Tag: gratitude

Life Update And Other Stories

So I got married. Oh, we made a wedding website also. Wanted to have a dating game at the wedding where people try chat up each other on the chat box in the website before they came for the wedding, but unfortunately the box wasn’t widely used and the wedding party (yeah, we did have a dance party after the “vara pooje”) went off “peacefully” without any one pairing up (as far as we could see).

The biggest pain point at the wedding was immediately after I had tied the thaaLi around Pinky’s neck. The stage of the hall (not very big, mind you – the stage that is, the hall was pretty big) was invaded by all and sundry. Random uncles tried to ensure some discipline and make people queue up, but to no avail. We were assaulted from several directions by people wanting to shake our hand and get introduced to the one of us that they didn’t know. I’m not sure if either Pinky or I actually got to know anyone during that process.

Then, despite a lot of thought and prior planning (a long time back), the inevitable happened. There was a long queue at the reception. Thankfully, there were large groups of people so the queue cleared out fairly quickly. But it was still painful looking at so many people wasting time there when they could have spent their time at the wedding more usefully, scouting, networking, flirting, eating and the works.

A large proportion of the guests have given us gifts. It seems like we’ll have a very festive 2011. Ganesha Chaturthi will be grand at our house, given the number of Ganesha idols (in various positions) that we’ve received. Dasara (navaratri) will also be grand, given the number of other sundry dolls we’ve got. And a large number of (mostly really pretty) candle stands means that Deepavali will also be grand next year.

One thing we fail to understand is why someone cares to give us something when they don’t put their name on it. I mean, what is the use of gifting if the gifted doesn’t know who the gifter is? Is the gratitude for the wonderful gift to be directed to the general public that attended the wedding? Why would someone want to let go of the good karma that they get by giving some nice gift?

During our honeymoon at Sri Lanka, we realized that both of us are package-tour kids. That when we were young, most of our vacations were “package tours” where you were made to wake up early in the morning and taken to a thousand different places with a really busy schedule. We realized this when we kinda got bored halfway into our day-and-half stay at a beach resort in Bentota. I think the most boring part of staying at a resort is that you get bored of the food! How many times can you eat out of the same buffet, irrespective of how large it is?

I take this opportunity to apologise to my readers for not writing in the last one month. I hope to be more prolific in the future. Given that my wife and I met because of this blog (technically, due to it’s predecessor on livejournal), she quite appreciates my blogging and is very encouraging and supportive. And as I’ve been writing this for the last ten minutes, she’s been busy in the kitchen making what I think will be delicious sambar.

Hug Theories

This is some kind of a chow-chow bhath post – I’ve aggregated several concepts related to hugging and the Mata Amrita Index and am putting them in one place.

Firstly, is hugging a cost or a benefit? This thought came to my head recently when I was really thankful to a friend and wanted to express my appreciation by giving her a hug. Then, doubts crept into mind if she would actually consider a hug from me as a reward, and I finally ended up desisting. So the basic funda is would she consider hugging me as a cost or as a benefit? If the former, my thank you hug would have the adverse effect, while it would’ve been just fine if it were the latter.

And what about me? I was thinking of hugging her as “a reward”. What does that say about my mindset about hugging her? Do I consider it as a cost or as a benefit? If the latter, I’m not really being thankful to her but am just using the occasion to put hug. And if I considered hugging her as a “cost” would I be able to hug her properly enough for her to feel my gratitude?

Then, how does this tie in with the bilateral Mata Amrita Index? Is it obvious that if both of us consider hugging each other as a cost, our bilateral MAI will be low? Is it obvious that if both of us consider hugging each other as a benefit, our BMAI will be high? What if I consider hugging you as a cost while you consider it as a benefit? How will our BMAI profile be? Let me know what you think about this.

The other thing I want to rant about is this concept of a “half-hug” or a “sideways-hug” where only the shoulders of the huggers touch each other, and most of the rest of the torsoes are separated. People say that this is usually used with acquaintances, and in social occasions. I fundamentally dislike this concept. It’s neither here nor there, and I believe that this creates discomfort in both parties. If at least one of the two parties considers hugging the other as a cost, this half-hug will be on the whole uncomfortable (from my limited experience, you can’t enjoy a hug if at least one of the parties is not feeling comfortable). Is it really worth it? Wouldn’t it be better to just shake hands?

So I fail to understand how this concept has still survived. Wouldn’t a judicious combination of handshake and proper hug be enough to eliminate this? On my part, I’m doing my best in order to not half-hug/side-hug. If I’m completely comfortable with the counterparty, I put full hug. Else handshake. And call me homophobic, but as a rule I don’t hug other guys.

Another question is how do you hug when one of you is significantly taller than the other? Priyanka, who claims to be an expert on the subject, says that one option is for the taller person to marginally lift the shorter person to bring him/her to the same level, but isn’t that too cumbersome? Does there exist a more elegant solution to this problem? And don’t suggest sideways-hug – I don’t want one party to be smelling the other’s armpits.