Art Of Match Making !

Basheer sir told his life experiences in his stories and novels. May be that is why his stories are so strong and moving. I was thinking of writing something which I am experiencing and then this topic popped up. What else can be the apt topic for an ever young (or chronic!) bachelor of 29 years can choose! But being an analytical guy and not a story teller, I ended up writing an analysis!

Now, Amma (Mom) says it is the time for me to get married!

So the question is how do I choose somebody? Oooops, you don't have a gal friend yet :) So no hope now. Only way out is go and ask your parents to search somebody for you! This is the most common and expected answer I keep getting for this question. And they even look at me sympathetically!

Well, they all misunderstood the question. The question was not how I will get somebody. In this country of arranged marriages, it is not really difficult to find somebody and I don't need to worry about that. It was about how do I find the right match for me? What should I look for?

• Beauty
• Intelligence
• Height :)
• Adjusting
• Homely
• Ready to cook, ready to accept male domination, a quiet conventional type!
• A home maker or a money maker (working gal)!
• A chatter box.
• A practical Vs dreamer!

Etc.... Who is a good match for me?!

So how all these married couples have done that... Did they have time to experiment and find out the correct match? Or they just left the most important decision in one’s life to fate!
Now since it is time for me as well, what am I going to do about it?

Analyzing the conventional wisdom of arranged marriages, where a suitable match is found from a similar back ground, I.E. same family type, geographical region, religion, education etc; it suggests to look for similar tastes. And it takes care of a lot of things to help you live together.

Arranged marriage is all about making a match between similar kinds of people. But this goes against the medical wisdom. This says, it is better to have quiet different gene pools for mother and father. That will help to have a strong gene pool for their kids.

Now let us look at the wisdom of loving somebody and getting married? Love at first sight. Love after years of friendship. Let us analyze the chemistry of love. How somebody develops this feelings!

As a male I can give a description of a man's perspective of it, from what I have experienced, read and what others have told me. Man definitely get attracted towards the appearance (I think it is the same for both the genders) at the first sight. Measurement scale of beauty varies from person to person. But in general a good looking girl will attract a man (of any age!). But that attraction is initiated by his animal instincts and not by the desire to make her his partner of life. What ever the emotions he has, when he sees her, I couldn't find any other source (other than his instincts) which is making him attracted towards her.

This attraction will take him near to her. Make him talk to her. Invite her for a dinner or a date. This will last until the initial attraction fades away.From there which direction it will lead, depends a lot on the chemistry between them. And the direction it takes from here will depend a lot on the type of the girl. Men tend to categoris or compartmentalize the gals into the types he is aware of. He tends to analyze and conquer. In most cases the attraction ceases if she submit herself physically or emotionally at an early stage. The relation may still continue but will not be very exciting to the guy.

The guy likes her to keep him excited but at a distance. He gets excited when he could not catch hold of her or she appears to be at the stretch of his hand but he is never able to touch her. She keeps giving him surprises. She is very friendly but he is never able to predict her. She gives him sad moments, she makes him analyze about her body language, words. She starts to dominate his thoughts. And when she is not around, he spends most of his time thinking about her. She likes me ... but then why she said like that... May be she didn't mean that way..Etc etc. This is the beginning. The guy is attracted and he wants her more and more, he doesn’t want to loose her. If it is the uncertainty which keeps him attracted, it is the thought of loosing her which makes him commit and tell her his desire.

The thrill of capturing something or somebody is what driving the men's mind. Here it is capturing her mind. And the emotion is so strong that, he becomes blind to so many other things. She may not be in alignment with most of the conventional wisdom rules. She may be from a different religion/caste, family back ground, and geographical region etc. But he is blind toward these things. He is not satisfied until she tells him that he has captured her mind or she submits herself to him.

So there is no logic here as the match making is concerned. The matching depends not on these emotions, but realities and facts. Once the excitement ceases the realites come up. They may be successful. The strong emotion of love may give them enough courage and energy to overcome many obstacles. And they may live happily ever after!

Now let us look at when a girl decides to make him her life partner. Being a guy and not a psychologist, I am not an expert to write about this. But let me write here what I observed, read, and heard!

Physical appearances make a first impression on girls also. But one thing I have noticed is, unlike men, girls attraction towards look keeps changing and it reduces as she become old. Where as, I think for men, it kind of remains same even at the age of 50!

Mature gals are more attracted towards well natured men than a Tarsen! Where as teenagers and young ladies fall for a Tall, dark (or fair!) and handsome chap. As she ages (matures) she starts to enjoy the beauty of his mind than his body. How he treats her, how he conducts him self, self confidence, being humorous etc become the factors she use to measure the guy.

And it is also true that matured ladies shows a lot of level headedness before committing to any body. And on the other hand, lot of young ones just fall prey of their fantasies and end up in miserable relationships or incidents. Some become mature from these experiences!

And from this it is quiet logical to say that, a relation initiated by a matured lady and agreed happily by guy has a lot of chance of survival in this modern world. And success of such relation ship is quiet high. This is a very general statement and there are exceptions to this. Especially in this modern society where young women are losing the extra sense and sensibility that evolution has given them.

So for me it should be either the lady, whom I respect and love most, selecting a lady for me or a matured girl coming and asking me to get married to her. Let me wait and watch the show :)

Understanding a true Entrepreneur!

Why should some body start some thing of his own? Is it because he is, as you can quote many saying, bitten by an entrepreneurial bug? Searching into encyclopedia of bugs you can see that such a bug doesn’t exist or is extinct now.

