Arranged Love

by Mittal, Parul A

  Thank God it was Friday! The whole week had gone by with me being trapped in a training room, learning the ABCs of iTrot’s business, with other newbies. I didn’t get any clean one-on-one timeslot with Deep and I didn’t feel like dumping him over email. Finally, after a long four-day wait, I was going to carry out my well-planned rejection. I knew by the way I felt today that this was going to be different. The usual twinges of conscience were subdued under unexpected fireworks of excitement. It’s not every day that you get an upper hand over an IITian. For a brief moment, my mind went back to the summer I had spent with that schmuck IIT intern and how it had hurt. Well, tonight was my golden chance to get back at their creed.

  I looked at my reflection in the office bathroom mirror one last time and I liked what I saw, especially the hint of the cleavage that peeped out from my strapless, floral dress. Short and seductive, I had carefully chosen the outfit for today’s mission. With my hair twirled in a high, puffy top knot to accentuate my bare shoulders and my tummy tucked in to hide the bulge, I sashayed into the office lobby, ready to go for the kill. I noticed Deep give me a long, appreciative once over as I reached close to his car parked in the driveway. He gave me a soft, playful smile and I smiled back flirtingly. As he was about to open the front door of the car for me, I walked past him and hopped onto Sanjeev’s bike.

  ‘Chalen, Sharmaji,’ I said to a startled Sanjeev, who was staring wistfully at Madhuri, now heading towards Deep’s car.

  Sharmaji kicked hard on the pedal and the bike immediately roared to life. ‘Vaise, by choosing you in his team, Deep bhai has proven that he is a true professional,’ said Sanjeev, shouting above the loud roar of his bike.

  ‘How so?’ I asked intrigued.

  ‘I would never be able to work with my would-be wife in the same team,’ he admitted. ‘It’s hard to hide feelings, especially for guys, you know,’ he explained shyly.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Deep observing us as he got into his car. Deliberately I bent closer to Sanjeev, and holding my breath to avoid inhaling the strong coconut smell from his hair, I whispered, ‘That way, every girl who is of marriageable age could be a would-be wife. You must be having a lot of problems, Sharmaji,’ I teased.

  ‘You are very naughty, bhabhiji,’ he said blushing, the colour of his cheeks blending in with the colour of the tilak on his forehead.

  Moments later, Deep’s car whizzed by at top speed. Someone was feeling hurt. Touché.

  Another half an hour later, after having navigated through dust clouds that seemed to have found a permanent home in Gurgaon, I had a layer of sand on my skin that made it feel itchy. I felt nauseated by the obnoxious smell of exhaust fumes, Sanjeev’s sweaty armpits and his hair oil, and I was cursing my decision. By the time we reached the restaurant, we found that the others were comfortably seated and already chugging cool beer. I took the empty seat next to Madhuri, bang opposite Deep, and allowed myself to soak in the refreshing lemon grass scent. While Sanjeev humorously narrated the incident of being caught by a traffic policeman, for taking a pillion-rider without a helmet, and then escaping without a ticket or a bribe, I stole a quick glance at Deep. He was dressed in a collared, lime yellow tee and faded blue Levi’s jeans. This was the first time I had seen him in casual Friday attire and he looked surprisingly charming. Good for me, I thought. It would have been tough to lure someone I found unattractive. Tonight, as per the plan, I was going to tease him, flirt with him and tempt him, and then in the end I would leave him high and dry. A perfect KLPD (Khadi land pe danda) in an IITian’s lingo.

  Madhuri caught me eyeballing Deep and smiled approvingly. ‘Who’s the hottest girl in the world, my desi girl, my desi girl,’ she hummed in my ears.

  I returned the compliment by saying that her boot-cut jeans suited her curvy hips perfectly.

  Becoming conscious of her pear shaped body, she said wished she had an hour-glass figure like mine.

  I suggested that she wear boat-neck tops with slight embroidery to widen her shoulders and balance her small bust with her full thighs.

