Marina Thatha

A Chennai icon- 'Marina thatha' (grandpa). This eccentric man can be found on his bulging two-wheeler driving along the Marina beach or in areas around it, selling knick-knacks. The first time I saw him, he was giving a biscuit packet to a homeless man .

Be still, my beating heart!

 My break-down on profiles I've found on dating/matrimonial sites online.

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The Applicant- This is a man who knows how to use Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. That is how he transferred the information from his bio-data into his profile.

The Man on the Street- This is the hopeful, who has just enough of a vocabulary to scrape together a broken phrase or on a good day, a complete sentence. He knows the word soulmate and he'll use it. His profile, unfailingly, has at least 4 rows of vital information headed 'My qualification', 'My hobbies', 'What my friends say', 'What is marriage'.

The Preacher- These are the guys who missed their calling. Paragraphs and paragraphs of sermon-like text, the monotony broken by beautifully capitalized sentences running together with too much passion for paltry things like punctuation.

The Strong, Silent type- Yes, they're silent, but they're not strong, at least not in the head. They see no need for descriptions. The scary photograph does all the talking, because the words simply say "will tell you later'. Right.

The Obvious- These guys mouth platitudes but make it sound like they've had epiphany after epiphany and these revelations are too good to not be shared. Things like "It is better to talk a few times and then get married", "two people have to have understanding to make the relationship work," and so on. It makes you want to weep, the depth of that wisdom.

The Recycler- This is another guy who's hit upon the brilliant idea of copy-pasting. He lifts someone else's (usually a brilliant woman's) profile, word for word. Something doesn't gel when you read it and sure enough, a Google search of the content will lead you to the original.

The Grammar Slammer- A crisp round of bullets shooting across the page. 'graduate. working in MNC. good family.' Completely eliminates the hassle of using things like pronouns, conjunctions or any element of grammar. Why complicate things?

The Uber-cool- Their pictures show them standing next to their bike, car or at the least, wearing shades. Sometimes you get lucky and they're not wearing a shirt. They don't have much to say, really, because well, they just don't.

The Drugged- They can also be called 'the dot-dot-dotters'. They've rambled, don't make much sense and they've used '........' a lot, because in the intervals when their brains stopped working, their fingers apparently did not.

I yam yan Yindian- 'I want fair, god-fearing, BEAUTIFUL girl, adjusting homely type, must look after me, my parents'. You can almost see him peeing against a wall. Enough said.

The Mouthpiece- These guys have endearing parents or siblings who're doing all the dirty work. Well, not exactly dirty, but it makes you wonder if he can wipe his own bottom, speaking metaphorically, of course. Or am I?

The All-encompassing- They'll accept 'widows, divorced etc'. They're split over the issue of children however. Some say it's okay, some have a problem. Whatever. Just be thankful that if you are 'flawed' by falling into any such category that makes it obvious you aren't a virgin anymore, there are goods souls out there who will give you a second chance at life.

The Wounded- These guys are talking to their exes. They'll tell you how much they hate 'LIARS', people who play games, who do this and that and this and that. You know that years of therapy won't make a difference, so you just pray for their souls.

The Wordless Philosopher- These guys start off with 'It's hard to describe oneself", "I can't believe I'm doing this", "I don't think words can explain who I am," or something similar and most of them end immediately afterwards with "let's meet and you can find out about me." I want to put one of these guys against one of the preachers (see above) in an arena to see who wins a fight to the death.

The Anna University(or equivalent) graduate- These are quite easy to pick out. Their profiles teeter on the edge between being a bio-data and a sensible write-up. When I talk to them, I hear impeccable English delivered in a pronounced Indian accent. They use words like 'mingle'. They're very proper...and very boring.

The Demi-God- These are men who are completely, passionately and dizzily in love with themselves, which is a shame because they almost are as intelligent, funny and articulate as they say. The only problem is that they are so admiring of themselves, the arrogance reaches non-attractive levels. At the least, you can see that it has warped their perspective of the people around them. These are the guys who say things like "they have a sense of humor like no one else's", "they see the world the way others don't", "they're amazingly rare" and so on- as if they've met every person in the world, compared themselves against them and found all others lacking.

The God- The God is the Demi-God concentrated to an insufferable degree. Condescending, self-absorbed and of course, so irrefutably convinced of being the single most precious human being on Earth that it, ironically, gives him a sort of tunnel-vision and narrow-mindedness that you can't wait to get away from.

The One- These guys are cool; they're the diamonds that you come across once in a blue moon, the ones you're willing to sift through tons of silt for. Tons and tons and tons.

One good thing about being single, pushing 30 and having worried Indian parents who drag you off to a great big ceremonial prayer, is perhaps, waking up the next day to the newspaper with your photograph in it ;)