The Charms of the foreign, of love

When we were school-going kids, friends would ask us to fold our hands and open our palms. The idea was that if you held your palms side by side and the two arches on your palm flowed in a connected way from one palm to the other, you would go to a coveted 'foreign' land. Mine would at times connect and at others would not. Those whose didn't struggled to make it work, while others busily boasted and showed-off. These lines are actually called the heart lines in palmistry...God, who teaches school kids these things! And it seems to have been doing the rounds in not just my school but a number of others too!

The other thing we were told about was about love marriages. And these ideas were carried on from one classroom within the school to another more faithfully than any tradition would ever be! According to this one, if the lines off one palm met with the other, yours would be a love-marriage. Everyone wanted a love marriage and yet didn't want to upset their parents! Chey, such a terrible dilemma even as a teen! And so our young minds struggled and weighed the options. Today, I find that most people of my generation have travelled abroad; I find so many of them on Orkut. Many of them I am sure, still laugh at the idea of arranged marriages. Our modernity was indeed all about the charms of the 'foreign' and 'love' and limited options thereof. 

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