of people who have it good , God bless them!!Their arranged marriage was the best thing that happened to them , but I’m sure many people have to go through this irritating stuff as well …

I’ve read that chick based blogs are the least frequently read, and I guess I do a lot of male bashing , hopefully should post more positive stuff later!!!

Recommended reading :These posts by Meghna:
Horoscopes
Holy Matrimony

Quotes 3

This should have been a part of the previous post, I like this a lot, it’s not from the site I linked to in the previous post ..anyway its by Rumi , and Unbearably romantic, day by day the cynic in me gets stronger and stronger….. anyway here it is

“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”

AAh this practically gave me goosebumps the first time I read it , this won’t happen in real life , but its good to have an ideal to compare with!!!

Note to self to be referenced in the future : NOT at ALL KEEN on getting MARRIED, especially getting married to a MORON!!!( YEEEEEEEEESH)!!!! Want to stay SINGLE for atleast two more years …Relatives and friends reading this please keep this in mind and tell my PARENTS!!!!!

What if prospective Moron’s read this entry…. Hmmm… that’s a small price I have to pay for not keeping my thoughts to myself

Not that i've met a lot of Morons, but have got to know of a few!!!

Open question to the world: I wonder if a few years down the line I’ll end up deleting posts?

Aquarius

No matter how much I search ( and I do a lot of searching on this subject!!) I never find another description of my star sign that I like better , this one makes me sound much more interesting than I really am!! I keep going back to it over the years. Every one knows that Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs is the touchstone in its field. Since I don’t believe so much in links on my blog postings I’m going to paste the entire 6730 word description of Aquarians and Aquarian Females to act as ready reference whenever I need it ……. for the few of you out there who may be interested …here’s a link to the online version of the book.


From "Linda Goodman's Sun Signs"

AQUARIUS, the Water Bearer
January 21st through February 19th

How to Recognize AQUARIUS

"In spring, when -woods are getting green, I'll try and tell you what I mean:
In summer, when the days are long, Perhaps you'll understand the song.'"
"For this must ever be -A secret
Kept from all the rest Between yourself and me."

