Polly (my wife) and I sometimes puff up like a puffer fish (with pride, not alarm) when we remember that we got a love compatibility score of 33 out of 36 when our horoscopes were matched. For those who are not faint hearted, horoscope matching used to be a complicated process which required an astrologer who has studied the science of matchmaking. Based on the planetary positions at your birth time and 36 qualities in a human being, the astrologer calculated the compatibility and predicted if coupling was possible. It ended up with a number of charts which looked like a football field crisscrossed with a number of lines, something similar to the signs which lesser creative aliens have left on our corn fields.
Now a day, the whole process just needs a software. While our parents still go the old fashioned way, we always confirm the output on the software installed on our laptops in case the astrologer was too drunk to make out anything.
The software requires the couple to put their birthdates, gender, birth place and time (very important as a deviation of a second will alter the planetary positions and your life) and it will match the horoscopes. By the way, how do you determine birth time? Is it the moment your head pops out or the moment the umbilical cord is cut? Just curious.
Anyways, the software is useful after marriage too. Sometimes, after a fight, Polly and I have re-checked the compatibility figure several times either to
- make sure that it is still 33 out of 36 (It will scientifically never change because it depends on the planetary positions when you were born.)
- check if there was a mistake initially and the astrologer was actually drunk and the software malfunctioned too which again is highly improbable.
It acts as a pacifier. After all, how bad can it get if you scored 33/36? You will always clink back like two opposite poles of a magnet.
This brings me to the point of writing this post. Yesterday Polly and I were discussing this whole horror-scope thingy and the talk steered towards providing a gay friendly addition to the software. Of course the software does not allow it. It recoils in horror and disables its buttons.
What if a guy wants to check his horoscope against another guy? There is simply no option. He can’t narrow down his search and has the whole ocean to fish. Now imagine how this can be successfully used in a lot of movies to show the anguish and confusion of a character. Imagine Nandita Das’s character in Fire using Kundli (Horoscope) matching software to understand her feelings towards Shabana Azmi’s character and finding to her horror/delight/something that the horoscopes match with a score of 35/36. Won’t this addition to the story make the characters infinitesimally poignant? Won’t it increase their hope for a better future and bring out the dilemma more vividly? Imagine Nandita throwing the horoscope printouts on her husband’s face and leave with Shabana towards the sunset.
Leave aside such complicated software, our very own good old Linda Goodman does not provide the solution. The tome does not talk about same gender love compatibility at all. There are numerous check-your-love-compatibility-now (!!!) websites also available, but you will never see something like this in them –
or this –
Now imagine Jake Gyllenhaal’s character in Brokeback Mountain picking up a Linda Goodman in a bookstore and open the Scorpio-man-Leo-man love compatibility page and found that Heath Ledger’s character was tailor made for him. Although, the movie won so many awards that if you pile them on top of each other, you can make an award beanstalk to the moon, but that is beside the point. Linda Goodman’s love signs for Gay men would have added the written-in-the-stars angle to the love story.
One wonders that even though we are becoming such a gay friendly planet, why we are neglecting the homosexual angle in astrology. It’s a big market if anyone wants to make money. After all it doesn’t take much to fool humans into believing that there are only 12 kind of people in the world or the planets control our lives.
Images taken from:
http://www.astrosagar.com/article.asp?id=57
http://www.desivideos.net/2007/03/15/fire-movie-hindi/
http://www.betterworldbooks.com/linda-goodman-s-love-signs-id-0060968966.aspx
http://entertainment.ezinemark.com/most-impressive-animated-couples-773651103d6d.html
Mashed Musings 
hahahahaahaha, I HAD to read this!
I guess homosexuals already suffer from social horrors – others telling them whats right or wrong. Why subject oneself to the additional horror of the horror-scope?
I know. I was just hinting at the vast untapped market. Already there are so many people already hooked to compatibility between various sunsigns. Someone can make a lot of money here. No one is going to match the horroscopes (It might start happening in India in about 23998 years) but yes, a Linda Goodman-ish book might become a best seller.
Wow!!! Where do u come up with these topics?! 😯 😀
Actually don’t think gay couples are free from convention that way which is the whole point of it !! Let them choose their partners free of all this nonsense, what do u think?
Would they even be bothered to worry about horoscopes, if at all somebody came up with a match making idea for them?
Haha! Thanks Ashwathy. 🙂 Well, it came up during a discussion with my wife. 🙂
Of course, I completely agree. Their life is already very complicated to add another nonsense to it.
This is hog-washing in name of being concerned about the compatibility factor. Let’s talk about it being accepted first and then we’ll talk or rather never of the compatibility factor.
Vee, I really would like you to read the post again. And, it is filed under humor and drivel tags. 🙂 I don’t think I was concerned about anything while writing this.
You have a point there man!! 🙂 🙂
Yes, I do. Thanks for getting it. 🙂
You can become an entrepreneur! such novel ideas 😛
No, I am a social worker. I am giving the ideas for free.