Marriage! Am i old enough for that?

As per the cartoon, iam already married :P This rant pertains to the female species:P

It all started few months back, My company gave me name sake promotion of "Assistant Manager - Systems" (only the first three letters fo the quoted text are true :P) Name sake i call it because i was neither given responsibilities that goes by that post and definitely not the moolah worth it!
Ok, that was the appraisal story of 2007 april, Now folks at home always expect that you will increase your "quota" of moolah that you give home per month after each hike. Now in my case, apart from the designation given, i had no effective hike and moolah remained almost the same, worse was my tax bracket went up with grade and i was paying more to Mr chidambaram!

So what do i do, i know tempers will flare at home, parents will be like, what the fuck! you can't give more money to home? not even this year? why can't you stop spending on wasteful things and stop your stupid bike rides (:P) and save some money atleast!So i neatly went home and showed my folks the promotion letter with the visiting card that was thrown in free with it :P Now imagine the joy of my folks, in their world, the word "manager" associated with any thing means i have my own cabin, with few people to lord over and i the work i do is work on my machine (comp) and see through files! I still have hard time to give them a clearer picture of what work i do at office :P They fail to understand each time, can't blame them, the generation gap is all that has to be blamed.

Well, coming back to the story, my folks were overjoyed that their son was some manager now and lo, he had his own visiting card! :P i was happy that they didn't talk about moolah part :P the promotion part worked! i managed to keep them quite for 1 more year from asking for more money from me while my earnings remain the same. Heaved a sigh of relief that i can continue with the same juggaad with my finance and still do my bike rides once in a while :P
Then after few weeks, i was going through newpaper and my mom was trying to tell me something but was hesistant, i could make that out from her reluctance and the way she was changing channels so frequently. But trust me, i never imagined that she will tell what she told me!

She first asked me for my err "biodata" :P My my, why would my mom want my "biodata" for? i already came to know that i was going to face the most embarassing moment in my life soon! So i pushed it around and asked her if she's gonna find me a better job with that :P Then comes the bombshell :
"you know, now that you have become manager and all, there is a nice girl who's done her studies and is working as a software engineer.........."
Yikes! heck no! pls pls don't make me feel old, iam not ready for it yet! (my thoughts ran so) still pretending to read the newspaper, i asked her, "So is the girl known to you? you want me to find a job for her in our company?"
Hehe
But mom was determined, she had enough of my bullshit:P
"No, she's one of our far relatives, i think she'll be a perfect match for you"
Now i had no where to run, i couldn't manage to give smartass replies now that she had finally dropped the bombshell.
I was embarassed (NO!!! not becoz i was happy!!!) i didn't know how to tell her what i had in mind. We are such a non emotional/silent family, that we never had "bonding" thing or family time crap. Both my parents were non expressive and i grew up most of the time getting used to being alone and they both being at work. They are god like people no doubt, but we maintained our distance from as far as i could remember, we never discussed any thing so personal till that fateful day.

This was my life and i had to reclaim it, more importantly, not let my parents get any false notions from my actions. So i managed to put an expressionless dead face and looked at her and told that marriage is something that iam not ready for yet and even if i was ready, iam dead against the concept of arranged marriage and iam capable of finding my own wife myself! I promised her that my wife that i find for myself will be of same religion for sure!
My mom was totally caught unawares by my reply, she felt as uncomfortable as i felt when she dropped the bombshell on me, then she had to tell something to end the conversation, so she told " you people have become very forward" and she went in to kitchen and i went to my room.

The events of that day, made me thing hajaar things. From as long as i remember, marriage was something that used to happen to older people, older than me, my cousins of earlier generation or that neighbourhood senior etc. Now, from when did i start getting slotted to that category? No, iam not averse to getting old, it's what we are programmed for, getting old! But the grouse is, are you supposed to marry just coz have reached a certain age, which as per the society is the correct age to find your match and get in to holy matrimony?
or are you supposed to feel the need to settle down with in you and then marry? I believe in the latter ideology. I tried to pose this question to my colleague who got married recently (arranged marriage ofcourse!:P) and to my best friend girish, who is getting married by april, surprising, they all spoke the same language as my parents. They feel that you have get married because you are old enough for it! parents will find you a suitable match as per horoscope and astrology, then you marry the girl of their choice (sometimes your choice if you are lucky :P) and "adjust" to her and try to live happily ever after, with 1 or max 2 kids thrown in in due course!

Whatta idea! I ofcourse felt that they were talking to me like brain washed zombies. But fact is they are not risk takers, they don't want to "risk it" coz they say later you won't find "decent" girls. You gotto get married by 27/28 they say.
Hmm, i think i would rather "risk" it. After all it is this "risk" which i took in to biking, i was able to go to the most wonderful places and meet various like minded people and learnt a thing or two about life.
No, i won't say that iam 18 till i die like bryan adams :P I would rather say that iam getting old and my time is running out for my next ride! Marriage can wait at this stage of my life, i have bigger fish to fry, like say get a better paying job for once! :P