A Reconciliation Post and The Goalkeeper Theory

Yesterday’s post seemed to have ruffled quite a few feathers. Normally docile men and women who have forgiven many of my crazy theories have taken a strong exception to my last post, especially since it seemed to be misaligned completely to the popularly held theories. The point being sometimes it is good to incite people. At least they call you up to ask you to get your head checked or better still get married.

As if relatives weren’t enough.

Let me try to put my view point straight. I have always said, friendship is more important than love. Friendship can exist without love but love can not exist without friendship. It is purely a case of logical reasoning. I mean leaving aside the complications of the heart; it is merely a matter of a mathematical equation of A meeting B to give rise to situation C. Now the fun part is that once the first few moments of anxiety and excitement of the process of courtship is over, the relationship becomes a compromise for existing in a comfortable position. You are just comfortable being in the relationship. Any change just creates chaos. Like most other cases of living a static life, it is then that people look out for better options. The greener pastures may come in the form of a second honeymoon, an extra marital affair, or maybe just a simple double timing of your existing partner. So what is so great about this whole thing about being in relationship that people spend reams of paper and aeons of time writing about?

In fact I think this is just an extension of the Goalkeeper theory. For those uninitiated, I first came to know about this great theory in the hallowed portals of IIMB. Many great men have researched this topic extensively so I will not go into the gory details. Let me just jot down the main points.

First, imagine the woman of your dream to be The Goal. For all you geeks, the Goal need not be one of the best books on Operations. Normally, most goals have a Goalkeeper in the form of a current boyfriend or an imaginary boyfriend or an aura of mystery that you can not penetrate. There are also a lot of defenders. Some of the defenders come in the form of family, the most difficult being an elder brother or an Amrish Puri type father. There are also “brothers” that the woman makes. These often are men who would have loved to be the Goalkeeper but were unable to. So they now defend like there’s no tomorrow. The penultimate set of defenders is the most dangerous. These are people who would have loved to be the Goalkeeper themselves but since there is someone already for that post, they are trying to prevent all the other hopefuls and waiting to foul the other defenders. The last set of defenders is of course a result of Cold War Spy stories. These are your friends whom you have put as defenders in order to give you inside story about the opposition. Non Family Defenders often make a self goal. Some love the experience. Some go through a guilt phase and then love it anyway.

The beauty of this game is that once you score you yourself become the goalkeeper and the game continues. This is the classical goalkeeper theory.

Now I present to you Banjo’s Postulate I – If a goalkeeper is able to sustain his position for a long time, slowly he will get frustrated and leave for scoring a goal somewhere else. One by one, the defenders will lose interest and finally the big burly Big Brother defender and the Amrish Puri think-alike father will grudgingly accept him as an inevitable pest. As a result, he’ll take it easy, the goal will take it easy and both the parties involved will be comfortable in their peaceful co-existence.

Given such a situation, if you are as lazy as the average Homo sapiens, you’ll just stick on here since it is comfortable and you do not think that there is any merit in going through the entire rigmarole of trying to defend, score and be the Goalkeeper for another goal, even though you are aware of the existence of better goals.

I mean, it is just plain and simple economics people. You do not want to invest money in new ventures when the existing business is a Star in the BCG 2X2.

Oh by the way, this is very gender specific. I do not know if women have the same theory. If I knew what women think, I would at least have sold some more soaps and asked for a pay hike in order to pay my credit card bills.

But knowing God is easier than knowing women. So I continue to live on plastic money.