Lots of people like rainbows. Children make wishes on them, artists paint them, dreamers chase them, but the Aquarian is ahead of everybody. He lives on one. What's more, he's taken it apart and examined it, piece by piece, color by color, and he still believes in it. It isn't easy to believe in something after you know what it's really like, but the Aquarian is essentially a realist, even though his address is tomorrow, with a wild-blue-yonder zip code.
Like the bewildered Alice, taken through the maze of Wonderland by Aquarian Lewis Carroll, you'll have to be constantly prepared for the unexpected with Uranians. Generally kindly and tranquil by nature, Aquarians never¬theless enjoy defying public opinion, and they secretly delight in shocking more conventional people with oc¬casional erratic conduct. These normally soft-spoken and courteous souls can suddenly short circuit you with the most amazing statements and actions at the most unpredict¬able times. The typical Uranian is half Albert Schweitzer and half Mickey Mouse. His feet can be wearing sandals, boots, oxfords, or hush puppies, and he'll seldom bother to check whether they're appropriate for the occasion. He'll show up barefoot if he feels like it, and laugh at you for laughing at him. Aquarians often deliberately adopt weird attire to show their refusal to conform.
You can often recognize people born under this fixed, air sign by their frequent use of the word friend, Aquarian Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats invariably began with, "My friends . . ." and the typical Uranus question after a broken romance is, "Can't we still be friends?" Aquarius is neither jaded nor naive, neither enthusiastic nor blase. Continuous experimentation simply leaves him curious to penetrate the next mystery, and the next mystery could be you. That person who seems to be either a million miles away mentally, or else dissecting you under an invisible microscope, is probably an Aquarian. It can be disconcert¬ing to discover, after all his intense, nattering curiosity, that he's just as deeply interested in the personal lives of the corner policeman, the bartender, the bellboy, the night club singer or the inmates of the funny house as he is in yours. Politics fascinate him, sports absorb him and chil¬dren intrigue him. But then so do horses, automobiles, elderly people, medical discoveries, authors, astronauts, alcoholics, pianos, pinwheels and prayers-not to mention baseball and Louis Armstrong. Join the crowd and toss your ego in the wastebasket, or his coolly impersonal ap¬proach will be sure to bruise it.
Look for a strange, faraway look in the eyes, as if they contained some kind of magic, mysterious knowledge you can't penetrate. Aquarius eyes are typically vague, with a dreamy, wandering expression, and often (but not always) blue, green or gray. The hair is frequently straight and silky, likely to be blonde, sandy or light brown; the com¬plexion is pale and the height is usually taller than average (though the ascendant can modify the appearance of any Sun sign). You'll notice a marked nobility of profile. Uranus features are finely chiseled, suggestive of Roman emperors cut on old gold coins. True Aquarians will often adopt the pose of the drooping head when they're thinking about a problem, or just after they've asked a question. The head drops abruptly forward, or cocks to one side, waiting for your reaction. Curiously, thanks to the dual sexuality of Uranus, there are often feminine characteristics in the male bodies, such as broad hips, for example-and masculine characteristics in the female body, such as broad shoulders.
Freedom-loving Uranians can be acutely funny, perverse, original, conceited and independent, but they can also be diplomatic, gentle, sympathetic and timid. The Aquarian will almost desperately seek the security of crowds and saturate himself with friendship. Then hell fall into a gloomy, morose spell of loneliness, and want to be strictly left alone. But whether he's mingling or singling, he'll retain his sharp perception, which is at once both deeper and quicker than others. Uranus makes him a natural rebel who instinctively feels that all old customs are wrong, and that drastic alteration and revolutionary change is what the world and people need (although if he's in politics, he's clever enough not to broadcast his views prematurely and spoil his strategy).
To this end, Aquarians are always analyzing situations, friends and strangers. It can be disturbing when they start asking pointblank questions, with a bare minimum of tact, as they probe into the heart of your private feelings. When they discover the puzzle wasn't so complex after all, they become bored, sometimes even upset. Nothing is more insulting than to have an Aquarian tire of his game of microscopic examination and turn to the next interesting person, just when he's convinced you he thinks you are the most important human being on earth. It stings.
Despite their fixation on friendship, Aquarians don't have many intimates. They seek quantity rather than quality in their associations, and they seldom settle down to a steady relationship for more than a limited period. There's too much to discover around the next comer to remain tied to one or two friendships exclusively. It does little good to make an emotional appeal to such an im¬personal nature, but if you touch the heart of an Aquarian (which is not the same thing as mere emotion), he'll usually get off his bicycle and come back to see what he might have missed.
