Travails of SSIW (single southie women), or Why Amma said so!*

* This would be a corollary to a Blog I read somewhere titled "The Travails of Single South Indian men of conservative upbringing" or "Why we don't get any..."

If you think South Indian men had it bad, boy you have another thing coming when you hear the woes of a traditional southie woman.

Lets start at the beginning- no, not at childbirth, but when still in the womb. You are subjected to a barrage of high calorie foods smothered in desi ghee… The cards are already stacked up against you- You are programmed to head for the fatty foods everytime a crisis hits. Your comfort zone- the only place that reminds you of the womb is the pastries section at the supermarket!!!

Then of course once you are born, you are promptly christened ‘Mahalaxmi’ or ‘Saraswati’ or some similar deity- I mean c’mon! I’m sure that’s a conspiracy by all dutiful appas to keep teens with raging hormones away from their ‘kunju’- After all, who’d want to date someone who shares a name with your grandmom??

By the time the traumatized southie hits her teens, she works at a severe disadvantage, since her communication skills are restricted to complex equations or quoting arbitrary lines from Shakespeare, while her north Indian counterparts have been thoroughly coached in the latest movies, clothes, gadgets and the art of not seeming too bright in front of the guy they like.

To make things worse, mothers and grandmothers of a southie household will hide instruments like tweezers and wax from the poor girl child til the age of twenty-three, thus making the poor girl go thru’ her teen as the only girl in her class to have a more luxurious facial hair growth than most boys.

Skirts, if they absolutely have to be worn, should barely show a flash of the ankle, and the preferred choice of clothing for a ‘nalla ponnu’ of course is a voluminous tent-like salwar kameez that hides all bodily contours. Good girls are also expected to wear their hair in two, thick, rope-like plaits, and any mention of cutting of hair will result in an uproar so huge, the only thing worse would be not getting a 100 on your math pop quiz.

By this time, the girl has positively given up on any hope of finding a guy- any guy (further conditions of nice, tall, etc would be asking for too much) and is seriously looking up a good monastery to join up, when her parents, after consulting their family astrologer have decided that this is the year she will find a nice southie boy to settle down with.

Since at this point the girl, of course is clueless how to proceed, her well meaning relatives will help things along by parading her in front of a host of ‘good boys’ who have passed a mysterious screening process known only to them.

Any this juncture I must point out that any resemblance of the southie girl to a trained circus seal is purely co incidental. In a span of fifteen minues, not only will her parents show her off as a closet rocket scientist, but also someone who puts Travolta (o.k. o.k. Prabhu Deva) to shame, sings like MS and cooks up a whirling dervish in between all of this. Of course these qualifications are an absolute must for someone who’s going to migrate to the US (or middle east in the case of a mallu) and stay at home to look after home and hearth while hubby dearest earns the Bread & B at a nearby software firm.

So its no small wonder that when her husband’s busy whispering sinful pleasures into her ear, all she can make of it is that it’s probably another weird ritual to be carried out to please the family deity and whispers "But amma has said only on second saturdays!"