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I am no behavioral scientist, so please take whatever I say in this post with a pinch of salt. You will be happy to know that what I am going to tell you always happens around a dinning table in a restaurant – so salt will be at arms length.

Yes, seating arrangement in relationships change with time. When you and your partner are married, you won`t walk into a restaurant and take your positions, as you would if you were courting. My research in this area (aided by personal experience, of course) is spread over at least ten years.

During this research, I am not taking into account the behavior of my father and mother because back then eating in restaurants was a sin. Don`t believe me? Try ordering food from outside when your mother is visiting you. When I did, she asked me: “Why, has the cylinder gotten over?”

Anyway, during my research I have come to notice that there are six different positions that a couple can take when they walk into a restaurant – depending on which stage of their relationship they are in. Here, we are excluding gay couples because yours sincerely has not come across any. If at all he has, they have managed to hide the fact from him successfully.

Let me explain the six different positions in detail:

The getting-to-know-each-other stage

In this stage, the couple walks into the restaurant and feels happy that they are inside. If it is a small town (Madurai, for example) the couple even lets out a sigh of relief that they managed to enter the restaurant without a relative spotting them. The man then takes a position that allows him to see when the waiter is approaching. The lady sits directly opposite him. Some of the statements uttered by the lady are: “My friend Geeta has a boyfriend they have visited almost all the restaurants in the city” & “I would like to pack some food for my friends in hostel – the food there is really bad.” The man, if he is the talkative type might end up saying stuff like: “Maybe, next time we should go to a better place” (Girls, be warned…the man is pitching for the next outing already) & “You can have butter nan. Hope you aren`t cutting down because you think you are putting on weight.”

The Courtship Stage

By the time a couple reaches this stage, both have sworn allegiance to each other till death does them apart. Notice that the man still prefers to call the waiter and is willing to foot the bill. In this stage, the couple prefers to sit next to each other. The occasional brush of the legs and arms are cherished, and spoken about during late night phone calls in references like: “Remember that time when your shoe brushed against my shoe…that was heavenly.” This position also helps the couple get the same view, and thus help them make fun of other customers and have a hearty laugh.

The Engagement Stage

By the time the couple reaches this stage, they know each other well but are still yearning for more. Notice that the man still sits closer to the approaching waiter and thus is in command – he orders and he pays. In this stage, the chairs are pulled closer and the shoulders are almost touching. Since, in this stage the touching of shoulders is enough to send across an electric current… every trip to a restaurant is a shocking experience. Sweet nothings are whispered into each others ears which annoys the poor (read bachelor) waiter, who is still looking for a girl.

The Initial-Days-of-Marriage Stage

Every restaurant seems great in this stage. The ambience doesn`t matter…the food doesn`t matter. The couple believes that if they are together, they don`t need anything else. Notice the strange seating arrangement in this stage – which allows them to whisper into each other`s ears and yet allows them to gaze into each other`s eyes while they wait for the food. Notice the sudden change in the lady`s position (closer to the waiter`s path) which allows her to place the order and pay the bill. Note for those that are not married: More often than not, the bank accounts merge after marriage.

The Three-Years-After-Marriage Stage

This is stage when the couple has realized that they won`t die if they stop touching the other partner. While the lady continues to sit near the aisle, the couple now sit opposite each other. Sweet nothings are no longer whispered into each other`s ears…and neither a brush of the shoes spoken about. An occasional “Sorry!” is heard, when their feet touch under the table. Waiters love to serve couples in this stage, because it makes them happy about themselves. Some of the statements heard are: “Next time, remember not to bring me to this restaurant” & “These guys take so long to serve…why don`t they realize we come here to eat and not talk!”

The After-Two-Kids-Enter-The-Marriage Stage

Notice the lack of organization in the seating arrangement. Visits to restaurants are no longer occasions…but compulsions because the couple was busy earning money for their children and forgot to cook. Notice that the lady continues to sit near the aisle, and the couple take the two corners of the dining table. They do this to protect their two children from forks, pepper, salt and other such dangerous items one finds on dinning tables. Some of the statements heard are: “Let us cut down on such outings. Why don`t you ask the waiter if they deliver food home?” & “Who dropped hot soup on my feet?”

So which stage do you associate with?

Other Related Reads

# Do all married men need mistresses?
# Rekha and I visit Mocha, Chennai
# Toilets – how lucky we are to have them
# Valentine`s Day is over. Phew!

