This short piece was written by me way back in 2005. Somehow I stumbled upon it now. So here it is!
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Author Henry David Thoreau once said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
There are certain situations where desperation more often than not takes the better of us. I believe that this is inherent to everybody at one point or the other in his or her life. What drives a man to jump off a skyscraper? What drives a woman to bobbitise a man? What drives a child to scream to get the parent’s attention? What drove Abhay to make all the wrong choices in life? Some would say “Hopelessness”, others would scream “Forlornness”. But ask Abhay and he would say with a grim smile, “It was sheer desperation”.
• Age: 31
• Place: Kolkata
• Marital Status: Single (not by choice)
• Mental Status: DESPERATE
That’s all one would require to draw a mental picture of Abhay. Handsome, tall and full of energy, Abhay was the cynosure of all eyes wherever he went. He never had any dearth of females who followed him; females, men would kill and die for. Abhay was the topic of envious gossip of every male in his office and the secret focal point of fantasy for all females. Then, Abhay should have been the luckiest guy in Kolkata, right? Wrong!! According to Abhay, he was the unluckiest person to have been born this side of the Arabian Sea.
Abhay’s problem? He always fell in the company of wrong women. Women who wanted only one thing from him…his virginity (or so thought Abhay). And all the women were successful…no not in making Abhay lose his virginity but something more precious; his mental peace. Let us rewrite Abhay’s profile and this time with some specifics.
• Age: 31
• Place: Kolkata
• Marital Status: Single (not by choice) & Virgin
• Mental Status: STILL DESPERATE
He was always rubbed the wrong way (literally) by each and every girl he met. Abhay’s traumatic tryst with such women had made him even more desperate to search for the right woman. Such desperation assumed manic proportions and so started his journey. But little did he know that his desperation was driving him to the road to perdition. Satan was waiting with open arms.
Since the physical world had failed Abhay, he decided to go virtual and posted his profile on a matrimonial site. Desperation drove him to become a paid member giving him all the paraphernalia for self-destruction. Being a paid member gave him the facility of posting his email address and phone number on the site for public scrutiny. 4 hours out of the total 8 that Abhay clocked at office were used up for searching the right girl. His colleagues would suddenly watch Abhay yelp with delight when he found a girl with the right credentials. Since he used to occupy the corner most cubicle humanly possible to build, no one could see as to what Abhay saw on his computer monitor. His boss too was happy. Such a hardworking fellow who takes pleasure in his work. If only he knew, that Abhay was billing the client for his search for the perfect girl, he’d flip out.
Then Abhay was faced with a strange situation; one that he had no clue or expertise to handle. He liked a lot of profiles on the site; profiles that drove his hyperactive brain to start imagining leading a peaceful and thrilling life with the lady. He made contact with all of them in the hope that it’s better to be in the company of a million right ladies than in the company of 1 wrong one. I dare not ask Abhay for the definition of right or wrong. But this was the least of problems for Abhay. Not a single girl responded to his request…some even blatantly rejected him. Now that’s a big problem, don’t you think? I’m sorry but we’ll have to rewrite the profile of Abhay (which has changed of course)!
• Age: 31
• Place: Kolkata
• Marital Status: Single (not by choice) & Virgin
• Mental Status: EXTREMELY DESPERATE
Given the extremely frustrating situation, it’s quite easy to predict what Abhay did next. Yes! He waited for the very first lady to either respond to his request or contact him in the first place. The former never happened (a profile that says “I’m single n ready to mingle with trouser pockets that jingle!!”, can make even diehard gays stay away). So even we were very surprised when we saw Abhay’s eyes light up with 2 lac lumens (or is it candela) intensity. At last a lady worth her salt had the gall to contact Abhay. Oh! I forgot to tell you as to how the contact was made. She went to the matrimonial site and found Abhay’s profile, which she liked very much…no, no, don’t make a mistake…it was Abhay’s designation in his company that she liked. She had a motive and Abhay was the means; a perfect match don’t you think!
Ah! There again I still haven’t told you as to how she made contact. She first sent an innocuous looking SMS: “Hi! Ru looking 4 Brahmin! Im Kayasta Plz go thru my profile n if it’s like bi u (sic) then ok else we can b frnds n plz dnt go 2 my photo section. My friends say I look better in real dis is debasree 4rm Kolkata.”
So Abhay thought, that here was a lady who was the least demanding and was even ready to start a friendship if the marriage didn’t go through. Lucky me, he thought. And then he did something that will haunt him for the rest of his life. No! He didn’t lose his “you-know-what” straightaway but did something else. He SMSed back to Debasree. He was all mushy when he wrote: “Hi thr! Can I hve ur profile id? We can surely be frnds” Pretty mushy and romantic start, don’t you think!?
The lady sent her profile ID and Abhay instantly went to work and quickly clicked on the photo section and was pleasantly surprised. Here stood a lady with a body to die for and a face to kill for. This is my Helen. He called up the lady and was greeted by a pleasant voice on the other side.
“Hi Abhay! I have been waiting for your call”, she answered, her voice laced with honey. And so started the conversation of a lifetime for Abhay. Even now he shudders and gets nightmares. After about 45 minutes, Abhay was seen tearing his hair in utter disdain by his office mates. They didn’t dare ask him the reason lest he bit them. Leave the mongrel to his fate. During the course of his conversation, Abhay came to know that the lady had come to Kolkata from Pune, where she used to study. She had come to Kolkata at the behest of a guy she had contacted from the same matrimonial site and who was only interested in taking the girl to his home. No! Not to meet his mother, but … But she stayed back in Kolkata and started looking for a job and what better way to look for a job than to contact the job giver through the matrimonial site and seduce him. Since Abhay had never been rude to a lady, he agreed to forward her resume to the HR, but all this while he was looking up as if cursing his luck and asking for justice. The facilities people of the office thought that the AC vent just above Abhay was clogged and so they increased the airflow. Now both the lady’s blabber and the cold air were killing Abhay.
The call ended with a sighing Abhay and a muffled scream; muffled because he was trying to scream and bite his biceps all at the same time. Desperation is great leveler. Within 5 minutes, Abhay received an email from the lady with the resume attached. And he promptly uploaded it to the intranet site of the company for processing. He returned home that night with a heavy heart and bruised biceps (he was biting them, remember!) He couldn’t sleep that night. No, it wasn’t the thoughts that were tormenting him but the constant missed calls and corny SMSes from “Helen”. Abhay was having trouble reading and comprehending corny SMSes like: “Sending u 1000000000 smiles…take 1 for now n keep d 999999999 under ur pillow- pick out one every time u think of me coz I want u smile. Good night luv! Debasree.” Abhay’s real trauma had just begun. The next day, Abhay got 15 missed calls from her and was seen howling at the AC vent above him a la werewolf. This has been continuing for the past one week.
And so ended Abhay’s search for the right lady. As I write this piece, Abhay is busy posting his profile on a job site and calling up the mobile phone company to get his number changed. He took this desperate step after the HR executive called up to say that Debasree’s resume had been put on fast track and in all likelihood would be recruited fast. Poor Abhay!! So now we have just one more thing to do; rewrite Abhay’s profile AGAIN.
• Age: 31
• Place: Kolkata
• Marital Status: Single (not by choice) & Virgin
• Mental Status: Paranoid
Ah! Before we packup…it’s important to mention that Abhay is seen screaming like hell now. He has just received a forwarded mail of a very notorious bar girl dancer…and guess who she resembles? While you spare a thought for Abhay, I’ll just go and tell him to do one last thing…remove his profile from the matrimonial site…forever.
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Monday, July 04, 2011
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