I wish..

Preface: The current story is completely non-fictitious and any resemblance to characters living(only, none of them are dead) is fully intentional. This blog is not supporting or opposing the dowry culture but is a humorous take on the issue. The author of the blog though, vehemently opposes this tradition and has made some futile attempts (so far) to change the thinking of a few of the characters of this conversation.

On a sultry Sunday afternoon 3 of us were returning after a tortuous tête-à-tête with our first mock cat paper. The mess hadn’t started providing us with our daily dose of grub so we decided to go to the nearby restaurant wherein we were joined by 4 other wing mates. What followed was some imbecile yet jocular discussion on an equally interesting topic Dowry in the enchanting state of Bihar. I’ll try to provide you all with a grim picture of that conversation.

It all started off when one of us, let us call him Mr. A(I have been strictly threatened against mentioning their real names..), told that after returning from his intern in US, he got a proposal for marriage. Well what’s the big deal in it,huh, but then that wasn’t all, he had been offered a meager sum of 35 lakhs INR as dowry. Holy Shit!!!!

35 lakhs!!!! And guess what??? his family had calmly turned down the offer stating the girl was too old..As Mr. A put it, “IITian’s of my caste are in great demand and we will keep getting such offers”.. Before this could go down my throat, Mr. B proudly remarked 35 lakhs that too after your third year, haha, grow up…

They pleaded me with a proposal of 50 lakhs at the end of my second year only and I didn’t have to go to US and all, such is my esteem & demand. As this was going on, It suddenly dawned on me that only of 3 of us(me a bong, Mr. C a oriya and Mr. D a gult) had our eyes wide open, the other 2 non participants(they too belonged to the same state) till then were calmly munching their Tandooris. This is when one of them quipped “Dude, you are perhaps absolutely unaware of this tradition, none of us (the 4 of them ) would get anything less than 25lakhs!!!”

As all this was slowly getting registered in my old P1 processor, Mr. B suddenly said, “Dude as far as I remember your birthplace is sarwan (a small town in Bihar) and you are a Bengali too. You too can get the same amount, Bengalis with some soft corner for bihar are in demand too”

“What”, I said.

“Ya, u too can easily get a good amount”, said Mr. B confidently.

and here I was foolishly putting fight for girls, spending my dad’s hard earned money and my so very precious time. I wish I knew this before. I could have saved on so much of money, time and dignity(you keep losing some every time you put fight for someone). At this juncture i am reminded of a very close friend of mine (another iitian from a different institute though and my intern mate) who after failing in many such girl wooing attempts had commented “Arranged marriage is the best thing in this world” How right & foresighted he was.

By now my creative juices had also started flowing. I said, "hey guys I have a plan."

“See, we all expect to get placed in the first round of placements, i.e. by mid December and then we all planned to go to goa and all, spending our own money. What we can do now is, after getting placed we will all go out on a Bihar bhraman (journey, call it discovery of Bihar) and we will knock on all the doors and call on all the fathers whose daughters are eligible to marry. This way, hopefully we will manage to get atleast 10 lakhs INR as dowry. So what do we now? Spending some of that money we can go on a world tour guys. This way the problem of getting a sushil kanya to marry would also be solved and we will also get the much needed cash to enjoy the last semester of our college life!..Ain’t it simply brilliant??”

At this, we all broke into a big round of laughter…hehe..The gloominess after the pathetic mock cat had completely disappeared now and I felt fresh and happy. I too am in demand.

P.s. I am in an awfully bad writing form so couldn’t present the stuff as humorously as my skills at satire can produce but the topic was so facetious that I couldn’t stop myself from blogging. :)