A peculiar sort of isolation hangs over the Uranian, and he's often misunderstood by mankind. That's because man¬kind hasn't yet caught up with the Aquarian Utopia. Since the water bearer lives in the future, coming back only briefly to the present, he can seem just plain pixilated to more mundane souls. He senses this, and it deepens his sense of isolation. But just because others can't keep up with him is no reason in his opinion to go backwards. So he wanders among his lonely clouds, while we mere mortals wonder what he's doing way out there. Astrology teaches us that "As the Aquarian thinks, so will the world think in fifty years." That may be true, but it certainly doesn't narrow the gap between the Uranus-ruled and the rest of us today. This Sun sign is known as the sign of genius, and so it is, since over seventy percent of the people in the Hall of Fame are either Sun Aquarians or have Aquarian ascendants. On the other hand, a substantially high per¬centage of those confined in mental institutions, or who drop in for regular couch sessions with an analyst, are also Aquarians. There's a fine line, they say, between genius and insanity, and your Uranian friends can some¬times make you wonder which side of the line they're on. A great deal of the confusion is due to man's tendency to belittle his prophets. The familiar quotes that "they laughed at Fulton and his steamboat," "they thought Edison was mentally retarded," and "they wanted to lock up Louis Pasteur," are examples of the attitude of the materialistic world toward those whose senses are tuned to higher spheres of thought.
Uranians are a curious mixture of cold, practicality and eccentric instability, and they seem to have an instinctive empathy with the mentally disturbed. It's a curious fact that almost any Aquarian can substantially reduce the anxiety of the insane simply by talking to them quietly. He has a marvelous knack for calming hysterical people and soothing frightened children. Is it because of his own thinly-covered, highly acute nervous system that he has such deep understanding?
The Aquarian outlook is so broad that youll seldom find one who is prejudiced, unless there are severe planetary influences in the natal chart. Even then, he'll be deeply shocked when his prejudice is pointed out. The brother¬hood instinct is so strong in him that when a rare Aquarian is guilty of being intolerant, he's not only unaware of it, he hates the label. Ordinarily, everyone is his brother or sister. He'll wander through affluent society and the slums alike with his symbolic jar, gathering the waters of knowl¬edge and pouring them out again, except for those occa¬sional lapses into hibernation. But his hiding put periods seldom last long, and before you get a chance to miss him the Uranian is back gregariously making the rounds again. Don't try to interrupt his solitude. When he wants to be alone, he wants to be alone, but he hasn't retired from the mainstream permanently, even if he does take a sudden Uranus notion to get an unlisted phone number. His address hasn't changed, and neither has he. He can never renounce people for long. Ignore him and he'll soon be walking around town on those home-made stilts, as alert and inquisitive as ever.
Ordinarily, it's difficult to get an Aquarian to make a precise appointment. He'd rather keep it loose, because he doesn't like to be pinned down to specific duties or obliga¬tions at specific times. He prefers a casual "111 see you around-maybe sometime Tuesday" to a definite hour for a meeting. (And he sometimes means the second Tuesday of next week.) However, I will say that once you've suc¬ceeded in nailing him and he gives you his word he'll meet you at a particular hour he will be there on the dot. You can count on it, even set your watch by his punctuality, and you'd better not be late yourself. Hell show up dependably, unless he's been kidnapped on the way (which, being an Aquarian, he could be. Anything can happen to these people at any time. I mean but anything).
You can expect him to give his opinion frankly, but he won't try to dictate how you should think or how you should live your life. Conversely, he doesn't intend to let you tell him how he should think or live his. Unlike Aries and Leo or Gemini, he has no desire to hard sell his ideas to others. The Aquarian philosophy is that everyone has fais thing, his special yearning. Each person dances to his own fiddle music, and individuality should be respected. It's interesting to see that, as the world moves into the Aquarian Age, the heralds of the new era are the flower people and the Gurus. In exaggerated fashion, they are simply reflect¬ing the Aquarian ideals: equality-brotherhood-love for all-live and let live-seek the truth-experiment-and retire to meditate.
