Now that I survived six years of retired stress with Band Aid Therapy and your invaluable support, I guess I can now talk about the crux of it coherently, somewhat, on this World Environ-Mental Day.
I am sure you read Rip Van Winkle, the chap who went to the Catskill Mountains adjoining NY and dozed off for a good twenty years, and on returning found that it all has changed beyond recognition.
He didn't lose his mind because his termagant wife was no more and his son got married on his own meantime and he had no responsibilities pending. He became the cynosure of the town telling tall tales of a generation that had not lost its innocence (like me now).
I went to Bengal Plains and slept for forty years.
And my wife is the sweetest thing on earth and my son of a fun declined to find a bride himself.
When I left AP for Bengal in 1965, most folks were wallowing in the idealistic Nehruvian Socialism which had the motto: 'Plain Living and High Thinking' (like my Guru SDM); money being a dirty word officially (unlike now when even sanyasis are jet set).
And my double trouble was my Bengal went one step further and painted herself a gory red for my forty sleepy years there. Money wasn't a mere dirty word but a witch to be torched and driven out; which she did rather phenomenally.
To cut a long story short, I retired as the highest paid individual at IIT KGP barring the Director who had a few more peanuts in his nosebag. And when I retired and was trying to come to terms with life in Hyderabad, my young son with just two years experience was drawing about as much take-home as I did when I retired.
My joy knew no bounds and thought finding a bride for him was cakewalk.
Ah, but I didn't know my Hyderabad which changed so much during my sleep in the fishland that I was in for a gruesome shock.
Rs 38K per month was peanuts for any 'suitable' bride's parents here.
And an IIT Degree meant nothing if it is in sciences (all they asked was if he is going to shift to their Dreamland soonest leaving his parents here).
And I didn't own a flat here, not to talk of a 'villa' (that's what they call a two-room 'independent' tenement) .
The 120 responses I got for my resume' in the leading matrimonial portal here fizzled out in no time.
Then luckily, a cute bride (not born and brought up in Hyderabad) saw my son's photo and fell for it like in one of those movies of my boyhood (I think it was Chandrahasa, but it was the other way round).
And an added attraction was that my son didn't have any complicating sister!!!
Well, in the twelve months or so between their Engagement and Wedding Ceremonies, my son's salary doubled, he was sent to the Dreamland 4 times, and we were on the road to acquiring our own flat in Hyderabad.
The turns Life takes at times look weird and fool everyone.
And little Ishani is a sizzling bonus.
I hear quite a few of the bridal parents who missed the boat heave humongous sighs:
"It might have been!"
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