Arranged Scissors 14 – Losing Heart

I’ve been in this market for a while now. It was sometime in February that my mother decided that I had utterly failed in my attempts to find myself a long-term gene-propagating female partner, and that she needed to step in and find someone for me. It was sometime in March that I went to this shady photo studio at DLF Galleria in Gurgaon and got a “wedding profile” snap taken. Later in March, I got listed at some shadymax exchange in Malleswaram. And there was the “market visit”.

The last weekend of this March I was in Bangalore, and was taken to this shady-max exchange in Malleswaram for a “market visit”. My uncle had told me that we needed to go sufficiently early, since there were apparently profiles of six hundred girls that I had to inspect that day, and make a shortlist. We had had a hurried breakfast at a Darshini in JP Nagar and then headed out to the exchange. My uncle, aunt and mother took turns to go up to the counter there and fetch the “smartha brides” files one by one. And I would spend about a minute on each file – which had fifty profiles. The six hundred profiles were done in less than a quarter of an hour. Phallus had simply refused to budge.

Aadisht, via his friend Vishakh, came up with this awesome framework of “head, heart, phallus“. The basic funda is that in order for you to enter into a long-term gene-propagating relationship, your head, heart and phallus need to independently like the counterparty (women insert appropriate substitute into the 3rd component). There is nothing earth-shaking about this framework as another of my friends pointed out, but the important thing is that it distinguishes between heart and phallus. Which I think most other explanations of louvvu (including bollywood movies) tend to ignore. And people also ignore it and get confused between heart approval and phallic approval, leading to disaster.

I had taken a long break from this arranged scissors market – a combination of being generally disgusted, poor health and being in between jobs. Recently (with the advent of Navaratri) I’d gotten back, and realize that I’ve lost my heart. Yeah, you might think this sounds funny but it’s not. I’ve truly lost my heart. And the only good that can come out of this is that if a crocodile catches and threatens to eat me, I can tell it the truth.

This whole arranged scissors concept seems to dehumanize the wonderful concept of long-term gene-propagating relationships. You are expected to make your decisions quickly, and you are expected to design “questionnaires” so as to get the maximum amount of info through each meeting. You are expected to browse through files containing six hundred profiles and make a shortlist. And when you are in the process of making the shortlist, you have your mom and aunt peering over your shoulder with helpful comments such as “this girl’s mouth is too wide” or “that girl’s nose is too blunt”.

For a while you resist, and resolve that you won’t get sucked into this mess. You resolve that you are still looking for “true louvvu” (whatever that is) and won’t settle for a common minimum program. You resolve that you’ll use the arranged marriage exchange as a dating agency. And soon it begins getting to you. You begin to see the merits of judging noses as too flat and mouths as too wide. You start breaking a girl down into components, and giving marks to each, and taking a weighted average to see if it is beyond “pass marks” (ok I’m obviously exagggerating here). You agree to meet potential counterparties even if you know that it’s improbable that you’ll like her.

My head, I think, is doing quite fine. So is the phallus. However, I think I’ve lost my heart. It’s been three and a half years since I even hit on someone. My heart seems to have forgotten how to love, and to have a “crush”. I’ve forgotten how my heart used to react during prior blades. In each of those cases, if I remember right, it was the heart that initiated it, and the head and phallus only gave approval later. Now, I have no clue how that used to happen. That seems so improbable.

This whole concept of meeting people with the explicit intention of evaluating them for long-term gene-propagating relationships is seedy. I think it goes against the laws of nature, and completely ruins that wonderful feeling that one usually associates with louvvu. It makes you too judgmental (I’m judgmental otherwise also, but not this judgmental), and you are so busy evaluating her that you don’t enjoy it at all. And how can you trust your judgment when you know that you haven’t liked the process of judgment at all?

Yesterday I met a friend, an extremely awesome woman. Once I was back home, I sent a mail to my relationship advisor, detailing my meeting with this friend. And I described her (the awesome friend) as being “super CMP”. I wrote in the mail “I find her really awesome. In each and every component she clears the CMP cutoff by a long way”. That’s how I’ve become. I’ve lost it. I’ve lost my heart. And I need to find it back. And I don’t know if I should continue in the arranged scissors market.

12 thoughts on “Arranged Scissors 14 – Losing Heart”

  1. first, acknowledge that you are a socially inept geek who cannot get a girl on his own.

    second, stop thinking about it so much , analyzing everything and giving a label to everything. Take life as it comes!

  2. :)Well, you can rejig the process to make it a lil’ more enjoyable. Some of the things that worked for me…

    Look at matrimony websites, where the girl herself has probably penned a few lines and it gives you a lil’ more info than a picture and a horoscope.

    Use it as a dating site, but meet only one person at a time. Don’t make it extremely transaction oriented. Get out of these predefined timelines. Maybe you can have an upper limit of 6 months or something if you need one to decide on one person, but get over the pressure to make a decision within x number of meets. Just be honest to your emotions and it isn’t so difficult. You might get hurt in the process too but don’t let that stop you from being emotionally invested.

    Don’t involve parents until you and the girl have known each other for long enuf. You might argue that the whole thing is useless if parents veto later on, but you also do have a fair idea of what your parents would be looking for and you can evaluate it yourself and ultimately your the one getting married.

  3. Two people(the boy and the girl) simultaneously satisfying the “head,heart,phallus” framework at the same time against each other is a low probability event(1/64 if i am not wrong).There is only one favorable outcome – your head,heart and phallus agrees with hers and vice versa.
    You can come up with some trade offs or compromises in the framework and increase the number of favorable outcomes.

  4. I guess you are making it sound as an ITES call center recruitment drive. Here the numbers matter a lot irrespective of the quality. Attrition – ‘Divorce’ rate would be high, but still it is an inherent charecteristic of the Business itself.
    So may be you can adopt the ‘Consulting’ model of recruitment.

    Instead of questionnaires: Design some Case studies through which you can understand the attitude of the person rather than the knowledge and skill part.

    Overall , I understand man, it is really a very tensed phase in life to recruit a Life Partner: Have too many constraints to handle with.

    Btw: What’s your honest opinion? Which one is better? Lovvu marriage/Arranged Scissors? Plz do elucidate on this..:-)

  5. Sorry I wasn’t very precise. What I meant was are you really like that or is your ability to write fiction exemplary?

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