You'll rarely find the Aquarian fighting fiercely for a cause. They live their code, and feel that's enough. Let Aries, Scorpio, Leo and Sagittarius grab the sword and battle gloriously to free the downtrodden. The Uranus-ruled souls are too busy figuring out the reason for the revolution, listening to people's troubles and sharing sym¬pathetic understanding. Aquarius believes in violent change, but he leaves the violence to others. He's not a moral or a physical coward. He just isn't geared for battle. When a fight catches him unaware, he may strike out blindly in confusion, or he may simply agree, to end the argument. His reaction is unpredictable, but one thing is certain. The next day his opinion will be as fixed as it was before. Any¬one skilled in debate can usually get the best of him, since his attention can so easily wander to the abstract in a battle of wits. The Aquarian fights best with his hat. He puts it on and leaves. His truth-respecting mind, however, won't budge an inch when he has a firm conviction, despite his distaste for unpleasant confrontations. All the shouting and emotional pressure in the world won't keep him from determinedly going his own way with his independent ideas, while the fireworks explode all around him. Our two Aquarian Presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, demonstrate this principle perfectly. The con¬cepts were equally original and strikingly unpopular in both cases. There was no aggressive insistence on personal theories, yet the sweeping reforms were made, regardless of lack of cooperation and bitter opposition.
Another reason why Uranians often meet with hostile criticism is that they're so full of surprises. They can lead you west, then suddenly turn and march east, without warning. Aquarius has an obstinate way of not letting you know what he's up to. For weeks, the February-born father of a friend of mine ignored his wife's complaints about a stove that didn't work. He buried himself in his newspaper, oblivious to her desperate hints. Suddenly one day a truck pulled up, two men unloaded a brand new stove and con¬nected it in the kitchen under the surprised eyes of his wife, who should have learned to expect such behavior.
Trusting people doesn't come naturally to the Aquarian until after he's scrutinized your motives, even your .soul, if possible. It's easy to grow restive under his intent analysis of your every word and gesture. You get the feeling it's all being filed away in that penetrating mind for future refer¬ence, and it is. He may seem to be in a dreamy fog now and then, but don't you believe it. He can probably tell you how many eyelashes you have. Never expect the Uranian to take you at face value. His innate courtesy will never keep him from shining the Uranus spotlight on you from head to toe. He wants to know what's behind that face, and he'll ask some mighty embarrassing questions to find out. But it's comforting to know that once you're accepted hell be loyal and his friendship will be unshaken by malicious gossip. If you're his real friend, he won't believe the nasty whispers of your enemies, although hell undoubtedly listen to them out of sheer curiosity. Rest assured, however, that he’ll make up his own mind in the final analysis.
Uranus illnesses are usually connected with the circulatory system. Aquarians shiver and shake in the winter, and suffer with the humidity in the summer. They're susceptible to varicose veins and hardening of the arteries in old age, if their emotions are directed into negative channels, and they tend to have accidents to the legs, especially the shin and ankles. The ankle bones are often weak, and there may be pains in the legs, due to poor circulation; frequent sort throats; and sometimes heart palpitation, usually not serious unless there are severe afflictions in the natal chart. Uranians need lots of fresh air, sleep and exercise, but they seldom take advantage of these remedies. They don't get much fresh air because they close their windows, pile on the blankets and still complain that they're freezing. The high frequency nervous tension that accompanies Uranus mental activity keeps them from getting enough sleep, and often the rest they do get is troubled by strange dreams. As for exercise, unless the Aquarian developed an early love of sports by playing stickball in his neighborhood, it's difficult to prod him into moving fast, let alone running around the track. His mind gets a continual workout, but the body needs a strong push. Aquarian health is usually excellent in child¬hood, barring weird, Uranian complaints-impossible to diagnose. The real troubles don't begin until maturity in¬creases stubbornness. These people are extremely suscepti¬ble to hypnosis. Intuitively, lots of them sense this and won't expose themselves to it for love nor money, but this is a mistake, because hypnotic suggestion from a good medical hypnotist could successfully remove their myriad phobias. They're acutely responsive to electrical treatment, too, which can be just as beneficial.
Aquarians don't have the best memories in the world, but then they really don't need to memorize much, since they seem to pick up knowledge out of thin air, with some kind of invisible antennae. Why should they clutter their minds with information they may never need, when they can reach out by osmosis and grasp just about anything they want? They're likely to come home from the store without the most important item on the grocery list, be¬cause they can't be bothered with remembering what is, to them, non-essential. The typical Aquarian is the em¬bodiment of the legendary absent-minded professor. I know one who planned to meet his wife in front of the City Squire Motel at noon. But he arrived early and ran into an old friend. (Aquarians are always running into old friends. In Africa or the Aleutian Islands they will be sure to find somebody they know.) The Uranian was engrossed in conversation with his pal when his wife approached, all smiles. As she came closer he stared at her blankly, gal¬lantly tipped his hat, then turned, took his friend's arm and walked down the street, deep in conversation, leaving the furious, frustrated woman standing on the comer, alone and forgotten.
