"Priya can you please get me your birth certificate", she shouted. It was my mom. "Why do you need that now?" I asked. The birth certificate is the one piece of paper I hate the most. It has my name spelt as "Priyavarshini" and this is circled and the correct name is written above it. My name has been a mess ever since I was born. This is one among the million reasons as to why I hate my name. “Bring your birth certificate fast. I need your exact birth details" She said. "You don't remember the time I was born??" Was I adopted by any chance? I always get this strange feeling about myself. I was under the impression that my mother had to succumb a great ordeal during labour just before I was born. Her BP shot up or something like that. I think she got too worked up about the fact that I was born on the same day as the first prime minister of the nation and just 12 days after the birthday of Shahrukh Khan. For the first 37 seconds to be exact I was like that Kid in 3 idiots. I did not scream. Before my mother's BP could rise even further, I screamed to bring the much awaited relief. I was a slow child since birth.
"3:30 PM, Saturday" I told her. “Oh what an afternoon it was. I still can never forget it. Okay Patti and I are going to the Josiyar (astrologer) to get your Jathakam (Horoscope) done. "
" Ammaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!! You have to be kidding." "Priya, I came to this house when I was your age. It’s been 30 years now." Okay I had heard enough of this and couldn't take it anymore. Moms are just unfair when it comes to daughters. When my mom's mom was her age she already had 3 kids and was carrying the fourth one. Her mother had 9 kids in all and my mother had only two. She compares herself with me but I never get to compare her with her mother. Why should I care if she got married when she was my age. Her mother had nine kids. How fair would it be for me to ask for seven more siblings? I was too irritated and depressed at the same time.
I opened the refrigerator and got a can of Kwality Walls' black forest ice cream with raspberry sauce. "I'm gonna empty this." I said to myself. So what if I become fat? It would be an added advantage and they wont get me married until I thin down. I am great at developing strategies. I was in a mood to bitch and immediately called my friend Apoorva. Okay now Apoorva is a girl's name. Her name is neutral gender or whatever. It's just as complicated as mine and that's what I like. But she never cribs about it like me. I told her about how unfair my mother was and told her about the brilliant strategy I had devised to evade my mom's evil plans to pack me off." Are you nuts? What if your mother suddenly begins to think in a fair manner and packs you off to a fat guy? And more over there are some weird men who love fat women. They are the men who prefer women in the likes of Shakeela( I am referring to an Indian expert porn actress), Namita etc. So stop devising such foolish strategies will you?", she said. Apoorva is always one woman with some sense. Her sense builds up as and when you approach her with problems. Otherwise she is pretty much the slow kind of kid that I am.
"Apoorva I am too paranoid de. I don’t think I can ever find a Tambrahm who is like Shahrukh and Shahid fused into one. I am totally smitten by this Project manager of mine. He is Tambrahm too and super smart. But he dates Neha that bitch. I wonder what she has, apart from her fair skin tone that swept him off his feet." I have a prejudice against girls with the name 'Neha'. I simply hate them and 99 percent of them turn out to be bums. Nikhil Subramanian was my longest crush in school since class 2. Neha Koccha joined school in class 11, and she started going out with Nikhil just one month after she joined. I wonder how these girls manage to do what I couldn't do in 10 years in just one month. I hated her so much. I hate her even now. Apparently, Nikhil and Neha are still going out. There was this other Neha at college. She dated four different guys during four years of college, and passed out with 88 percent aggregate and a distinction. How did she manage to do that.
Coming to the point, Apoorva gave me some gyaan about marriages. "Marriages”, she went on. “are not as bad as you imagine them to be. In India it’s not enough if the guy alone likes you. It is important for you to build a rapport with his family too. More importantly his mother. After all, we cannot live without our families."
I was beginning to feel a bit nauseating with all the black forest and raspberry sauce. Apoorva was getting a bit boring with her gyaan.
"You know ...” she went on. “See it’s like this. You often find that adopted kids are more pampered and cared for by their parents. Why is that? It is only because the parents get to choose their kids, and by default women hate to accept the fact that their selection is awful. That's why you never find mothers of adopted kids cribbing about them. But our parents often blame fate to bring slow kids like us to be born for them. They didn’t get to choose us. Similarly if you are the the 'chosen one' of your mother-in-law, there is very less chance that she would crib about you. Women hate to accept that their selection is bad. All that she can possibly do is brand you under the name of ' Modern Bahu' thats it. That is something we all would carry in the due course of time."
This did make some sense in a weird sorta way. “I have three options", I told her. "One is that I can go in with the choice of my parents and become the chosen one of the mother-in-law too, or second I could wait and find the man of my dreams. I've always had a fancy to marry an army man. This is another of my brilliant strategies for life. Just imagine, you would hang around with the elite of elite people in the society. And the best part is you are married yet single. You can send each other the cute sms'es like 'I miss you.. Want to kiss you' types and never get bored of it. You can have a perennial honeymoon and intimacy intact. The guy would visit you probably only once in 3-4 months and you get to exchange love letters even after the wedding just like in the movies. The guy would be deprived of the sight of a woman for at least a 100 mile radius and would be dying to see you. And every time he comes down, you could have a wild wild time and never get bored of it. Adding to this, imagine the perks. Free medical checkups, sprawling army quarters to live in, free transportation by trains, and in some cases you get a cook and a driver too,and huge pension ( thanks to the 6th pay comission and salary revising strategies of the Indian Government). Just in case the guy pops off, you get a huge compensation and get hailed as the wife of an honourable man. This is so much fun when compared to the boring corporate guys. I wish I can be a privileged one. My last option is to remain single. But this is a tough task, considering the fact that I have absolutely no control of my hormonal upsurges and if I choose to be single I need to maintain the reputation that Lata Mangeshkar possesses and want to be known for my chastity."
Just as I finished speaking to Apoorva, the door bell rang. My mother and Patti were back. I was curious to see what the horoscope looked like. I went and opened an A4 sheet of paper from my mother's purse. The sheet had my name written on the top left hand corner and my date of birth on the right. There were many squares and it looked like some magic square. In-between those lines somewhere, there was what what destiny had in store for me. Was I to become the ' Chosen one', the ' Privileged one' or the ' Chaste one'?