Leaving a cozy high paying job and starting some thing new, isn’t it stupidity?

Why should some body take such big risk?

Is it because he wants to make money?

Looking at the kind of salary that is being paid to those guys who are jumping out of the box, it can’t be true, unless he is greedy to make a quick buck. If he has a level head over the shoulder; it doesn’t take too much to understand that, he can not make such a huge money over night in any legal business that he can do. Forget about those bogus real estate and share market millionaires, I am not talking about them.

And an analysis on how much more money he wants to meet all his basic and exotic requirements can not justify he leaving this job and venturing out. In most of the cases he is not limited by money from doing/buying those exotic stuffs but by time available. So it may be better off to stay back at his present job than venturing out. At least you have your weekends to spend for leisure when you are on a normal job. You can’t expect that when you venture out to make it big. To succeed you know you need to do hard work. In a recent article, I read that, Azim Premji works 18 hrs a day even now! So when you start, you will have to work at least 24 hrs/day!

So again the question remains unanswered. It can not be for making money to lead that exotic life. Unless if he wants to make that much wealth for the next generation and generations to come …! I suspect whether he really wants that!

So then what should be the reason? Another reason I keep hearing is being you own boss!

This reason made me laugh aloud! Being you own boss…. Oooppps. At least when you are a manager in a company you have a battalion waiting for your commands..! And your company makes sure that your orders are heard and obeyed. But look at who all you can command when you start on your own. I can’t see any body except you. Not even your co-founder, if you want the company to be there! You really have to plead. You need to please government officers. You may not have to deal with them directly. Your CA will take care of it and bill it as “out of pocket expenses”! In any form of business you will have to sell something to somebody. You need to negotiate with your customer. You really have to appear nice and pleasing to get the deal signed. So who is the real boss here? You end up pleasing every body including your employees… you can’t afford to make them angry, else they make walk away.

Then what …! I want to do something of my own??? To me it sounds like a yet another name sake reason.

You can’t build a company just by your self any way. If you want to do something of your own... best may be to start a tea shop. Even there, you will have to depend on the milk vendor, sugar vendor etc. Nothing is done your own. Everything in this world is a result of team work! So how is it different from doing a similar kind of product, working for a company? I can’t see a difference except you end up doing a lot more work since in earlier case you have a support system to take care of all non-core works.

So what is it? Entrepreneurship, that is something different. It is daring and that is the style now. Well of course thoughts like these are definitely good reasons for a few to get motivated. But I doubt such motivations are sustainable once you really start touching the water.

So what is it ….!

Let us digress for a moment and look into a different question. Why Gandhi sacrificed his life for India…..?

He was not the one who is much affected by India not having independence. Neither his family.

Why? Why?

Since it is a matter of past it may be easy to answer … Nothing but his love for the fellow Indians. His love for his own country and perhaps to make british realize that they are doing some thing wrong and to correct them.

May be there lies the answer to our question also.

A real entrepreneur derives his motivation from solving the problems of humanity.

He is the one who is committed to build a better place to live. He is building a prosperous nation.

He is committed towards the prosperity of his fellow beings. He is a freedom fighter.

With out such an out standing vision and motivation, he can never be a successful entrepreneur. He may just become an yet another business man!

Art of coffee making:

Not having the daily routine of office-home, for last a few days, made me a coffee addict.
It is been reading…. reading and more reading! To give an effect to this reading-thinking process, i started having “vella kappi”, or coffee sweetened with jaggery. I was making the coffee, the good old way. That is boil water, melt jaggery and add coffee powder. I like it black, so no milk.

How much time I should keep the coffee powder in the boiling water before filtering, what is decoction coffee , Is there a better way to do it, thoughts like this started appearing in my actively thinking mind !

My first instinct was to call amma(mother) and ask. Well, she taught/showed me the way which I am doing now. So she may not know a better way. Oops …now whom to ask, I don’t know any body who gave a better coffee. Mind started wandering for a possible solution. Thinking, more thinking… I took the coffee mug and went to my home 'office' and sat in front of the laptop. Oops ….here lies the answer…a chill went down my spine :) My dear google.

Typing “prep. coffee” , “decoction coffee” etc took me to different websites around the world. I learned about the way Americans make it, how to make espresso and also the beloved Indian filter coffee or decoction coffee.

Making of espresso was over complicated. Or the author wants to convey it like that. He suggests how to do roasting, grounding of coffee beans for espresso. And one should use the ground within 30 seconds :) Else throw it!

There were different methods, with nice names like French press, percolating (to me this was nothing but, decoction, but wrote by some body who misunderstood it!), auto drip, vacuum brewing (It is very interesting, but not worth the effort and money!), concentrate brewing etc.

But the bottom line for all the coffee making except espresso looks same.

You need to make the liquor (brewed and filtered concentrated coffee) first.

You need to have way to filter the powder out. A filter coffee vessel, or even a plain cloth tied to a vessel will do. The filter shouldn't give any taste to boiling water(Plastics, earthen ware etc may have this problem).

Put a few tea spoon full (3- 6 spoons) of coffee powder on the filter and pour hot water (~ 50ml) on the coffee powder. Hot water should be around 90-95 degree C. For that boil water and cool it for 2-3 minutes before pouring.

Add a few drops of the liquor collected to hot water/milk and put sugar or jaggery(if you are using jaggery dissolve it in the water while it is being boiled) to taste.

Remaining liquor can be stored in a closed (preferably air tight) container in a fridge and use it for 3 to 4 days without loosing aroma. Enjoy your coffee..!