The tambrahm guide to finding a spouse

Unlike in the western countries in India we believe in the concept of an arranged marriage. This means that your parents will go around looking for someone they think is a suitable life partner for you. This is the concept pretty much throughout India, but there are some things very different that go on in a tambrahm house…

after a lot of difficulty and research i have finally managed to find the secret algorithm that is used to find the perfect life partner.I have decided that it is now time to share this secret with the world so that everyone may benefit. ( I shall reveal the algo for finding a girl in my next post, this one shall concentrate on finding that perfect guy).

So tambrahm parents of today here you go!

ALGORITHM:

1. Call your daughter to give the talk about how getting married is important bla bla
2. convince her its time she get married
3. if daughter agrees
   go to step 4
   else
   you now have to do two things at once,one starts at step 1 and the other is continuing with step 4
4. Call every one you know on the pretext of saying hello… its been ages “romba naal aachu… chumma thaan” this has to be realistic… And after an hour long tele con
   “mama / mami ongluku ethaa nalla varan therinchithu naa konjam sollungo, namba _____ ku paakalaan thaan”
   (if you happen to get the details of a good boy please let me know, looking for a guy for our __daughters-name-here__
5. That step 4 is very important it calls of an external command which sends a chain of people calling each other… The thing is everyone wants to have to say at the marriage, did u know i am the person who put these people in touch.
6. If you are slightly modern, and want to use this to your advantage now might be a good time to put up a profile on all the million matrimony sites out there.
7. To pass time ensure that you look through every guy on these sites and find something wrong, this could range from height, gothram,vedam, star, moonji serila, avan US-la irukkan, epdi photo eduthirkaan paaru, and the most common “ivla thaan padichirkaan,”
8. Meanwhile the step you took at no 4 will bring some varan from some mama/mami you have never heard of in your life.
   “pattu maami oda athay payan oda payan” “ambi chithappa oda veetla kudirkaravar oda payan”
9. whatever the relation , your reaction should show awe as if you know them, “oh avaraa” … never the more sane I’m not sure I know him
10. now call up to get the info.
11. Here are some things you ought to ask for while getting the info
    • gothram
    • jaathagam (enowadays exchanged by email… naangalaam modern… we dont believe in age old methods)
    • if iyengar (thenkalai vadakalai)
    • what the boy is doing
    • star
    • where he works (you might not have ever heard of the company but make sure you pose as if you know it)
    • post
    • samblam (salary… if u dont feel shy asking)
12. tell them you’ll get back if the jaathagam matches.
    here are some straight of rules to eliminate 99 of the 100 ppl you get in touch with ,
    • the gothrams cant be the same,
    •  the jaathagams have to match,
    • the stars should be ok together,
    • the thenkalai/vadakalai should be the same…
    • there are about another 23 more things but we should start giving up all these superstitious things… so ill cut out the rest
13. now of the 1 in the 100 which matched you approach your daughter… kanna what do you think of this boy (you should have re convinced your daughter by this point again)
    in 99% of the cases
    • she asks you enna maa/paa paakara, ivan verum masters thaan panirkaan MBA kooda illa (hes only done a masters no MBA?) or some reason she doesnt like the boy,
    • hes not tall enough
    • he doesnt look good
    • hes not fun enough
    • hes ____ endless list
    • goto step 14

    and that 1% if she says ok

    • goto step 15
14. go back to step 1…. try try try till you succeed
15. YOU won!!! appaadi… now the various steps to fix the marriage and move on …(will describe this later)

NOTE: This is correct to the best of my knowledge. further improvisations shall be added as i figure out more secrets of the trade

• If you want to get your daughter married when shes 28, start step one when shes around 24. You will reach success only around the 15th iteration… Everyone knows the early bird gets the worm
• After years of watching my mom talking on the phone getting a million varans and passing them on to eager parents, this is as much as I have gleaned.

please share your knowledge using comments

Update : (with the knowledgeable advice of Siddharth Krishnan )

• The more modern families are ok with an iyeR or an iyengar … you see we HAVE to progress… intha maari chinna chinnathalaan paaka koodaathu
• the tamil translation of the “chekka chavelnu irukkan ” would be “he has Wheatish Complexion”

Rules to drive in Chennai!!

