Do you have it in you?

I have put down some of the key things that an Indian male needs to know and follow to survive two or three days weddings in India. While the list might be more applicable to south Indian weddings, it wouldnt hurt to read em anyways.

1. Be prepared to endure long nights and early mornings. If you are a coffee drinker, great. Else for all non-coffee folks like me, better get onto something that'll keep you awake. Grad students, rejoice. Its back to semester end project submission days where sleep was a precious quantity, rare and much valued and the owls retired to bed earlier than you did.

2. Learn to smile and keep it plastered on your face for hours together. You are going to have to smile so much, you'll probably stop smiling for the rest of life.

3. Make sure you have plain-glasses handy if you dont already wear glasses. The ritual smoke is going to fill your eyes and all others that can see or feel with a hazy feeling for the rest of the day. And yes, it hurts and irritates like crazy. I recommend a small bottle of Visine in your kitbag.

4. Think four times before choosing any pant or shirt that is light in color for your wedding related procedures. Trust me, its going to get stained and soiled and you dont want your hard-earned dollars and meticulously chosen shirt or pant condemned to the bottom of your closet for the rest of your life. Khakis are a strict no-no.

5. Make sure you are seen as a world-savvy individual who is street smart and knowledgeable. Else you be prepared for "The Talk". For the record, I didnt get one :)

6. Take some memory pills with you. You are going to be subjected to a never-ending stream of "Do you remember me ?" routine and its inhuman to remember so many people.

7. Start visiting the gym a few months in advance of your wedding. A soft and gentle person is well received, not a soft body with a *lot* of flesh all over. If you are a person on the heavier side, it still doesnt hurt firming up your body. You can then pass off with the "Mappilai is so chubby and cute" comment.

8. Learn to do the "Sample but dont eat" thing. You are going to be pummeled with food from all directions and its simply not possible to say No. Added to which is the nausea and tiredness you are going to encounter during the wedding, its not possible to really eat everything. For once, even too little of something is not too good. So learn the art of sampling (taking the food item to your tongue is considered sampling here) and resisting the urge to eat like you normally would. It helps, trust me. And yeah, the rest room even if clean and close to your living quarters is going to get messy and pretty much unreachable as the marriage procedures hit their peak.

9. Do not drink a lot of water. As I noted in the previous line, rest rooms are suddenly going to disappear or become inaccesible. Keep yourself hydrated but not too much.

10. Make sure you say "No" to gifts and presents in your wedding invitation itself. Or be prepared for 20 clocks and 100 Ganesha idols. Any takers ?

11. Concoct a nice story to describe your job. A standard software engineer doesnt work anymore. There are already enough and more out there. And yes, have an answer handy as to why you are not working in Bangalore or Chennai but in the US. The oldies are going to keep asking you to come back home and rightly so.

12. Finally, the worst of them all. Be prepared to watch all the beautiful girls in the wedding and realising the enormity of the situation- They are off-limits !!!. Its all over,gentlemen. Time to hang the boots.