The Uranus power of concentration can be awesome. Yet, they're also able to pick up things going on around and behind them when they choose, like a radar screen. They can carry on a complicated discussion and still not miss an inflection of what's happening in the other part of the room, if they decide to tune in. Sometimes you could swear the Aquarian paid no attention to anything you said, but the next day he'll repeat it back to you like a tape recorder. Never underestimate the Uranian process of soaking up knowledge while they seem to be oblivious, even though now and then they get lost in concentration, like my friend who left his wife standing on the street, in a mood to kill.
What the Aquarius man or woman thinks is always a clue to tomorrow. The uncanny Uranus ability to plunge into the unknown and absorb mystical secrets without half trying leads to a peculiar sort of intuition which gives them a high degree of psychic precognition. I know one who literally answers the phone before it rings, and what's more, he knows who's on the other end before a word is spoken. Abraham Lincoln had several premonitions of his own death in startling detail. Almost every Aquarian has a unique kind of sensitivity that lets him know your inner desires. Without talk, he understands a need buried so deep that you're almost unaware of it yourself. Using that magical osmosis, the Aquarian can transmit his own thoughts with an unseen charge of electrical current. Even when his back is turned, he can project strong feelings by this strange process. During a long silence on the telephone, he may be sending and receiving vibrations when you think he's fallen asleep. Some Uranians don't need Western Union to send a telegram.
Yet, there's nothing superstitious about their thinking. A true scientist even if he's a mechanic or a musician, the Uranian won't jump to a conclusion until it's passed the test of his keen mind. However, once he forms an opinon, it remains firmly fixed in his brain, and I do mean firmly. As strongly as he loves change in society and government, he won't change his own idea one iota for anybody. He's completely open-minded about world progress, but his mind clamps shut when it involves his personal behavior, which can be unexpectedly conservative. You can see that his liberalism has its boundaries.
Aquarians despise lying and cheating, and they avoid borrowing and lending. They'll give you money as a gift, but don't ask them for a loan. Did you ever try to touch Aquarian Jack Benny for a fast fifty? Jack may surprise you by saying yes, but be sure you pay him back promptly. A broken promise or bad debt can put a wide crack in your friendship. Aquarians keep their word and pay their bills, and they expect others to do the same. Charge ac¬counts don't normally excite them and credit cards can frighten them. All this love of honesty, however, can sometimes be distorted into questionable behavior. As much as he hates hypocrisy and double-dealing, the Aquarian can somehow answer questions so cleverly that he gives a false impression. Yet hell be outspokenly indignant if he catches anyone else guilty of such a delicate nuance of deception. He'll seldom tell an outright lie, but he can fool you in very subtle ways, which is hardly the essence of the honesty he so constantly preaches. His un¬relenting search for truth and the desire to hide his own motives are incompatible traits, and the Aquarian must eventually face this inconsistency if he's going to learn the real truth about himself.
Aquarians get credit for being idealists, perhaps too much credit, for true idealism consists of blind faith and optimism, and the Uranian is too shrewd to fool himself with lost causes for long. He knows that most dreams are illusions, like the rainbow he has examined so closely and still loves. Tradition and authority leave him unimpressed. He'll politely respect them, but they won't stop his com¬pulsive drive to uncover fallacies, distortions and illogical assumptions.
His mind and body must both be as free as the wind. To try to pin down the Aquarian is to try to stabilize the butterfly, to stuff a spring breeze into a closet or confine a winter gale in a bottle. It can't be done, and besides, who in the world would want to try? Though he's so far ahead of his time that you have trouble catching his view¬point immediately, it's still worthwhile to make the at¬tempt. You'll always come away a little wiser, if a little bewildered. His astrological flower is the daffodil-and now you know the derivation of the word "daffy."
The soul of the water bearer is constantly torn asunder by Uranus, the unpredictable and violent planet of change which lets him see ahead with electric blue clarity to the future. Aquarius belongs to mankind. He represents its truest hopes and its deepest ideals. Even his metal, uranium, is not really a metal, but a radioactive, metallic chemical, found only in combinations. It's important in atomic re¬search, and it can undergo continuous fission. The magnetic majesty of eight bolts of brilliant lightning reflected in the Aquarian sapphire can split open his secrets for those who seek to know him-but only for an instant can you see into his lonely heart, long ago infused with Saturn's ancient wisdom-unless you too live in tomorrow.

