not just any dental date

A ha the fun of having a computer while roaming around. I started writing this post while waiting for the most mundane. I am outside my dentist’s clinic. Well it’s not like I am a regular at the dentist, so I can’t really call her ‘my’ dentist. In fact I can’t remember the last time I was at the dentist. Recently Jasmine had got her root canal done and it cost us a bomb. Root canals do cost a lot and jasmine cant go to the community dentists so she ended up going to a dental studio. She finds the hygiene standards at the community run clinics a bit dodgy. As for me, I am game for practically anything. I have very low hygiene standards and I am known to pick wafers off the floor, dust them or blow some air and eat them. You know that typical guy thing. I look at it as a more macho thing... something like it builds immunity. So keep having it. In any case , there is enough shit in the atmosphere so you are like going to get enough of your germs just like that. A few friendly ones you pick up from the floor or the around will only help you. Hah!
This dentist in any case was a special visit. My elders weren’t and aren’t on the best of terms so we cousins don’t end up meeting too often. My generation couldn’t care less for the property disputes of our elders. But thanks to that we have never been very close. Compund that with the fact that we stay nuclear and os we have even less functions to go to. So basically we are almost cut off from our gene pool. My immediate siblings never understood the fights that our uncles and aunties had and we swore never to let money come in the way ever. Never to let protocol come in the way as well. life is too short to bicker over lesser issues.
So while I was placed in nariman point I used to get to the train everyday and there happily enough I once saw what looked my niece. I wasn’t very sure till she came up and asked me ‘wasn’t I her jaimit kaka’. Err yes. That was fun. Everyday in the morning you get to meet your niece. She is a happy fun person and it was pretty cool talking to her. She was studying to be a dentist. She passed out a few years ago and has started practising in some clinic. So when yesterday I felt a bit of pain in my teeth I used the opportunity to catch up with my favourite niece. Disclaimer – given that I hardly know any of my other nieces, itnot a great achievement. Hah! That was written as while we were talking about the fact that I had my computer open, she figured I blog. I have never tried to popularise my blog. Its been an open but a quite thing. If you know about it then fine. Else even better. So as she said she would one read it, I thought I would be nice and mean to her. I am always mean to her and pulling her leg.
In fact she is 26 and like all happy Indian gujju households, her mom is after her to get married. I don’t understand this marriage scare business. What there to get scared of marriage and commitment? Well its obviously easy for me to say that, as I obviously found someone to get married to. But I got married at 23 and had a child by the time I was 27. It did seem a bit young but I loved it. Today at 35 I have an eight year old. Soon at 40 she should be 13 a mini adult and hopefully I won’t be old and fuddy duddy. I can run with her, play with her and hopefully compete with her. She has already smashed me in swimming. I am waiting to have her taekwondo and squash skills develop so that I can play that as well with her. it would be a bit difficult if I was a bit older.
So our poor dentist niece has a poor role model to look up to. She is not exactly enthused with the prospect of getting married and I keep telling many youths like her that its not that bad. Sometimes all I do is just explain the superficial behaviour they sometimes exhibit. Something like rejecting this guy as she speaks with a local accent or he wears a printed shirt or something. The tables have changed and how... I guess my mom would not have had much say in choosing her husband, but I am happy that we Indians are slowly allowing our daughter to have a greater say. I guess now the pressure is put not physically but emotionally to say yes to a guy of the parents liking. Nice.
So while she explained her exasperation at the various guys she was seeing and choosing from (all crap according to her) , I gently nudged her to a marriage portal. It’s an interesting disintermediation. When these portals made an appearance around a decade ago I thought they would be all sleaze and the last resort for old unmarried / divorced men and women. I started looking at it with a little more respect when I heard that one of my friends met his wife through this portal. Interesting. You see profiles, you approach, you chat a bit, you become facebook friends and then you meet up and figure. Cool nah. Its a bit like dating. And the parents are now open to this new concept as well. I met one lady who I interviewed some time ago. She said she is a maharashtrian who family was after her to get married. So she went online and registered herself and met this guy who was a gujarati. Then she set it up herself and met the guys and decided to get married. All this I came to know when I asked her if her marriage was love or arranged. And she said sort of love. If you see the story I kind of agree with her. is that within the definition of love marriage or arranged marriage. A new term needs to be invented for this stuff – loranged. That sounds a bit like deranged? How about Arrove. Ya... you arrange the match and then you love and then you marry.
Like I was telling my niece – go on and register yourself. See some male profiles, check them out. a bit like ‘body shopping’. In the traditional sphere the women used to feel like they are on display with the men coming in to meet and ‘grade’ them. Now the game is more equal I guess. Men and women have equal body shopping rights! Yay yay!
These are small steps to a new world. That’s why I have so much faith in the Indian dream playing out. Women – we haven’t factored the rise of the women in this economic dream. Their rise gives me great confidence.
So in the end my niece was disappointed. I had no reason for her to give me any degree of pain. My teeth were in fine form and my molars were well and truly filled with the old silver cavities long ago. There wasn’t much to fill in. No root canal that she could recommend and not even a teeny weeny cavity. She would get her revenge on some other day. Tada!