Driving in Chennai(or anywhere in India), as everybody knows is not the same as driving anywhere else in the world… There are certain things any person driving in here ought to know… So to help out newbie drivers in Chennai I am going to write a set of rules and prerequisites to drive here…

Requirements:

• A license may not be necessary if you have enough cash to bribe the police guy( popularly called as “Mama” by the youth)
• A limited knowledge of Tamil… YES i mean the SWEAR words… trust me you feel much better cursing in language the other person understands
• A sound device which starts playing the ‘airtel song’,’vaseegara’ or ‘every night from titanic’ when u shift to the reverse gear!!! (Strictly no other songs entertained)
• and of course patience!!!

Ok the requirements are probably very easy to fulfill, lets now get down to the rules. Not too hard either, its  just a question of knowing what to do when!

Rules

-> Unlike other countries, it is much better to ensure the driver doesnt wear a seat belt so that it is easier for him to turn and scream at anybody(we’ll get to that later)

->One hand constantly on the horn. Be sure to honk every 90 seconds or so. Whether you’re at a signal or not,  or rather wherever you are just honk at fixed regular intervals. Make sure u honk whenever some one does something stupid as well!!!

This is where your patience and honking skills come to use!

-> If you think you can play a song while honking, go ahead you might as well entertain the pedestrians

-> Whenever you are at a signal be ready to give a big smile to the random people in other cars who stare at you. Chennai is a very friendly place, you smile at every random stranger you see

-> Just as you turn to the left or right at the signal some asinine d#!@ @$$ will cut across. Take a quick look to see if its some huge burly guy(it will most probably be the same stranger you smiled at while waiting at the signal), if its not, now’s the time your Tamil comes to use, lower the window and curse away ‘$#!T @$%@!$#  !#@$%*#@#!  #$@%’ … REMEMBER : use Tamil, you want the other guy to know what you are saying!

-> When the person who cut across at the signal is a huge looking wrestler kind of guy, it might be wise to keep your windows shut and scream in english all the same!!! Let it out, trust me it keeps the pressure from building.

-> If you happen to see a ‘jaalmudi thalu vandi’ on the road, stop your car and get a packet or two, don’t worry about the cars behind, they’re now going to play music for the pedestrians. Make sure you fumble for a bit while looking for that money.

-> Parking is a whole art in its own here. Its way beyond the scope of this post but I’d be happy to teach anyone who approaches me. But a quick pointer, you can park your car just about anywhere u think it’ll fit. Just make sure that once you park, the people beside you have an arduous task of getting their car out.

Thats something not many people can do!

-> Please don’t stare at the guy with 4 people on the bike. Its rude!!! He has taken pains to arrange his entire family on a vehicle that barely supports 2 people. Furthermore he has even managed to drive it that way! He would be a way better stunt driver than those teams in the “foreign circuses”.

-> Dealing with “mama’s” is yet another art. Obviously ladies have the upper hand on this one. Start of by denying knowledge of what you did wrong (wrong direction in a one way, parking in the wrong place). Something on the lines of  “appdiya sir, theriyavae illa, anga boardey illa sir, sorry sir, therippi pannamaaten” (is, that so sir, I had no clue,I’m sorry, I wont repeat it) and repeat the “sorry sir, therippi pannamaaten” bit for quite some time. Of course the ladies could just feign a few tears and sort the issue out much easier. EASIEST method of them all, IF you have the moolah, bribe him. Not directly but more on the lines of, “sir late aaidchu, onglukittu fina Kattitu pota?” (I am late, may I pay the “fine” to you and leave?)

-> When u find that you can’t take a U-Turn at a particular place and that it will save you a LOT of time. Follow the following algorithm

->Stop

->look on all sides for a mama

-> if (mama==not found)
{
make the U turn. don’t bother about the cursing from other drivers… “It’s all in the game”
}

-> else
{
Check purse for cash and willingness to pay, if ready make the turn bribe the mama and be on your way

Else go the long route!
}

-> Lastly while you do all this, remember to keep honking at regular intervals. We wouldn’t want to reduce the noise pollution now would we?

You now know the basics of driving in Chennai. Keep watching this blog for more tips and tricks and how to go about getting there quicker!

If anyone else has any rules please post them as comments. Lets help each other out!