  Amid the discussion on female body types, I gingerly raised my eyes to check on Deep and catch his attention, but he was engrossed in the office gossip that dominated the conversation around the table. One guy was cribbing about how the salary hike had reduced this year from 100 per cent to 50 per cent while the another guy felt a desperate need to increase the estrogen levels among the staff. It was basically an outing of Deep’s close associates from office, all of whom had been with iTrot for at least two years, barring Madhuri and me. First week at work, I had little to complain about other than the boring training, the flat taste of instant coffee and the scarcity of pencil sharpeners. I was playing the role of a passive listener, when I heard Kavita complain about her insensitive, manipulative MIL.

  ‘Doesn’t your husband say anything?’ I asked, genuinely surprised.

  ‘I guess the poor husband finds himself stretched between his wife and his mom,’ empathized Vikas, who was sitting beside me. I had seen him earlier on the first floor a couple of times, but I had never met him before. I noticed that he had a handsome face though the hair on his sides was beginning to thin.

  ‘Indian men,’ I said sarcastically, ‘They grow up enough to have sex with their wives but never to stop sucking up to their moms.’

  Kavita burst out laughing loudly at the crass humour of my comment, but Vikas stared at me like I had slapped him on his cheek. Mission accomplished. I had everyone’s attention, including Deep’s.

  Deep bent forward towards me, pursed his lips in amusement and narrowed his eyebrows suspiciously. ‘I am sure you won’t stop loving your dad just because you are married and have a different surname,’ he challenged.

  ‘You’re right, I won’t,’ I said, staring directly into Deep’s eyes, ‘and neither will I change my surname,’ I declared confidently. ‘But I will not have an arranged marriage either. I will marry a guy I love and know well. A guy who will stand by my decisions.’ I took a swig of my beer and ran my tongue sensuously across my lips.

  ‘I agree with you, Suhaaniji,’ supported Sanjeev. He then took out the picture of a slim girl holding a matka, her short choli revealing her fair navel, but her face covered under the chunri. ‘This is what my parents sent me and expect me to say yes to. Now how can I marry an unknown face, Ji.’ He then looked hopefully in Madhuri’s direction and said, ‘I will also marry a girl I love and know well, Ji.’

  I watched Madhuri, waiting for a reaction, but she sat inert, expressionless, studiously ignoring Sanjeev. My girl–guy relationship sense told me something was wrong, but I soon got distracted.

  ‘Arranged or love,’ Deep was saying, ‘I have no problem whichever way a girl wants to enter my life … or me.’

  His sassy remark was received with a huge applause, especially from the boys.

  ‘I actually had a love marriage,’ divulged Kavita to my utter shock. ‘Knew the guy for three years, or so I thought.’

  ‘I also fucking thought I understood the girl I married,’ retorted Vikas, defending the male of the species.

  I caught Vikas smirking at Kavita and felt a strange tension in the air between them. It was weird that both Kavita and Vikas were dissatisfied with their love marriages. If three years wasn’t enough to get to know a person, how does one ever figure out whom to marry? Were my ideas about love marriage all wet?

  ‘Understand a woman? Are you kidding me?’ Deep chortled mockingly. ‘Try complimenting your girlfriend and she will tell you to stop lying. Now try keeping quiet and you will be accused of not noticing her or taking her for granted,’ joshed Deep. I smiled inwardly at having similarly blamed Jay for being glib and non-observant on several different occasions.

  ‘Women are too complicated for our simple minds, yaar,’ Deep summarized and there was a general chorus of agreement from the men around.

  ‘No, they are not,’ I asserted, keeping my eyes locked with Deep’s. ‘It’s just that a woman doesn�
�t only want that ONE thing men are after.’

  ‘You are right. The woman doesn’t want one thing alone,’ said Deep smugly. ‘She wants to be loved, to be respected, to be desired, to be needed, to be listened to, to be trusted, to be praised, and she also wants that ONE thing.’

  Despite myself, I found his wickedly honest sense of humour in complete alignment with my spicy single-track mind. I couldn’t stand the fake people who thought of sex and said behenji. Grinning, I bit my lower lip suggestively.

  Sanjeev, who was fascinated by Deep’s knowledge of the fairer sex, asked him if he had ever been in love.

