Saturday, February 11, 2012

Need help catching Cupid's eye?


‘Love is in the air’ someone said the other day and I promptly looked at the calendar to find myself in the middle of February once again.  

Every time I hear this phrase, by reflex, I tilt my head up and sniff at the air like a hound on a scent only to wipe the drool pooled by the spicy aroma wafting in from my neighbor’s kitchen.  Love, I guess, requires specially designed noses.

My mother was telling me recently over one of our informative phone conversations how very difficult it is these days to find a bride for a boy in India.  According to her, girls in India are now plowing through the field of marriageable boys, harvesting only the best of them after ruthless scrutiny.  Her blessed heart was fretting over the fate of those poor boys that don’t ever make the cut.

And that got me thinking:  Is it time to reveal my secret?   Do I have the right to sit on this anymore when it could potentially change lives?  Knowing that I have the power to make it happen, can I really live with myself if I don’t lend a helping hand to those boys who yearn for their turn to be struck by Cupid’s arrow?  Will the crest-fallen faces of those bearded youth haunt my sleep forever?  

After a whole minute of thinking, I decided to come clean and tell the world about it if only to get back to my dreamless sleep. 

Coming from a conservative South Indian family, my sisters and I owe our timely marriages at the tender age of early twenties to two things.  
  
1.  Good luck – Never underestimate the power of luck in a South-Indian wedding.  How else can you get the kind astrologer to declare your horoscopes ‘MATCHED’?  No matching, no wedding so if the astrologer turns his nose down at your horoscope, you may be Rajinikanth for all the good that will do you.  A conservative South-Indian father would still boot you from here to Amjikkarai.  

So is it any wonder that my sisters and I feel such gratitude for the powers above for lining up the dominoes correctly on our horoscopes?  If the ‘Guru’ on our horoscopes hadn’t winked at his brothers on our spouses’ horoscopes just at the right moment, where would we be today?  God’s grace is bountiful indeed! 
 
2.     Apsaras Photo Studio – This is the secret that I have been safe-guarding all these years.  Second to luck, I owe my ‘mangal sutra’ to this Studio and the time has come for me to reveal it to this world so all mankind can benefit from it.

 
Want to get married?  Go to Apsaras Studio today and get your photo taken.  I guarantee that proposals will start flowing your way before you can sneeze and say’ bless you’.


But WAIT!  This photo is not for the eyes of your prospective girl.  Oh dear lord, no!   Not if you want a fighting chance with the girl.  Pose for the photo, pay for it, then quietly tuck it away like I did because an Apsaras Studio photo is never flattering to the subject and that is God’s honest truth.  

Say, for example, you have a few pimples artfully spread on your face.  Little pomegranate seeds just sprinkled here and there like cilantro in a bowl of ‘Chole’.  Left alone, no one will be the wiser for they don’t attract too much attention other than lending sweetness to that young face, right?  Wrong!  Once Apsaras’s photographer is done with you, each one of those pimples will stand tall as a solder on a battlefield.   

Got small pores on your face?  ‘Yes, but they are hardly noticeable’, you may say.   Wrong again, my friend.  The Apsaras photographer will diligently adjust his lighting and make it his life’s mission to highlight each one of your pores to ensure that ‘posterity will not willingly let them die’.  

I have always wondered about the camera equipment they use.  How special it must really be to be able to zoom in on a standing subject from the bottom to give the subject a very unique ‘bloated’ effect!  Man, was I awestruck when I got my photo back from Apsaras all those years ago!  It reminded me of those Telugu movies on TV about Gods where NT Rama Rao will grow in height and weight by magical proportions to give his devotees a viswaroopa dharisanam.  I looked just like that in the photo.  

Be that as it may, that photo was my ticket to marriage.  Till then, Ragu and his friends residing on my horoscope were most disinterested in cooperating.  Once I subjected myself to a photo session at Apsaras, as if from a trance, dear Guru woke up and winked promptly at the astrologer and the rest, as they say, is history.
 
Happy February to one and all!  May Apsaras Studio continue to be the miracle that will stop all those youngsters in India flocking to a monastery!

PS:  Contact me privately for more details on Apsaras.  Serious inquiries only.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

One of the few hilarious ironies I've come across is the Apsara photo. Even a decent looking girl like one of us (we are a modest lot, aren't we?} turns out downright dull and insipid, not to say out of shape to put it mildly (Boothagaram is the word for it), but somehow, miraculously that photo seems to be the groom clincher. Other such ironies: if a groom's horoscope is brought to our place, you can say with a 100% certainty that his marriage would have gotten fixed elsewhere at that moment. This became such a laughable routine, at one time I thought we could advertise: "If you have boys who haven't been successful in the marriage arena, bring their horoscopes to our place . In no time, will you find them married off".
Well, kudos to Apsara for "stooping to conquer".
Krithika

Shobha Krishnan said...

Oh meenu. You do it again:-):-) a rollicking post that had me going Hahaha.
Btw Jenny studios in an obscure galli in amchi Mumbai should also do the trick:-)I can vouch for that:-)

Meena Sankaran said...

//Well, kudos to Apsara for "stooping to conquer".//

LOL Krithika. The fact that Apsaras Studio played a 'big' part in our lives is undeniable. :-)) What a unique niche they have created in the market! "Get a photo taken today, be married tomorrow. You will look ugly but who cares?" should be their banner, if you ask me. ROTFL......

Meena Sankaran said...

Hey Shoba(finally I can call you by your real name :-) ),

What a wonderful surprise to find you here in my blog! A hearty welcome to you, my friend.

Jenny Studio, Mumbai sounds to me like a sister concern of Apsaras, Chennai. In this month of love, I bow my head (only slightly, I am afraid, as I got a crick in my neck today)to pay respects to these studios that keep Cupid in business all year long. May their services never be forgotten. :-)