It is a Truth Universally Acknowledged

That a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Or that a single girl, in possession of a good fortune or broke, must be in want of a husband. Marriage is a very serious affair in my country. Now, I’m sure that it is quite the serious affair in yours too (this is me liking to think that people from all over the globe read my blog, but I digress) but in mine, especially when you’re 21 and almost a graduate, it’s pretty much supposed to become an end in life. You see, when I think of marriage I don’t feel all warm, sunny and photogenic. I feel like the fire in my backyard, the existence of which I’ve been wilfully denying, is finally on my backside and oh boy, does it burn.

I am at that point in life where a lot of my seniors from school are married and some are with kids while more than just a couple of my classmates are seriously contemplating the thought. In Kerala, where I come from, 21 is the standard age, as dictated by  21st century societal norms, when your parents are supposed to ‘start looking’. Everybody knows if there is a single girl whose parents are ‘looking’ because important NEWS like that spreads faster than common cold. The way I understand it, your entire life is supposed to be spent building up an image that will be found acceptable at this crucial moment when your parents finally open the gates to you. I’ve heard of prospective in-laws sending ‘private investigators’ to the college the girl in question attended, to find and dig up dirt if any. So if you’re thinking of putting up a Facebook profile picture with a boy in it, think twice. You might just kill your excellent chances at a narrow-minded mother-in law.

Now my parents know, understand and embrace my immaturity and have accepted that I am not quite done being a kid or educating myself but every single time I am at a family gathering, the following happens. Some distant relative will start a count of the number of my cousins who’re married and this discussion has lately been ending at the conclusion that my elder brother is ‘next in line.’ He is then exempted by the laws of unfair advantage to the male and everybody looks at me. This is usually followed by collective laughter and elbow- nudges (where I assume I’m supposed to join in, exhibit a degree of reluctant shy-ness, pretend I’m in a Bollywood blockbuster and break into a song about my dream man). Disappointed by my apparent lack of enthusiasm, an aunt will declare that I be ‘married off’ by 23. I will guffaw (because ‘laugh’ does not quite cut it). To this, a very forward cousin will very gallantly stand up for me and say that 23 is too early for ‘today’s time’ and that I shouldn’t think of it till I’m 25 but no later because apparently you’re senile the day you turn 26. I will protest vehemently and say the word ‘career’ and the older adults will promptly gang up and try to drag me away from the materialistic path I’m on because there are more important things in life like getting married to the near-stranger they approve of. Finally, the oldest adult in the room will declare how he/she wants to take part in my wedding before he breathes his/her last and then everybody nods and disperses because that just settles it, doesn’t it?

Now, that right there is standard conversation at any family event. It gets worse if you happen to be wearing a saree. I’m terrified to the point that if I’m wearing a saree and an adult comes up to me to say ‘Look how grown up and pretty you’ve become!’, I immediately look around for that single son or a concealed phone camera. Nobody gives compliments like that to a single girl at a Malayali wedding without having a match in mind. I am especially wary of people asking me to pose for pictures alone because one, my arms look fat if I can’t hide them behind the other people in the picture and two, because I’m pretty sure there is an online community of Malayali moms who love their sons where the pictures are going to be put up and reviewed. My own mother asked me to stand still for a picture the other day and I ran away screaming.

So you see, marriage is  like a humongous boulder hanging over my head on a loose thread right now. Nobody, in my part of the country atleast, seems to understand why anyone would want to stay unmarried after they’ve graduated. I mean I’m sure there’s that accepted thing where you can hunt for jobs in pairs. Travel the world? Even better if you have a husband to go with you! Money? Well money comes and goes and we’ll get you married into a ‘good’ family so there’s no worry there. Higher education? I’m sure your in-laws won’t have a problem with that. What if I’m not even close to ready? You don’t have to be. It’ll be like having a permanent friend you’re expected to sleep with and make babies with that’s all. What if I simply want some time to myself? *scoffs* That’s a western concept. In our culture, everybody gets married and has children before they figure out what they want in life. Also, your biological clock is ticking and you’ll birth alien babies after 30.

We once told our Spanish teacher (who’s only 22 and touring India alone now, by the way) about the above scenario in response to him laughing at Indians constantly asking him if he’s married or engaged. He opened his eyes wide and suggested we run away. As much as I like to believe that my parents are the coolest people on dear Earth, I can’t begin to imagine the pressure they’re under because they have a single daughter in the house. Good humour can only beat so many aunties at a time. Add to this my general irrational fear of marriage and near-complete ignorance of the inner workings of the opposite sex and I am pretty much living my personal nightmare. Every social event I go, I feel like I’m a moving exhibit presented for everyone’s appreciation and attention. Demons and dark rooms? Bah! Malayali aunties with single sons or nephews? Now that is something to be terrified of. So you see, marriage is quite the serious affair in our country. It is more a societal norm than an individual choice. While there has been quite the relaxation in the ‘Who you can marry’ laws (British guys still don’t qualify sadly enough), there doesn’t seem to be any leniency whatsoever in the ‘When you should marry’ clauses. And so I hope you’ll excuse me now as I wind up this post and figure out my migration to Timbuktu.

Why I Think It's Totally Okay To Believe In Superheroes and Other Unrealistic Stuff

My brother and I weren’t the sort of kids that liked to step out of the house and engage in that game of street cricket which our parents liked to think were ‘friendly’. We were the weird kids in the new house at the end of the street that got to watch WWF (later WWE) unsupervised in the evenings and whose parents got them to do most of the Sunday gardening (taught us responsibility they said). But as a five year old girl and a ten year old boy, you are expected to fulfil certain social commitments to avoid being called names in school and hence, we forced ourselves to go play with the other kids once in a while. Half an hour into a game of Catch, my brother would snatch my arm from amongst the other 5-10 year olds in the group and announce in the manliest voice he could muster,

“We have to go.”

