Sunday, July 23, 2006

The chemistry and economics of falling in love.

Matrimonial sites
One Sunday afternoon I got a mail from a locally popular matrimonial site congratualting me on registering with them. Surprised I was .. , I clicked on their homepage. I had the shock of my life when I saw my photo on their home page ! I was being advertised . I was on the main page of a matrimonial page asking for prospective girls !!! I called up home and there lay the answer .. my parents were getting worried that my youth was getting wasted in office politics, travel and bad philosophy. They wanted me to get married - even without my consent !( I personally resent from advertising on these sites .. I accept this as the first symptom of you not able to pick up potential mates and globally having acknowledged the fact that you are way below in the mating food chain. ) It cost them well over a thousand Indian Rupees and my profile is "valid" for the next 6 months . It so happened that my parents knew the people well and they even managed to get a discount ! So I made the calculation ... on an average, a girl-seeking-guy waits for 6 months without much success through their site. They know it .. and they want us to know it. Some even wait for a year ! Further I searched their database .. about 100 "potential candidates" on a loose search criteria. Thats about Rs.15/- for viewing a profile. Why dont they put a pay-per-use policy on their site ? Ahh now thats a fantastic business model !

Body Politics
I always had trouble convincing my ex-girl friend that being thin was in.
Maybe I was just being hyper conscious about my physical stature or I wanted to justify her ego and comfort her that she had not made any wild , out of the natural choices. She was wrong in almost all her choices - including me.


Chocolates and love
I read this alternate theory that chocolates induce the production of amphetamines that are similar to the ones that are produced when you are in love. Or was it the artificial stimulation of your senses because chocolates seems to be the obvious( cheapest) choice of gifts. So its just Pavlov's reflex. After almost three years when I was out of love, I didn't have the craving for chocolates ... Either it was not love or something was wrong with my endocrine glands. ( I like to believe the former )


Economics of love
I love to listen to the NPR when I drive to office and back, and on one such boring thursday evening, they had something interesting .. about how lovers ought to get state benefits , how they positively drive the economy , how the hospitality and beverages ( esp red wine ) industry is atleast slightly influenced by lovers . .think about the amount of diamonds, red roses, champagne bottles, mushy cards, telephone calls, lunches/dinners, movies,
Lovers should get some kind of exemption on these , maybe a tax cut , or some extra free cell phone minutes, a reduction on luxury taxes, service taxes, and ofcourse some free movie tickets ..all sponsored by the state. Afterall love makes the world go round.

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"Florentino is so in love with Fermina that he eats gardenias and drinks cologne so that he can know her taste. He becomes drunk on the cologne, and his mother finds him the next morning, in a puddle of his vomit, in a cove of the bay where drowning victims are known to wash ashore" - Love in the time of Cholera