My Unmarried Cousin

I had a cousin, now no more. She was ten years my senior, then teaching in an English medium school in Kochi. I had often wondered why she remained unmarried despite her good looks and cerebral endowments. Proposals were aplenty even in her fifties, but she would reject the suitors one by one after giving them an ‘interview’ opportunity. Her reasons for rejection were strange. One Mathew she rejected because he introduced himself as Maathew! Another man had a mole on his chin, which might as well have passed as a beauty spot, but not for her. She liked dimples, but rejected a dimpled man because it did not suit his particular personality.

I once worked as the Chief Executive of a Management Institute. We advertised for a senior faculty. Short-listed applicants were called for interview. One question we asked a brilliant candidate was a seemingly ‘irrelevant’ question. Such questions, when asked systematically, serve the purpose of bringing out the candidate’s reaction pattern. The ‘irrelevant’ question on the occasion was why Australia and New Zealand were collectively referred to as ‘Down Under’. He smiled and shot back: “Do you want to know that?” and neatly explained the phrase. The Chairman was annoyed by the candidate’s ‘impudent’ counter question, although satisfied with his explanation. The other members just smiled.

 At the end of the interview, the ‘Down Under’ man was adjudged by the members as the best candidate; but the Chairman vehemently opposed his selection. We faced a stalemate. But, since the need was mine as the head of the institute, it was required of me to initiate the needed charm offensive to make him see wisdom.

Tea breaks are time for calming nerves and ironing out differences. During the lobby talk, I casually recalled to the Chairman the story of my cousin that I had light-heartedly shared with him when an occasion had presented itself the previous year.  He had then ponderously observed that no one could expect to find a perfect partner.   She herself might not be perfect in the eyes of her suitors. “Take the southern delicacy you call ‘appam’. It is baked on a pan. The heat provided under the pan may not get distributed uniformly and, as a result, the bottom of the appam may be baked unevenly, with brown patches showing here and there. You don’t throw away the dish because of such little blemishes. Some of you might even relish the appam more with dark spots under them. So, advise your cousin to ignore the ‘Maathew’ in Mathew, the beauty spot in the spotted one and the dimple in the dimpled guy and choose one of them as her partner.” With a twinkle in his eyes, the old widower added, “One is never too old for marriage.”

It was my turn now to ask him, “And, so, why not we ignore the brown spot in the ‘down-under’ man and choose him as recommended by the other members of the committee?” It dawned on the old man that I was tricking him all the while into declaring that the down-under candidate as the ‘winner’. He was large-hearted enough to accept his ‘defeat’ with a chuckle, and everyone, including himself, emerged ‘winner-winner’.

Months later, when he learnt that the selected candidate was doing extremely well, he candidly exclaimed, how often do we reject deserving candidates purely on subjective assessment! “As the proverb goes: How often do we unwittingly reject hard stones, and lay inferior ones in their place as the cornerstone for the edifice, thereby weakening its very structure itself!”

K X M John

24/04/10