Famous Aquarius Personalities

Francis Bacon Oprah Winfrey Jennifer Aniston Tallulah Bankhead John Barrymore Jack Benny Shelley Bennan George Burns Lewis Carroll Katharine Cornell Charles Darwin Jimmy Dean Charles Dickens Jimmy Durante Thomas Edison Mia Farrow Clark Gable Galileo
Langston Hughes Jack Lemmon Abraham Lincoln Charles Lindbergh Somerset Maugham Jeanne Moreau Paul Newman Louis Nizer Kim Novak S. J. Perelman Leontyne Price Ronald Reagan Vanessa Redgrave Norman Rockwell Franklin Roosevelt

The AQUARIUS Woman

But Alice had got so much into the -way
of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen
that it seemed quite dull and stupid
for life to go on in the common way ...
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea- And welcome Queen Alice with thirty times three!

The safest way to enter into romance with an Aquarian female is to remember she's as paradoxical in love as she is in everything else. That way, you won't be expecting Priscilla Alden and get Pocahontas.
This girl has all the faithfulness of the fixed signs when she's in love, but she also has the detachment and lack of emotion of the air element. It's possible to have a happy relationship with the Uranus woman if you leave her free to pursue her myriad interests and circulate among her friends. Never try to tie her to the stove or the bedpost. Ask the man who's tried. She can suddenly decide to study ballet, meditate in the mountains or join the Peace Corps. Remember the story of the princess with the long, golden hair who lived high in a tower? That's the Aquarius fe¬male. Cutting off her flowing tresses won't change her any more than it did in the fairy tale. She dreams different dreams than you or I. She hears a distant drummer-and follows a star most of us have never seen.
She belongs to everyone, and yet to no one. Her love can be tender and inspired, but there will always be a vaguely elusive quality about it, like a half-remembered song. You can hum the melody, but the lyrics keep slipping away. The Aquarian girl's demand for freedom is insistent, but her allegiance to anyone who can accept romance with¬in such limits is boundless. Here's something you'll like:
She won't be terribly interested in your bank book (unless Cancer or Capricorn or Taurus is on her ascendant). Money is never the prime consideration of the typical Aquarian woman. She won't care if you're not the richest man in town, but she'll expect you to be respected in some way for your intellectual achievements. Dr. Christian Bamard and his heart transplants or Wemher von Braun and his rockets interest her far more than J. Paul Getty and his billions.
When you set out to catch this butterfly in your net, remember that she'll never spend her unpredictable life with a man who isn't true to himself. Her own code of ethics may be as weird as anything you've ever come across, and quite different from the accepted codes of society, but she lives up to it totally. She'll understand that your rules may also be highly individual. That's fine with her, but don't compromise those rules. If you're looking for a passion flower, you've picked the wrong daisy. Passion is not her forte if she's a typical Aquarian. She'll think physical love is pleasant enough, if it's not overemphasized. In other words, she can take it or leave it alone. Uranus fe¬males can respond to lovemaking with a haunting, deep intensity, but if you prefer to keep it platonic for long periods of time, that's all right, too. Like all Aquarians, she may have an unconscious fear that desire for one per¬son will imprison the spirit in some way, and keep her from being true to her one great love-freedom. Freedom to ex¬periment and investigate and freedom to give time to hu¬manity. Also freedom to pursue her rather kicky, off-beat fancies.
She's an ideal girl if you're planning a political, scientific or educational career. You couldn't do better, unless you happen to run across an Aquarian girl with adverse planetary positions in her natal chart who enjoys shock¬ing people by walking barefoot down Main Street or smok¬ing big black cigars on buses. There are some pretty wild, way-out Uranian females here and there. But the average girl born under the sign of the water bearer is a social delight. She's graceful, witty, bright as a penny, and ex¬tremely adaptable to all forms of society, high and low and in the middle.
Her lack of suspicion under normal circumstances is a special bonus. A traveling salesman should find his dream girl in the typical Aquarian female. If she actually catches you being unfaithful, it will cause a deep wound to her sensitive nature. You'll know it the minute you look into those strange, dreamy eyes. But she won't suspect you without cause, and she'll rarely doubt your word. The typical Uranus woman will never check up on you after you leave, phone you at the office, inspect your handker¬chiefs for lipstick stains or look for blonde hairs caught in your cuff link. Deception will have to be brought forcibly to her attention; she won't go out looking for it. Before you give her too much credit, consider that her lack of pas¬sionate jealousy is due to something more than strength of character. First of all, she probably dissected your psyche under a microscope before she gave you a second glance. Besides, she has so many outside interests and so many people who turn her on to talk with, there's not much time for her to worry about what you're doing when you're out of sight. Out of sight can often mean out of mind for Aquarians of both sexes. Absence seldom makes the Uranus heart grow fonder. Occasionally, an Aquarian woman will suffer a promiscuous or flirtatious mate, be¬cause there's something she needs which she can find only with him, so she looks the other way. On the other hand, if she doesn't really need you, that moral strength will work in reverse at the first actual proof of infidelity. Shell simply walk away. Don't try to kindle the embers, they're stone cold dead. Of course, you can still be friends. Why not?
