Once Upon A Hullabaloo!

CHAPTER 1

Chapter 1 is dedicated to LunaticLassie :*

Munching on the chips next to my cheese grilled sandwich, I reached out for the ketchup squeezer lying in front.

"Tomato ketchup has been found to contain high amounts of high fructose corn syrup.  It is very high in calories, and therefore can contribute to weight gain and possible obesity. One of the other ways in which high fructose corn syrup is dangerous is that it can wreck havoc with your blood sugar levels. Since the sugar in the product is digested rapidly, it produces a huge blood sugar spike, and subsequently a relatively rapid drop." He raised his eyebrows at my grip on that red bottle from behind those glasses on his sharp nose bridge.

I blinked at him as my fingers froze around the bottle's round circumference trying to figure out his sudden rant.

Well, welcome to the life of a twenty-four years old (almost twenty-five to be honest) Indian spinster. When a girl in this mysterious sub-continent of Asia has very well passed her "marriagable" age of between twenty-one to twenty-four still as a spinster, her family, friends and anyone remotely related to this female in subject will pledge their lives to one single mission- get her married ASAP!!!

Belonging to the very same clan of women mentioned above, I- Omanah Thakkar, usually got myself into such awkward situations now and then. The 'Creepy Ketchup-phobic' guy sitting with me was the latest entry to my long list of (not so)potential grooms I had been tolerating for the past two years. 

I always found myself at some new restaurant with some random guy almost every week since past few months. My rapid pace to the haunting age of twnety-five had got my family restless which resulted into meeting Family-Friend's son, Distant relative's friend's son, Relative's distant friend's son( I'm sure you have a fair idea by now) very frequently.

I absolutely did not do matrimonial sites because the idea of being on internet and portraying one's bests like some selling commodity to be claimed did not fascinate me really. So, my folks reluctantly agreed to it and had opted for the typical old-fashioned way of spreading the word far & wide and the Indian aunties were more than delighted to find a new hobby-project in me.

The aunties of my community from all around the nation dug the ins and out to list down the eligible Gujarati bachelors which could be forwarded to my fidgety 'Thakkar' family in gujarat who would then short-list it and parade their chosen bachelors to me in Mumbai. To avoid a trivial thing such as distance to intervene in montoring over my match-making process, my folks had managed to rope in my four besties who lived in Mumbai to keep an eye on my meetings.

So, to sum it up- All of my loved ones were responsible for getting me stuck into such weird situations but being mad at them was impossible because I knew that their hearts were in the right place!

Do not interprete my cribbing as a dislike for or a disbelief in the ancient institution of marriage. Infact it's the other way round and the long ferreting around for two years had been about finding The One. I wanted it to be just right and if it existed then I considered it worth all the wait.

Afterall, marriage is like a Sundae Dessert- the blend of perfect flavours in the beginning is always the key to a splendid palatableness.