Just in case you didn`t know, I am 32 years old. Considering all the bullshit I deliver on Ouchmytoe, you probably thought I was a stud bull. Unfortunately, I am just another old man, who in 20 years time will get an ICICI loan for his daughter`s marriage to a US-based Software Engineer.

I wouldn`t have realized that I was old if I hadn`t had a 30 minute session with four of the interns in my office – three of them pretty and one handsome. They had completed their six months in ibibo and Uma Iyer and I were telling them how they can`t remain interns for ever and will have to branch out to different departments like Sales, Marketing, Project Management etc…of the organization.

Just to ensure, they didn`t feel any pressure I said: “I want you to understand that we want you to branch out and grow because ibibo cares for you, and not that we don`t need you anymore.”

“Yeah, we understand.” They said in unison.

“You trust me, right?” I asked.

While the handsome intern remained silent, the pretty ones let out the killer statement: “Jammy, we aren`t worried. You are like a father figure to us!”

Their statement hit me like a lead bullet…penetrated me, and left from my back leaving a wide wound. But I didn`t let my guard down…after all I was a true-blue professional.

Back home, I asked my wife: “Do I look old?”

“Not very,” was her response.

I looked into the mirror. I wasn`t balding. At least, not yet. My hair wasn`t graying. But I had dark circles around my eyes, thanks to long hours in front of my laptop. Wrinkles had only started camping at the corners of my eyes – but the dark skin was helping camouflage it. I smiled at myself, just to be sure that my smile didn`t betray a few wrinkles – they didn`t.

What could be wrong? I asked myself…why was I being considered a father figure…and why not a buddy?

We Rajans believe in cross checking everything. A practice, my father ingrained in us…while trying to investigate the crimes me and my two sisters committed as kids.

“Are you sure you saw Sumathy (the younger sister) use crayons on the white-washed walls?” he would ask us. If one of us answered in the negative, Sumathy wouldn`t have to wash her own clothes that day. Though we made sure, she always did.

“All girls in the right age group consider me to be a father figure. Why? Why me?” I asked Mohak Gambhir (no relation to Gautam Gambhir), a male colleague in office.

“Hmm…tough question. But I can keep a watch on you and get back with answers.” Mohak is a man with solutions…so I decided to wait for his answer.

Two days later, he got back with his analysis. He had a flow chart ready…which looked like this:

Other Fatherly Reads

# Father vs Mother – what will the child choose?
# Entering a new house in Gurgaon
# Every photograph has a story to tell
# To be a father or not to be
# Different types of fathers in law

But enough of me. Let us talk about you. What do YOU think of me?
– Bette Midler

Recently, I got a mail from my boss saying that I was being made Head of the Product Group, responsible for ibibo blogs, ibibo Sawaal, ibibo Locals, ibibo Opinions & ibibo Polls. Phew! I agree…that`s a long list of products to handle if you are just 165 cms tall.

Ever since, some of my colleagues have been telling me that success has gone to my head…and I now have a big Ego (jokingly of course!). Well, dear colleagues…I have always had a big ego.

Don`t believe me? Let me re-produce the conversation I and my girlfriend (the 7th one) had before she walked away from me.

“Jammy, you have a big ego.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. You can never think beyond yourself. I don`t think I can marry a man with such a big ego.”

“So, are you leaving the awesome me?”

“See, you are the only person who addresses himself as ‘awesome`.

“Well…anyway, will you be sharing this ‘ego` bit with your friends?”

“And you are only worried about what my girl friends would think of you.”

“Can`t you think of some other reason to give for the separation?”

“Hmm…I can. How about I say we separated due to religious reasons?”

“Religious reasons? How would you justify that, Madhuri?”

“I will say, you thought you were God…but I didn`t.”

That was the first time somebody had told me that I had a big ego. To take my mind off myself, I took to blogging…but now (thanks to your comments appreciating my funny articles) I am more in love with myself.

My love for myself is so high that if I had been born before Copernicus, I would have suggested a Jammy-centric model of the Universe. In case, you didn`t get the joke you probably need to know that Copernicus suggested a helio-centric model of the Universe, where everything revolved around the Sun.

Maybe my childhood was deprived. Maybe, I suffer from a major sense of inferiority and that`s why I always have to be the center of attraction.

