Comfortably Numb or Romantically Challenged?

Quite a lot of my friends must have read my post on crushes.I got the maximum number of comments on that.Some said it took them down memory lane, and for some it was something that they could relate to.Something that might have happened in their lives too.

Five months after I posted that, I thought let me write something more about things similar to that.I must have had a few more crushes during these five months, but I don't want to make this one a Part 2 of that post.That's because I hate sequels, unless the movie is Godfather ,and the director is Francis Ford Coppola.

Recently, I was having a coffee time chat with a close friend of mine at a corner of the pantry. He announced that he'd be getting married soon. And he did ask me one simple question,

"Why did we try to desperately have a girlfriend all our lives, there can be love in an arranged marriage too?"

The discussion went on quite intensely till our cups of coffee got over. After that it was back to R&D(Regression and Debugging) at work, and we conveniently forgot all about that topic.

And this friend's atleast a hundred times more emotional than I am.I'm sure he must have had something in his mind when he said that. And this thought of his made me think what's wrong with guys like us.A lot of girls might get offended by what's written in this post, but I wish to clarify that this post's not against girls.I'm pretty sure that 'Very few girls' too think like this about guys .

In my last post on crushes, I came up with Sudipi's theory of crushes,

"From all these crushes, I am able to conclude that every girl that I'm interested in, is one of older than me,married,committed or all of these.If its none of these, then definetely that girl's not interested in me."

In reply, my buddies at office promptly came up with their own GOF (Gang of Five) theory.
"Any girl who is decently good enough and is of our age group, and is not yet married, is always committed."


That's the reason why I typed the words 'Very Few Girls' in bold in the paragraphs before that.

For the uninitiated, Gang of Five here refers to Joshi,Manju,Shivaji,Chethan and me. People who take the tables on the far end of the cafetaria during lunchtime. And by the way, Shivaji is a married bachelor, for he thinks like us, and Chethan is planning to buy a few sites in Suwon, South Korea.

There's a funny thing that I noticed.Suppose a guy has a crush on a girl.When a girl says that a guy is behind her, it means she doesn't like him.But she'd proudly declare that a guy is in love with him if she liked him too.

A close friend of mine whom I was "behind" for five long years told me that I was a very intense and emotional person, for someone to fall in love with me.Maybe she was right about me.For, the effect of my five year misadventure was so profound that, amongst other things I gave up all kinds of creative writing for five years.Till one fine day when sheer inspiration from the Deep Blue Sea made me start blogging.

Being single all my life till now, I had to ask myself ,"Why don't any girls fall for guys like us?"

Maybe we're too dumb to steal, and too proud to beg.

Maybe most girls prefer much more jovial, flirtful guys who would ask the girl out the second time they meet, but would hardly give a second thought to hurt in more than one ways that they could.I got so more rejections for an offer of a date in those five years that that I decided that I've completed my quota for a lifetime. Taking a girl out for a date is a far off thing considering that I have to muster courage to ask a girl for a harmless cup of coffee with me.

I don't have great pickup lines too.And having those military draftee like looks;a short haircut and a prominent moustache don't add to a lot of charm either.And perhaps the fact that I dont smoke, drink or socialise in pubs and discos, or even frequent perfectly decent places like Forum mall add up to the negative score.

Maybe its written somewhere on my face, that guys like me are best kept at a distance.Or maybe a lot of girls are subscribed to alerts on their cellphone that sounds an alarm whenever guys like me talk to them.

From experience I figured out that understanding what girls think about guys like me,is a lot more tougher than rocket science.An old time proverb has it that Experience is the comb that life gives when you got no hair on your head left. As of now, I got as far as having a few grey hair on my head.And not willing to risk baldness, I recently gave up most of my rights to find a life partner to my parents.

I even figured out that I could not even manage having a good friend who is a girl in recent times.I thought, "Hello, hi, how do you do ? Isse kabhi aage badh saktha hoon?" suits me aptly in my case.But I must admit, I didn't try really very hard too.And being an overly committed workaholic who spends a good part of twelve hours a day in office, doesn't exactly give me a lot of time for making friends either.Though while in office I share a good rapport with most of my female colleagues,most of whom might be trying to run away from my next PJ, a caustic comment or one liner that they might be coming their way. If having a good rapport is one thing, then making good friends is entirely another.Somehow I tend to think that we are professionals at a workplace and not classmates in college, so maintaining distance becomes second nature.

Over the years, I've found that I'm very slow to lend my hand out in friendship to anyone, more so if its to girls.But I'm very quick to take it back too, if my handshake's not properly acknowledged.Maybe the past history of facing rejections makes me do that.I'm only as interested in a girl, as interested as she is, in knowing me.So if any girls think that I'm giving a lot of bhaav, not speaking to them properly, chances are very high that,I'm also giving back the what I got, with interest though.

All these thoughts made me think that belong to a big group of people called "The Romantically Challenged". Its just that not many are as hypercritical and overanalytical as I am.

Maybe a community on Orkut with that name will show how many more of those exist in this wide world.Members anyone?

When I posted this, I also thought of putting this song from Aerosmith. The song is a story in itself.I loved everything about it.