The Enhanced DTPH Theory

Dil To Pagal Hai (DTPH) was a nice movie. I really enjoyed it when I first saw it some eleven years ago. The only problem was the message it imprinted on my 15-year-old mind: someone, somewhere is made for you. It ended up completely messing me up for the next 3-4 years.  I took it at face value. Every time I met a new girl, I would start asking the question “is she the someone, somewhere who is made for me?”. I would be lucky if the answer was an immediate no.

As I had explained in a blog post almost three years ago, these kind of questions never give “yes” as an answer. They either say “no” or they say “maybe”. And the maybes are a problem, since a few years down the line they might be converted to a “no”. They will never turn into a “yes”, mind you, and if you are forced to make a decision, you’ll have to make do with the number of occurrences of maybe and the confidence bounds that it produces. So the maybes were a problem for me 10 years ago. I didn’t know how to handle them. And in the one case where the answer consistently came out to be “maybe” (even when i ask the question now, it comes out to be “maybe”), I royally messed up the blade. Disaster was an overstatement.

Now that the digression is done, DTPH similarly messed up thousands of young minds all over the country. It didn’t even spare the married. Everyone started asking themselves the question “is this the someone somewhere that is made for me?” I think Yash Chopra (he directed it, didn’t he?) should shoulder a large part of the blame for the spurt in suicides in the late 90s.

The theory I’m going to state now was first stated by Neha a couple of years back. Back then, I’d thought I need to blog it, since she wasn’t blogging then. She has started blogging recently, but still I think I’ll write about this. As you might have figured out from the title, I call this the Enhanced DTPH Theory. It is quite ironical that this is coming from the fairly irreligious me, since it somewhat endorses creationism. I know the inherent contradictions here, but I think I should write it anyway.

The theory states that there are several people, in several places, who are “made for you” (if you are religious) or are “inherently compatible with you” (if you are not). The key is in finding at least one of them and making things work.

I think this is easier on people’s minds. The constant quest to find “the best partner” should be laid to rest, I think, mainly because it is unlikely that you’ll find a “dominating partner” (someone who is better, in your eyes, than everyone else that you could’ve  gotten married to). Instead, what you will get is what I can call as a “dominating set” – a set of people who are collectively dominating over the rest of the population but cannot really be compared to each other.

Each person has his/her own different evaluation criteria. And based on that, each person has his/her own dominating set. And it is this dominating set that is the “several people who are made for you”. I suppose you are getting the drift. I know this is a bit confusing.

Then, you need to understand that the universe doesn’t obey the Hall’s Marriage Theorem. This is trivial to prove since the total number of men exceeds the total number of women. Actually, as a corollary to this, we can establish that the original DTPH theory is false, unless of course it assumes that the population of gays is significantly higher than the population of lesbians, or if it takes into account animal sex.

Some hand-waving here, but my next hypothesis is that Hall’s Theorem doesn’t hold for local smaller populations also. I’ll probably try give an explanation of this in a subsequent post (else there would be no reason for women to remain single).

Tailpiece: The cost of not marrying the “right person” is significantly lower than the cost of marrying the wrong person.

PS: I also acknowledge Baada’s contribution to the development of this theory.

6 thoughts on “The Enhanced DTPH Theory”

  1. Well there is one more theorem called the Infidel’s Glee theorem summoned by a pal of mine who is hmmm known for his esoteric yet masterful expositions of marriage and its aftermath
    states that
    “The cost of not marrying the “right person” is you can move out with a totally the wrong person and yet not pay the price(No pun intended here)”

  2. I think the main corollary I would add to this is that the “right person/made for you person” need not necessarily remain so for the rest of your lifetime. The growth potential of each partner may be different and hence trying to plot these permutations-combinations may lead to even lesser chance of ending up with the so-called “right person”(who is possibly in your dominating set at the beginning of this exercise). To cut all my expositions short – marriage to ANYONE is a risk and the sooner you accept the fact that you may always never be happy but be reasonably content for most of the rest of your lifetime with one of your dominating set, you are set for the stage!

    1. yes. i agree that this is dynamic. for two reasons: 1. the other person is changing; 2. you are also changing, and so are your criteria.

      so it’s best to put an “absolute cutoff” (though I don’t mean that you should put CMP) and you have to work on likelihoods.

  3. I was just thinking about common grounds between this theory and The Ladder Theory.

    You state – “it is unlikely that you’ll find a “dominating partner” (someone who is better, in your eyes, than everyone else that you could’ve gotten married to). Instead, what you will get is what I can call as a “dominating set” – a set of people who are collectively dominating over the rest of the population but cannot really be compared to each other.”

    Does this mean that right at the top of the ladder, there wouldn’t be ranks 1, 2 and 3? And instead, there would be just these 3 people who collectively dominate over the rest of the population but cannot really be compared with each other?

    1. yeah. none of these 3 “dominates” either of the other 2. but then, the way it gets resolved is that your priorities change wrt time, and so these 3 people have a dynamic equilibrium

      of course, you can’t just keep trying to let this equilibrium stabilize; so have to take a decision and put blade on one of them

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