She's willing. It never embarrasses an. Aquarian girl to be chummy with ex-lovers or husbands. She's forgotten the past and wiped the slate clean of memories.
There is one peculiar and notable exception to the rule. Like the Uranus man, the Uranian female will remember the first true and honest love for a lifetime. Only the first, however. Are you wondering whether that Aquarius girl you once knew still remembers you? The answer lies in her definition of love. It could have something to do with the first boy who gave her a bunch of sweet peas when she was nine-the boy who walked her through the park in the rain-or the one with the funny ears who knew the clown at the circus, and used to feed her peanuts.
Uranus women involved in extra-marital affairs are rare. They can be tempted in exceptional situations, but a dis¬honest relationship goes against their chemistry. It won't be long until an undercover romance is broken off for good. Yet, there are many Aquarian divorcees. There's a reason. If a situation becomes intolerable, the Uranian nature turns cold suddenly. They can disappear overnight, and never look back. They don't seek or enjoy divorce, but it isn't the shock to them it is to their more sentimental sisters. Uranus rules change, you know. Since she's such an individualist, with a list of friends several miles long, the Aquarian female never hesitates to make her way alone if the need arises.
Expect her to probe into your heart until you haven't a secret left, or a dream that hasn't been analyzed. But don't try to dissect her private thoughts. That's not the way the game is played with Aquarians. She'll keep her motives hidden, and sometimes take a perverse pleasure in de¬liberately confusing you. She'll usually be truthful to a fault, but remember, with an Aquarian, telling a lie is one thing. Refraining from telling the whole story is another.
It's comforting to know that an Aquarian girl is pretty cagey with a buck. That is, it's comforting to know unless you're planning to hit her for a loan. She might say yes a time or two, but if you let your credit rating slip, she can be colder than the guy at the bank when you skip your car payment. On the rare occasions when she ac¬cepts a small loan herself, you'll get back every penny with no stalling, excuses or feminine wiles, if she's a typical Uranus female. As for every man's nightmare of charge accounts, you'll have little worry on that score. Aquarian women are uncomfortable about owing money. Bad debts don't fit in with the Uranus code.
Her appearance is puzzling. Most Aquarian women are lovely, with a haunting, wistful beauty. But they're change¬able. They can give an impression of smooth whipped cream, then suddenly switch to salty pizza as quickly as a bright, blue, zig-zag bolt of Uranian electricity. Next to Librans, Aquarian females are often the most beautiful women in the zodiac. At the very least, they're interesting-looking. The Aquarian manner of dressing can stop you dead in your tracks. There are a few of them who could grace the cover of a fashion magazine, but the average Aquarian girl is anything but conventional about her cos¬tumes. She can wear some outfits a gypsy would envy, and her naked individuality can produce some mighty unique combinations. She'll usually be the first to wear a new fad, no matter how zany it is, yet she can also stick to Grand¬ma's styles-even great-grandma's styles. With typical - Aquarian indifference, she'll mix yesterday's lace snood with today's metallic jump suit, and the effect can be a little startling. She'll wear her lace nightgown to a formal ban¬quet, ostrich feathers to the supermarket, bell bottom slacks to the opera, sneakers to the theater, diamonds when she visits the zoo-and top it all off with a faded Mother Hubbard she picked up in a thrift shop.
Your Aquarian girl will probably have an unusual way of wearing her hair. Her tresses are as unpredictable as her personality. They can be worn braided, pig-tailed, pinned in a bun, flowing down like a waterfall, short as a marine's, in Mary Pickford curls or as straight as a poker. One thing you can depend on. Her hair won't look like the hair of any other female on this planet.
A conversation with her can be remarkable, to say the least. She has charming manners, and usually behaves in a timid, almost reserved way. Then comes one of those sudden Uranus urges, and out will pop a remark with absolutely no relation to what anyone is saying. You'll be talking about the fluctuations of the stock market, and she'll interrupt out of nowhere with: "Did you know that Woodrow Wilson, Jack Kennedy, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Calvin Coolidge, Benjamin Harrison, Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley all have double letters in their names?" There's only one way to answer a question like that. Tell her she missed Millard
Fillmore, Ulysses Grant and Thomas Jefferson. Then gen¬tly, but firmly, lead the discussion back to the stock market. Other minds may progress in fairly logical steps, but hers rigs into tomorrow, then zags back into today with no more sense of direction than a flash of lightning. Now and then she'll toss off an unexpectedly poignant phrase. You'll ask her what she thinks of space travel and she'll answer, "When I was a little girl, I thought the stars were holes in the floor of heaven where the light shone through." If she's in a different mood, you'll say that melted snowmen make you sad, and shell counter with: "A melted snowman is just a pile of slush, Charlie." First misty-then practical. First timid-then rowdy. Aquarian women will rudely ridicule flying saucers, then tell you a story about a polka-dotted elf on a windowsill. Never talk down to an Aquarian female. She'll resent not being considered your equal, and an unsympathetic attitude will cause her to retreat and become unapproachable.