While attending a marriage, I want to be the bridegroom (once, I did manage to dislodge the bridegroom and snap a picture with his wife!). When I am in the church attending a baby`s baptism, I so much want to be the baby. I didn`t think this ‘disease` was much to worry about till I attended a funeral – I wanted to be the corpse. It is another thing that people had surrounded the corpse, and didn`t give me any chance to creep under the white bed-sheet.

Believe me or not…but when I am alone…I crack a joke, laugh at it and then pat on my back myself. Sometimes, I do sprain my right arm while patting my back.

“What happened to your hand,” Rekha would ask. I would just say: “Nothing!” and walk past. But one day, she spotted love bites on the bathroom mirror and found out that I was in love with myself. Thankfully, I was able to hide the few cuts on my voluptuous lips.
Warning: It is dangerous to practice love bites on the mirror, at home.

Now, it is an open secret.

Other Must Reads

# Saving your skin in North India
# The Kingfisher Class – Part 1
# The Kingfisher Class – Part 2
# When I was a famous jockey

Somebody has put Photoshop to good use. To quote the source from where I have flicked this: “Nice use of Photoshop to create a recursive paradox and a self-fulfilling prophecy at the same time.” To view the photograph, get high on some hash….by clicking here –>

A poem titled – Today in the Stock Market:

Helium was up, feathers were down.
Paper was stationary.
Fluorescent tubing was dimmed in light trading.
Knives were up sharply.
Cow steered into a bull market.
Pencils lost a few points.
Hiking equipment was trailing.
Elevators rose, while escalators continued their slow decline.
Weights were up in heavy trading.
Light switches were off.
Mining equipment hit rock bottom.
Diapers remain unchanged.
Shipping lines stayed at an even keel.
The market for raisins dried up.
Coca Cola fizzled.
Caterpillar stock inched up a bit.
Sun peaked at midday.
Balloon prices were inflated.
And batteries exploded in an attempt to recharge the market.

Courtesy: http://treebeard31.wordpress.com/

I have never been a great singer leave alone being a music lover. I say this because when I last sang, people said I was reading. The only deaf person in the audience loved the speech I delivered before I started singing (she was lip-reading)….but turned away when I started singing. I am so bad at singing that when I sing even lip-reading can be noise.

But I am not to be blamed for being a music-dyslexic. For my interest in music (or lack of it) was built on an old, single-speaker National Panasonic tape-recorder (yes…that is what we used to call them) which my father bought after saving money for two years. Whenever I felt like listening to music, I would play the single audio cleaning tape which came along with the tape-recorder. It was five months before we played an actual movie tape – I remember because we invited my uncles and aunts for the occasion. Coming from such a family, you should be happy to just know that I don`t think ‘Sonu Nigam` is a girl.

In order to nurture an interest in music, I started attending Musicals and Operas but my experimentation ended abruptly. I was in an Opera House, and I let out an involuntary radish-fart. If you visit Opera Houses, I suggest never fart because they have great acoustics and even a small ‘puff` ends up being a ‘boom`. A non-Rajan can definitely not handle 1000 pairs of eyes turning towards them….more so because spotlights in modern Opera houses track sound and focus on the person…in milliseconds. The actors refused to continue till I left the Opera House. My friend, who stayed back, confirmed the power of what a single person can achieve in the society by saying: “Did you know…all of us were smelling of radish when we got out?”

I then decided that learning a musical instrument would help me ease into the music loving circles. Being a big fan of Bagpiper Whiskey, I decided to become a Bagpiper.

After three months of effort, I decided would never become a good bagpiper (and no it wasn`t about wearing a skirt). I just didn`t know when I was placing my fingers on the wrong holes of the pipe. If I were a candyman, and I placed my hand on the wrong box of candies the customer would have said: “No! Not that one…the one to your right.” But with bagpipes the audience never knew.

With years, my respect for music has gone down. All those music reality shows, notwithstanding…. I have no respect for music (while Rekha has too much of it).

I did listen to Yanni for hours, once. Five years back, when I was really down emotionally, I listened to him for four hours at a stretch….and when that didn`t work out, I started looking for my father`s pistol. Like it happens in anybody`s house…my father`s pistol was also missing. Apparently, my 10 year old nephew had taken it to his school for some shooting.

But please don`t go by what I have said about singing & music. They are definitely better than they sound.

