Dappankoothu zindabad!

Look at what Wikipedia has done to our very own gilli-danda dance!!Don't miss the section on Outfits and...

Am sure whoever inserted this was thinking of a Ramarajan-gone-wrong. Dance along, ladies and gentlemen...only this time, dont feel apologetic about your pattapatti (???!!!) showing!

Demolition Men

What would you term an organisation that has only men as its members (and that too ONLY men whose marriages are in various stages of disarray, some of them going through messy divorces and some on the verge of getting there), that seriously advises men not to get married as almost every potential spouse is a manipulator?
That insists that family laws in India should be amended to keep pace with the US as it is easy to get a divorce out there in just six months?

This organisation, ladies and gentlemen, is called--well, you lost the guess--Save Indian Family.
I shall say no more than direct you to this blog, written by a young girl who, it appears, doesnt belong to the feminist conclave, but is horrifically disturbed by what SIF stands for.

I got to know of the existence of a rump of this organisation in Chennai a few months back, and had not paid too much attention for I thought it was just a gripe club. I couldn't have been more wrong. This is no ordinary support group for men who gather together to exchange notes about painless divorces. Rather, they seem to have a surefire strategy to boost membership-enlist more members, even if it means wrecking perfectly normal marriages. The law of averages, I guess.

Here is how it goes: a friend ( who till then had been quite happy with his marriage but had had a few heartburns in an earlier relationship) chanced upon this group and dropped in on one of the meetings just out of curioisity in "finding out how other men coped."
He was perhaps the only married man in the group who attended their meetings after discussing about the forum with his wife. There seemed to be no misunderstanding, at that moment.
The motley SIF, Chennai, comprises of men, who are gainfully employed otherwise but would rather stew in the stench of the past than simply get along with life.
For a few weeks, all was well with my friend. The indoctrination must have been ever so subtle for the man never showed up any trouble and even invited his wife to attend one of the weekly meetings.
Then, whoosh, the kaleidoscope changed. The trouble started manifesting in ways in which the couple could not have foreseen. From then on, every little domestic tiff became a potential minefield, every small argument blew up in their faces and they ended up averaging two fights a day.
To be fair to them, they did talk about talking and getting things sorted. Thing is, it never happened. All those women-hater tales about scheming, manipulative wives who were after their husband's pay packets, ready to slap a dowry harassment case at the slightest pretext and throw the man's aged parents into jail--had obviously found their mark.

This is not to say my friend is as impressionable as all this sounds. In his better avatar, he was a sensitive individual, well read and articulate and with a mind of his own. But then, you are what your peer group makes of you.

To cut a long story short: when the friend brought up the issue of his own troubled marriage amongst the group, one of the ever-so-helpful leaders promptly helped him find a lawyer and asked the friend to henceforth discuss (DISCUSS!!) all domestic quarrels with the lawyer first.
So, now, the lawyer has a tab on the couple's life.
And of the marriage? I'll save my breath.

SAVING INDIAN FAMILIES? Laughing out loud!