Of Progressiveness and Disasters

I'm a big believer in the old saying "Results talk". Results, alone, talk. Which probably makes me a conservative person. The institution of marriage, when looked at from a conservative point of view, paints a pretty bleak picture. Bleak, because among the two choices people have (Love marriage vs arranged marriage), love fails miserably. The exciting stuff always fails.

If you look at countries where the majority of marriages happen between people who're in love a.k.a. "Developed countries", the divorce rate crosses a whopping 50%. More than half of love marriages end in divorce. Some guy in my family who had an "exciting" love marriage, just ended the whole thing. Which is why this topic came up today. On the other hand, if you look at most of the arranged marriages around the world, the couple tend to stick together forever. The right decision, when it comes to marriages, has never been simpler or more painful. It's clear, obvious, "right there". Arranged marriages work. Love marriages have much higher probability of failure. Ouch.

I like to embrace love for what it is, it's the spiritual positive; (fear is the spiritual negative). It isn't just something that you need to get a girlfriend/boyfriend for. It can just be felt and accepted as the ultimate source of energy and passion. Especially if you have no other option! I know that I have none.

"What happened on valentine's day?" Nothing. There's no one,really. There cannot even be anyone. The "perfect girl" for me is something like this:

She's young, about 3-4 years younger than me, very beautiful, from a classy, "high-status" family, belongs to the exact same religion and caste as I, well educated, well read, smart, possibly from the same state (Andhra, is it?), respectful towards her family and ours, orthodox, and jovial.

Of all those specifications, "JOVIAL" is the only thing I got to add; the other specifications are from my parents. That's how bad life is. I did have other things to add but if the list got any bigger, I might be describing a non-existent girl, maybe even an "impossible girl".

So, I've happily outsourced the problem of finding such a girl to the elders. "SHE HAD BETTER BE JOVIAL."

I'd said in a previous entry that Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is my valentine. Maybe people don't get how serious I was: I love it, i trust it, it makes the majority of my "awake time" exciting as hell, nothing in the world can change how I feel about it. Oh wait, Visual Studio 2008 was launched one month back!

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Swaroop Murthy
http://360.yahoo.com/swaroopmurthy