“But you’re it!”

“Sorry, Batman’s calling.”

“What?” the 10 year olds would say while the 5 year olds, myself included, gaped on with stars in their eyes.

“Yeah on our phone.”

“I don’t hear your phone ringing.”

“Not THAT phone silly. The other one.”

“But you said that last week.”

“Yeah well, they call us every week. Right, Ammu?”

He’d shoot me a glance and I’d nod in hasty agreement. You simply don’t disagree with your big brother publicly when you’re five. We did this every week and all the kids we used to play with believed us, a little less bright as they were in the pre-internet era.  My brother would hold my hand and lead me up the steps to our house. We would go to this little cupboard that we had under the stairs (I know right!) and he’d pick up an imaginary receiver. Smart as I was, I’d venture.

“But they aren’t listening anymore.”

“Shh. Batman’s waiting.”

I would shut up. Nobody kept Batman waiting.

I like to think that that’s how everyone started off – believing they could have a superhero at the other end of a phone line tucked away in a cupboard under the stairs. That it’s everybody’s first real dream to own a cape, a mask, be able to wear their underwear over their pants and have a symbol across their chest. When you’re five and having your cheeks pulled everywhere you go, there is nothing more empowering than waving a plastic cricket bat in the air, shouting “I have the power!” and imagining your resident stray turn into the Mighty Battle Cat.

Superheroes are important when you’re growing up. They defy all logic, defy high-school norms and defy unnecessary rules like gravity. They fly, wear masks, fight the bad guys, champion the nerds in the cafeteria corners and more often than I’d like, they lose. But then they get up, all bruised and battered, and summoning their last reserves of awesomeness, proceed to kick some serious bad-guy backside. They then simply walk away, alter-egos intact, leaving ordinary humans still guessing as to who they really are. Unless you’re Tony Stark.

I am not and never have been a super-hero aficionado and I have never owned a substantial enough number of comic books. I am the kind of fan that stuck to the cartoons and gaped at the movies and like all the people that take that route, I have never known the internal workings of any super-hero universe. So yes, there’s me. And then there are the other super-hero fans who know and understand Peter Parker like he was their sibling. Now, these are the people that take personal offence if you even mention Stan Lee without talking about Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko first and who scoff at you if you believe that Spiderman had webs shooting right out of his wrist. He had a web-shooter! How dare thee!

They are the oddities that laughed at Zack Snyder’s Krypton while you sat there open-mouthed in innocent wonder and whose very souls were broken by Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin. They are the ones that noticed how Spiderman had blue hands in The Amazing Spiderman and oh boy, did they disagree. All this while you were probably preoccupied drooling over Andrew Garfield and/or Emma Stone. They are the ones that will break your throbbing heart and tell you Wolverine looks nothing like Hugh Jackman because “He’s much shorter – a little over 4’ maybe.”

 And then there are some sections of our population so grounded in reality that they question the sanity of us imaginative folk who love holding on to our fictional idols even after we’re legally adults. They call it ‘Escapism’ – a situation where we escape into a non-existent world because we’re probably too chicken to cope with ‘real’ problems. Well, what is wrong with a little escapism may I ask? I believe that sometimes that’s exactly what we need. I like being able to look at an awkward-looking guy in a crowded place and have my brain involuntarily wonder if he has a cape tucked away in his bag somewhere. It makes me extremely weird but it brightens up my day. I will not venture to say that superheroes teach us some very important life lessons. Maybe they did at some point, if you were a smart kid back in the day. But once you’re a certified adult, nobody pays much attention to the moral of the story when, instead, you can gawk at angry green men beating up demi-Gods.

I adore the extra-ordinary and thrive on the unrealistic. I am escapism personified. The way I see it, real-world problems do not get sorted out because you dwell on it. They get sorted out because you act and nothing gets my adrenaline pumping like a good super-hero story. Peter Parker dealt with abandonment issues, bullies, unpopularity, Uncle Ben’s death and being bitten by a radioactive spider. I am so going to resolve this toilet on that floor!

My mother never understood why I go absolutely ballistic every time Robert Downey Jr says “I’ve successfully privatised world peace” or why, at one point of time, my biggest dream was to get bitten by a radioactive spider. Sometimes, the 21 year old realist in me makes me forget too. Just when I begin to question my fitness to be in sane society a little after watching the latest Spiderman movie, I look to my side and see my friend waving her wrists, first at me and then all around, making “Tchoo!” “Tchoo!” noises and shooting her imaginary webs all over. You see, childish as it may sound, we’re the ones with the alternate realities in our head where we are wand-wielding wizards or masked vigilantes with the super-power to fight everything that’s wrong. We go there quite often and come out with minor quarter-life crises. It is our means of escape from the physical reality we live in that can get a little too mundane at times.

Super-heroes are important when you’re grown-up. They fly, wear masks, fight the bad guys, champion the social misfits and kick some serious bad-guy backside. And then if you have as much awesome as Tony Stark in you, you can go ahead and call that press conference.

'Happy' @ Faculty of Architecture, Manipal University

Architecture isn't one of the easier majors you can take up in college. However it goes without saying that even in the middle of the consecutive all-nighters, soul-crushing reviews and the unhealthy amounts of caffeine in your system, there is still something bright to be found especially in a place like Manipal. This is a little something we, being the outgoing batch, compiled to show just that. Enjoy and share away! :)