  ‘Arz kiya hai,’ said Deep in his deep throaty voice.

  ye na thee hamaaree qismat ke wisaal-e-yaar hota [wisaal-e-yaar = meeting with a lover]

  agar aur jeete rehte yahee intezaar hota

  tere waade par jiye ham to ye jaan jhoot jaanaa

  ke khushee se mar na jaate agar eitabaar hota [eitabaar = trust]

  koee mere dil se pooche tere teer-e-neemkash ko [teer-e-neemkash = half-piercing arrow]

  ye khalish kahaan se hotee jo jigar ke paar hota [khalish = pain]

  In a flash, my mind went back to the cool summer nights I had spent with Tanu di. Lying on her terrace, gazing at the starlit sky, and listening to Ghalib playing on her old, rusty tape-recorder. Deep paused in between to explain how the poet would have died with happiness if he had confidence in her love and how he felt the pain of the arrow half piercing his heart, that is, his unfulfilled love. But I who knew the verses by heart, needed no interpretation. Everyone watched Deep weave the magic of words as he melodiously sang Ghalib’s soul-stirring ghazal. My mind, however, was searching for a suitable riposte. Lost in a dreamy trance, experiencing the joys and the sorrows as penned by the famous poet, the words traipsed through the memories and fell out of my mouth. Before I knew it, I was reciting a couplet from the another of Ghalib’s famous ghazals.

  mohabbat mein naheen hai farq jeene aur marne kaa

  usee ko dekh kar jeete hain jis kaafir pe dam nikle

  ‘There is no difference between living and dying when you are in love,’ I deciphered for the others. Startled at my esoteric music taste, they looked at me with undisguised curiosity, like I was a book with an erotic cover which contained the shlokas from the Bhagavad Gita. Impressed by my unexpected rejoinder and making no attempt to hide his surprise, Deep took on the challenge and responded, ‘Just because I smile in front of my lover, she thinks that I am all right.’

  unke dekhe se jo aa jaati hai munh par raunaq

  wo samajhate hain ki bimaar kaa haal achchha hai

  I immediately knew what I was going to say. ‘Don’t ask how I am doing in your absence; see how you are faring in front of me.’

  mat pooch ke kya haal hai mera tere peeche?

  too dekh ke kya rang hai tera mere aage?

  The witty repartee continued and people looked from my face to his and back again in awe. It was no longer about putting the other person down. The initial rivalry had transformed into a jugal-bandi where we were both experiencing the intangible joy of sharing a common passion. I felt like a part of our souls was connected and somehow this connection was nourishing my existence. It was satisfying my innate social desire to be understood by others, to be told that I was right, and to be assured that I was not alone. It made me feel more complete and alive.

  Two hours later, I stood in the washroom, looking at myself in the mirror for the second time during the evening. Ignoring the strange glow adorning my face, I applied a coat of light pink lip gloss and re-adjusted the underwire of my seamless, push-up bra to snugly hold my assets in place. I undid my bun and left my hair open, letting it ripple down loosely over my shoulder skin. The evening had been fabulous and I had thoroughly relished the Mediterranean hummus, falafels, the cool beer and the playful banter. Coming out of the washroom, I was glad to find Deep standing all by himself in the foyer. I was hoping to be able to get a ride back alone with him. It was hot outside and he had opened his t-shirt buttons, revealing a manly tuft of chest hair. What? No, I was not leching at him. Just because I find black body hair more macho than light brown doesn’t mean I wanted to get all over him.

  ‘Where are the others?’ I asked off-handedly.

  ‘Couldn’t take any more Ghalib,’ chuckled Deep, as we headed to the car park.

  ‘You have a good voice,’ I commended, in what clearly was an understatement of the year.

  ‘You have good taste,’ he responded with a complacent smile.

  We walked along the pavement in silence, till we reached the car. There was a palpable restlessness and excitement in the air.

  ‘You play any games?’ I asked, just to keep the dialogue going.

  ‘Games as in mind games like chess and bridge? Used to be in the hostel team back in college days. Haven’t played since though.’

  Ting tong! A bell rang in my mind at the mention of bridge. ‘Marry him. He can be your fourth bridge partner,’ whispered someone from the back of my mind. I quickly shushed my back office and told it to mind its own business.

  ‘I meant more like physical games,’ I said out loud.

  He smiled at me dubiously.

  Realizing the alternate implication of my statement, I soon corrected myself, ‘Physical, not as in getting physical, but as in involving exercise … er … I mean the other kind of exercise …’ Shucks! Why was I blabbering?

