So I was at this graduation party for a family friend the other day, just minding my own business, nibbling some pakoras, listening to the soft veena music in the background, enjoying the gaudy rococo decorations, ya know, the usual.

Then she walked in. I looked at her. She looked at me. She looked away. I kept looking at her. I read her lips as she asked her mom if I was still looking at her. (I was.)

After that, we didn’t talk or in any way acknowledge each other’s existence. What a great first date! I was so full of life that I cut a rug the rest of the night, talked up the room, cleaned out the last call of Indian buffet and went home with my parents at 9:30 p.m.

“Did you see that girl in the red patavai?” I coyly asked in the car, as my father alternately yelled at me for driving dreadfully slow and recklessly fast and my mother braced herself for imminent impact.

“You mean Padma?” my mom responded, “Lalita’s daughter? She sings so beautifully. Why don’t you take up Karnatik music? You’d make such a good...”

“Mom! Please, can you just tell me about...”

“What is this musical theater thing you do? Makes no sense to me. Anyway, what do you want to know about her? She’s your cousin, Lalita’s grandfather Vatsu and your great-grandfather’s second nephew on Daddy’s side...”

“Wow,” I thought to myself as an odd feeling crept over me while my mother mapped out our familial connection in gruesome detail; “Had I just checked out my cousin?” The facts were hard to dispute: I had.

At first I was a bit off-put by the thought, but... not entirely. I mean, basically every Indian person is somehow my cousin, and from what little I gleaned from the genealogy my mother laid out, it was possible that no blood relation existed between us.

Was I just getting my kicks from concocting a kooky Bollywood romance? Surely our parents would never approve of such a union, and neither would society. Although our eternal love was etched in stone the second that I made eye contact with her (and her mother), there would inevitably be many unexpected obstacles to our unholy union, in addition to many fantastically choreographed vocal numbers in which an august ensemble would materialize out of thin air, both of us would lip-sync and professionals would do voice-overs.

No, there was a deeper reason for nurturing these futile thoughts, one that in general makes the conceptual exploration of the irrelevant quite alluring when it comes to my love life. I think what appeals to me is that, as long as my beautiful imaginations of a blissful future run up against external barriers, such as an increased chance of children with Tay-Sachs, being disowned by my family and becoming a permanent pariah, I’m saved the hassle and possible humiliation of taking action and, more importantly, of having to deal with the collateral consequences of those actions.

Let’s be honest — actual relationships can be pretty brutal and annoying. So if I can keep myself content with garland-laden lollygagging and sambar-flavored fantasies, is there any reason to get into the mess that is the actuality of intimate human connection?

In spite of what I’ve read in all the self-help books (sorry Tony Robbins, the giant within me is comatose), what Oprah would tell me and what I myself acknowledge as sound reasoning, I can’t help but answer that question in the negative. When/if the time is right, my perspective changes or I’m otherwise inspired to poke my head out of my shell, I’d like to think that I’ll do so. But until then, I’ll probably just pass the time constructing dream worlds in which the girl in the red patavai and I abscond from our parents, throw off the shackles of modern living and pass our days as humble but happy subsistence farmers in the nether regions of the Himalayas.

If you want to know your familial connection to Vishnu, email him at vishnus@stanford.edu.