boo.. from Singlehood.. Part 2

while on quest for singleton woos and boos... I endup reading Bhaichand Patel's Chasing the Good Life : On Being Single, a Mono of Single Life.. lively and varied volume of essays brings together the thoughts of more than two dozen Indian men and women on life as a bachelor, spinster, divorcee, widow, widower — and even husband or wife.

One category well represented is of those who could be described as defiantly single: they insist they have absolutely no regrets about being unmarried and even revel in their single status. but others(Rahul Singh/most of older writes) who see their single status as something that can be coped with but is not a cause for celebration, who are the most convincing. The life of a married single that Sheela Reddy describes is probably best only for those who are ambivalent about the charms of their spouse since you cannt avoid wondering why bother to get married at all..??

Among them is Asha Narang Spaak, who in her contribution Bathrooms Are Not for Sharing, delights in being able to spend hours doing the newspaper crossword or watching the wildlife in her garden. But can't you do all these things and more if you are married?

India's grand old man of letters, Khushwant Singh, contributes an amusing, if a touch self-indulgent essay which looks at being single from a completely different angle from that of the other writers. Singh, a widower, finds that for him the pleasure of being alone is that you can break wind — or be offensive in any other way you choose — without anyone caring.

It could be great if author could have captured views from Ratan Tata, Mr. President APJ Kalam..! cannot avoid wondering what they were thinking...!! Two-thirds of the essays in this book are written by women and some of them, plus one or two male contributors, fall into the assumption that singlehood is somehow trickier for women than it is for men. There are several reasons why this might be the case, often related to societal scepticism that manifests itself in, for example, difficulty in finding accommodation or even outright and blatant ostracism. In addition, the biological clock ticks more rapidly for women than for men. However, the reverse case — that men might have to deal with particular difficulties when they are single — is not properly put, which is a shame.

one conclusion to be drawn from this book it is that single people are anything but a homogenous group who share the same values, interests and problems. There are as many ways of being alone as there are of being in a couple.

Proud of me: If anything I can credit my international-exposure- and-happy-go-lucky-backpacker-attitude has given me; is habit of acceptance & not pre-judging... whether its same sex relationship or no relationship - all is good, if no harm for other and happiness for you (ofcourse by having self-defined values & ethics). I treat each day at its merit.

having said that.. I know, Life is not always about choices, fortunately or unfortunately its about priorities...

boo.. from Singlehood

Landed on this blogs - Will Mylapore Mami’s RIP?

My single status seems to push everyone to the sideline and without any effort it gets me the limelight. Is this an accomplishment or am I the recipient of Param Vir Chakra? Be it a family gathering, a professional gathering or a relative visiting my home these folks are always read to assault and autopsy me with their questions. I don’t know their intent?......

I am just sick and tired of answering people why I am single. My single hood seems to trouble them more their old age friends, viz. asthma and arthritis and I don’t know how and why I become an eyesore in Mami crowds. May be someday I will feel marred due to my single status and decide get married, but when I do it a lot of graves will open in the city and Mami skeletons would parade to the wedding hall to bless me and walk back to their graves to rest in peace.....

I dont have somany words but I share sentiments/frustrations.

However moderate you are, when it come to marriage - No one is listening and even willing to listen to any rational arugements. more than half of 'eating-brains-questioning-my-single-status' crowd didn't even cared, what I was doing before?studying? what I do for living? habits? ambitions? OK, Can understand some but cannot understand why do some many strangers bother?

Guess.. Its a social pre-defined system... process is set, follow step-1 to step-10, leads to marriage then managed it to be happy. ofcourse its Time tested so NO questions, exceptations, deviations,. unwritten rule of the land... NO one knows WHY but everyone does it...

Arranged Marriage Remote Control

Don't misunderestimate yourself

Why people think that rivals are better looking than they really are?

IF YOU have ever sat alone in a bar, depressed by how good-looking everybody else seems to be, take comfort—it may be evolution playing a trick on you. A study just published in Evolution and Human Behavior by Sarah Hill, a psychologist at the University of Texas, Austin, shows that people of both sexes reckon the sexual competition they face is stronger than it really is. She thinks that is useful: it makes people try harder to attract or keep a mate.

Dr Hill showed heterosexual men and women photographs of people. She asked them to rate both how attractive those of their own sex would be to the opposite sex, and how attractive the members of the opposite sex were. She then compared the scores for the former with the scores for the latter, seen from the other side. Men thought that the men they were shown were more attractive to women than they really were, and women thought the same of the women.

Dr Hill had predicted this outcome, thanks to error-management theory—the idea that when people (or, indeed, other animals) make errors of judgment, they tend to make the error that is least costly. The notion was first proposed by Martie Haselton and David Buss, two of Dr Hill's colleagues, to explain a puzzling quirk in male psychology.

As studies show, and many women will attest, men tend to misinterpret innocent friendliness as a sign that women are sexually interested in them. Dr Haselton and Dr Buss reasoned that men who are trying to decide if a woman is interested sexually can err in one of two ways. They can mistakenly believe that she is not interested, in which case they will not bother trying to have sex with her; or they can mistakenly believe she is interested, try, and be rejected. From an evolutionary standpoint, trying and being rejected comes at little cost, except for hurt feelings. Not trying at all, by contrast, may mean the loss of an opportunity to, among other things, spread one's DNA.

There is an opposite bias in women's errors. They tend to undervalue signs that a man is interested in a committed relationship. That, the idea goes, is because a woman who guesses wrongly that a man intends to stick around could end up raising a child alone.

On looks, however, men and women make the same error. So go on, pluck up your courage: you may think the competition is frighteningly hot, but then so does she.

Source: The Economist