It's that time of the year... when is your time coming?

PROLOGUE : Let me start this one off on a good note. Congratulations to all you 'couple in love' to 'couple married' people. May you have a blessed life together ahead. And I sure do hope those waiting in line do get married. I really do. Love the payasam you people serve us during the wedding! And now... read on.

It's that time of the year... when a lot of people get married. This year is no exception. In fact, if marriages were the monsoon, this year would be a mega super ultra bonanza year. I've already attended 3 weddings, and I know of at least 4-5 more on the cards in the very near future.

A lot of my friends have been getting married of late. And by of late, I mean ever since I finished my engineering, which is about 4 years ago. Initial estimates by me say that about 99% of my engineering batchmates are already married. Over the past one year, I've been getting only marriage invitations from all my B.Tech classmates. And, almost invariably, the spouse would also be from the same college.

The engineering course is tailor made for everlasting, long-term relationships. You have better odds of getting yourself a good life partner, than understanding what those AC/DC machines do, or the CINs and COUTs of any programing language. It's like this :

1. Get into engineering college. Preferably a reputed one. But, we all know how that goes. Our choices are limited by how many educated guesses we get right in our entrance exam.

2. Woo a girl of your choice, your life partner, within the first 2 years of engineering.

3. Do... all those girlfriend boyfriend things in the next 2.

And by the time you are with your degree, you can immediately get married and life a "happy", "nag filled" life ever after!

4. Wait for a couple more years, and you can get yourself a partner with an MBA too. Even better. No extra knowledge gained. Lot more money in the bank, though. Secure future!

I guess my B.Tech batch mates knew this WAYYY before I did. Finally, I understand what those management gurus meant by "First-To-Market advantage". No wonder so many of them are MBAs.

The only thing different about Kerala would be that there are more women than men. So, you will actually get to see SINGLE WOMEN over here! That's something that's even rarer than the blue moon, going by how good the sex ratio was at MDI (and, by extrapolation, in every other "top notch" B-school that admits under the CAT.)

Another thing with this place... (not sure. Could happen anywhere, for that matter.) is that everyone expects you to follow the crowd. In everything they do. 

They do B.Tech, you should do B.Tech. 

They eat appam and mutton stew, you eat appam and mutton stew. 

They fall in love in college, wait for boy to finish MBA, then get married, you should fall in love in college, wait for boy to finish MBA, then get married.

I followed them two-thirds of the way.

A very VERY common sequence of dialogues that I hear practically everyday, these days. Doesn't matter how old you actually are. You're batch mates actions forced you to listen to this, till you finally go insane and jump off a cliff. (OK. Probably that last part you might not do. But, you are resigned to the fact that you WILL get a lot of this.)

Someone : Hey there! Been quite sometime yo! What's up?!

Me : Nothing much dude. Things going cool. You tell me.

... (Some more small talk)

Someone : This guy who's getting married, he your batchmate, right?

Me : No. He was my junior. And the girl too my junior.

Someone : Ah! Yes. So you're an MBA now, right? mmmm... interesting... so when is your time coming?!

Me (Counts) : This is the 732nd time someones asking this!!

I sure do hope all future marriage seasons will be as event filled, if not more, than how it has been this year. Now, all you married couples (or anyone else for that matter) who might want to kill me after reading this, kindly read the PROLOGUE once again.