According to a WebVisible-Nielsen survey from October 2007, 74% of people use search engines to find information when purchasing a product or service from a local business. Yet millions of businesses don`t have websites, and even those that do, don`t often engage in search marketing because they lack the time, knowledge or resources. Business opportunity? Read More on how Search is Now Top Resource For Local Information

As my daughter in the picture says, if you have been reading Ouchmytoe, we guarantee a Happy New Year and not just wish you. That`s why I thought we needed an article on ‘Happy New Year` was/is/will be celebrated.

Rekha and I had celebrated 2006`s New Year`s Eve by venturing out in the dark (an event which was chronicled here) but this year it is going to be a quite one. My 9-month-old baby doesn`t like partying.

Talking of partying, can you recollect how you parted your colleagues on the last working day of the year? Well, I shook hands with the guys and hugged the girls. Just in case you didn`t know, New Years Eve is second only to Holi when it comes to feeling the girls, as other girls feel.

New Years` Eves in the early part of my life were before our television set. Doordarshan would start running the promos at least 15 days in advance. And after building a suspense that was bound to burst sooner than later they would start their programming at 10 p.m. on 31st Dec. Their best TV host would drop anchor and when you sat in front of the TV, it seemed as if he would come alive any moment and jump into your living room. For long I even thought the guy used to live inside our TV – our ECTV was so big. The high-energy (and high-Bollywood content) program would go blank at 11.59 p.m. and a digital clock would start taking us closer to ‘Happy New Year`.

At 12.00 midnight the screen would come alive again and the anchor would shout “Happy New Year” and we would join him. Needless to say, everybody – both inside the TV and outside – would hug each other and wish Happy New Year. Note: I wonder how many of you remember the hand that would come in to place an announcement board that said: ‘Rukawat Ke Liye Khed Hai,` whenever Doordarshan had programming issues.

The pious lady that she is, my mother would give us all a spoon full of sugar and say: “Let this year begin sweetly.” Once when I asked why she never offered any sugar to the program host, she said: “We can`t offer it to the host alone…there are at least 40 others in the set. And we only have half a kg of sugar in the house.”

Things changed as I grew up. When I was all of 24 years and as innocent as a white lily in English breeze….I went to Rajpath (the road in Delhi, which South Indians know as the India Gate road) after our New Year`s Eve party. I saw neatly dressed gentlemen teasing girls, some of them trying to molest, and some trying to rape. I enjoyed my time and only after we had left did my friends tell me that it wasn`t a movie shooting. I remember asking: “But that guy looked so much like Pran?”

The next year I wasn`t in Delhi, but on the Chennai roads reveling in the new found freedom. I had three credit cards in my pocket and I could buy the whole world. Believe me…the New Year looks great if you got purchasing power in your hands. I was piss drunk, and we were stopping all bikes & cars and wishing them a Happy New Year.

If the cars had pretty girls, we would insist on the window being lowered and say: “Happy new year, Sister!” As soon as the cars speed away, one of us would comment: “Nice babe, huh?”

The very next year a friend of mine inherited a Maruti 800, when his father bought a Ford Ikon. This time, we went out in the car…and there were these drunk bastards, who would stop the car at every corner and want to wish us ‘Happy New Year” …as if we cared. It was so pathetic that we had to buy a few beers and rush back home.

How times change…now I prefer a quite New Years Eve, at home.

If unlike me, you are a party animal you probably look out for those free passes to late-night New Year parties. There is a thing with New Year party passes – if somebody offers them to you on 31st Dec, rest assured you were last in the queue of preferences. Such freebies are first offered to the most interesting of people and when they decline (because they have lots of others offering them passes) it trickles down to the least interesting.

Way back in 2002, I once accepted such a pass and attended a late night New Year`s party. Close to 12 midnight, when the lights were switched off I was looking at a girl standing to my left – and she was looking at me too. As soon as the lights went off…a hand from my left pulled me aside and gave me a strong kiss on my lips. The kisser was really passionate for it didn`t stop till the lights came up again. And thank God, they did…for the lights showed me that I was receiving a kiss from a 30-something man. I could see a yucky-relief feeling in him too when he pushed me away – as if it was my fault. He probably mistook me for the girl who was standing to my left.

Survival guide for office
When the office colleagues gather after the New Year, there are bound to be questions like: “So what did you do for the New Year?” “Which party did you go to?” etc. Are you prepared enough? Ouchmytoe recommends leafing thro` the last week`s newspapers so that you can let out sharp ones like: “Before I went to the party at the five-star Hotel Galaxy, I had dropped in at Bristol for half an hour …and man was the crowd rocking or what?!”