  ‘I play squash regularly. How about you?’

  ‘Not an expert at any, but used to play a bit of tennis earlier,’ I said indifferently.

  ‘What about your imagination?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘What about it?’ I asked cautiously. I had a pretty wild and sexy imagination. I wondered what he was referring to.

  ‘I thought painters preferred playing with their imagination.’

  I gave him a startled look. How did he know that I paint?

  ‘Your biodata,’ he replied to my unspoken question.

  ‘Oh! Yeah!’ I said dismissively, marvelling at how deeply he had read every word in my biodata and how serious he was about getting married to me. I knew I should just dump him and get it over with, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it. We chatted about this and that, mostly inconsequential stuff, both of us wanting but neither of us broaching the marriage issue weighing on our minds. He had turned on the car’s air conditioning but I was still feeling hot. I saw a tiny drop of sweat lazily trickle down his temple. I bent forward slightly and stretched out my hand to switch on the FM in the car radio. The black hair of his forearm accidentally brushed against my smooth skin as he changed gears. We both felt a spark of electricity run through our bodies in that brief contact. I sat back upright in my seat once again and looked outside the window. The glowing neon signs lighting the front of the multinational business offices, gave a playful, pub-like personality to the national highway. We would be reaching the MG Road any time now and my home was only minutes away from there. I had to do it now. Crossing my fingers, hoping that he wouldn’t take the rejection badly and screw my first job, I turned my attention back on the job at hand.

  Deep had begun to hum along the chirpy old number ‘Hum aapki aankhon mein is dil ko basa dein to…’

  ‘His voice is so titillating that it makes me want to make love to the notes as they come out of his mouth,’ babbled my back office. I reminded it that we were here to bewitch Deep, not to captivate ourselves. I had barely hushed the voices within when my libido kicked into top gear. My nipples became hard and tingling, craving for a touch. What was wrong with me? I never had problems being friends with guys or in breaking hearts in the past. Why was I behaving like a novice on a first date, about to experience her first kiss?

  I looked at his lips as they parted rhythmically, producing the rich, mellow sound that I wanted to get drowned in. I had to find a way to shut him up if I wanted to accomplish the task I had set out for. Suddenly a light bulb lit up in my head. It was again my back office’s brilliant idea.
I was going to kiss him so that he couldn’t speak and then tell him that I couldn’t possible marry him because we were not kiss-compatible. It would not only soften the blow but also minimize any after-effects. At that moment, in my libido-infused mind, the plan seemed flawless.

  We were waiting at a traffic light very close to my house now. I looked up at the stop time metre. I had forty seconds.

  ‘Deep,’ I uttered softly, gazing into his eyes.

  He turned and looked at me. His fingers were drumming the steering wheel and his lips still chanting the magic love spell.

  I tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. Thirty seconds. On your marks, get, set, go. I lapped my tongue over my lips, wetting them slightly, flung my body forward and landed my lips on his. He resisted the invasion for a brief second, after which he kissed back with the skill of an expert. He slid his tongue gingerly on my lips to warm them and then gently blew air on them, the hot and cold kiss causing an explosion in my body. I caught hold of his lower lip, sucking on it and flicking my tongue at it alternatively. Slowly, our lips parted and our tongues passionately and ruthlessly explored each other’s mouth, while the rest of the world melted away.

  The signal became green and a bike zoomed past us blaring its horn and snorting at us. Regaining composure, I unlocked our lips and pulled away. Deep steered the car aside and parked in the service lane.

  ‘I have to say something,’ he mumbled a bit awkwardly. He had the regretful look of a class teacher who was about to inform his students about the cancellation of a school picnic.

  ‘There is no need for you to be sorry,’ I said condescendingly, to spare him the guilt.

  ‘Well, I am not,’ he said serenely. ‘Not about what just happened. I kind of like the strawberry flavour,’ he added with a chuckle.

  ‘It wasn’t strawberry. It was a Bobbi Brown raspberry shimmer lip gloss,’ I corrected, having forgotten why I was here today.

  ‘Raspberry, hmm? Are you sure?’

  ‘You bet! I applied it,’ I said irately, ferreting for the tube in my purse.