Since Uranus rules the future, you might imagine that these girls would be natural mothers. Children do, after all, belong to the future. But the average Aquarian woman may be bewildered by motherhood in the beginning. She has to adjust to devoting all her attention and energy ex¬clusively to one human being for a period of time, when she's used to spreading herself far and wide, and this can take some practice. Her natural aloofness may make it difficult for her to demonstrate warm affection outwardly. The typical Aquarian mother is devoted to her offspring, but also somewhat detached toward them. But shell prob¬ably be the most willing PTA worker in the neighborhood. She'll talk happily for hours with their small friends on their own level without patronizing them, and she'll give up her afternoons to work for a school project. The chil¬dren will learn the lessons of brotherhood and humanity from her by observation. Aquarian mothers are never fiercely protective of their children. They take a tolerant view of the most startling confession. A Uranus woman will seldom punish a child for telling the truth, no matter what he's done. With her unprejudiced viewpoint, she'll gain the complete confidence of her little ones. She's great at reassuring young minds about everything from monsters hiding under the bed to the pain of being ignored in the playground. She can turn their tears to laughter in minutes. Your children will find her jolly fun, a little helter-skelter, relaxed about housework, helpful with homework and gentle when they're ill. She won't smother them with affection, and she'll seldom nag. Maybe Tommy didn't wash his hands the third time he was told, but she's more interested in what he learned in science class.
We may be a little ahead of ourselves. Even though Uranus likes to reverse the existing orders of things, before your Aquarian girl becomes a mother she has to become a wife. And before she becomes your wife, you'll have to convince her that marriage isn't synonymous with Al-catraz. She won't exactly rush into matrimony. She's in no hurry to take your name until she's weighed you, sorted you, tested you, and found out what makes you tick. The opinions of her friends and family will mean nothing, though she may ask them what they think out of curiosity. She has her own yardstick for measuring you. Assuming you pass her test, marriage to an Aquarian girl can be confusing. She'll listen pleasantly when you give her advice, but there's something in the Uranian make-up that prevents her from following directions explicitly. She can't stick to the recipe when she bakes one of her angel food cakes anymore than she can park the car exactly where you told her to. There's some kind of a snag in her thinking that causes her to believe just a little twist will improve any¬thing. But shell smile agreeably as she goes on her own sweet way. There's a constant urge to experiment with a different way to make the coffee, fill her pen, fasten her ice skates or cross the street. She'll wear a sweater back¬wards, mix her brandy with milk, arrange flowers in a fish bowl, rinse her hair in shaving lotion or make a rock garden on your desk. But don't ask her why. She doesn't know herself. The unique and unusual is her wave-length, that's all.
Because her nature is so impersonal, expressions of deep feeling won't come easily. Except for those sudden remarks that sound likes a combination of Robert Frost and Yogi Berra, she has few words with which to express her love, and her pattern of physical passion is woven closely with threads connected to the mind and soul. Although the unique Uranus outlook leads some Aquarian girls into peculiar attachments, once they find the right mate their marriages are usually models of happiness.
Your Aquarian woman can float through her days and nights with all the grace of a proud swan, but she may behave like a clumsy bear in romantic situations. The line between friendship and love is often all but invisible to Aquarius. Love songs about people who only have eyes for each other strike her as silly. There are so many miracles in the world for eyes to behold, it seems to her a terrible waste for two pairs of them to do nothing but gaze into each other's depths. Shell be glad to let you take her hand and walk beside her as she looks with happy delight on the sunrise, an antique car, the milkman's horse, a yel¬low garbage pail, a stuffed owl or a red balloon caught in a church steeple. But don't distract her with too much to-getherness. Let her wander through her wonderland alone when she chooses, and she'll never question your pinochle games with the boys.
The quickest ways to lose her are to show jealousy, pos-sessiveness or prejudice; to be critical, stuffy or ultra-conservative. You'll also have to like her friends, who will come in odd, assorted sizes and shapes.
She's susceptible to sudden flashes of inspiration, and her intuition is remarkable. Her judgment may not seem sound or practical at first, because she sees months and years ahead. The Aquarian girl lives in tomorrow, and you can only visit there through her. What she says will come true, perhaps after many delays and troubles, but it will come true. I suppose, after all, that's the most special thing about your February woman. She's a little bit magic.