Arranged Love

by Mittal, Parul A

  I am going to skip the details of the girl serving a tray of tea to the prospective groom’s party, walking shakily like she had just learned to walk, her eyes lowered to make it convenient to check out the guy’s package, while the guy sneakily sizes her bust. You must have all experienced this scene either in the main role or a side role. Frankly though, other than the gulab jamuns and samosas, nothing else is worth mentioning.

  Next day, I was watching the previous night’s recording of KBC with my parents. It was a scorching hot Sunday afternoon. The air conditioner was running on full blast, but I could still feel the sweat on my palms. Looking debonair in a black bandhgala suit, Amitabh was discussing the everyday life of a peon’s daughter from a remote village in Madhya Pradesh, who was on the hot seat, when my phone burped.

  Message from Deep: ‘I have decided not to go for an MBA.’

  In today’s paper, I had read an article on how the average salary across top tier B-schools had dropped by 25 per cent, wiping out the record 20 per cent to 22 per cent salary gains students made last year.

  ‘Good choice, but I am not available now,’ I replied.

  The very next instant, my phone started vibrating vehemently. My parents were a big fan of Big B, so all our mobile phones were kept in silent mode while they watched KBC. This was the only time Mom entrusted her farm with the Farmville cheats application to automatically plough, plant and harvest her crops.

  ‘Big boss calling,’ my phone’s screen read.

  ‘Are you planning to take part in that ridiculous reality show?’ Mom asked disdainfully, staring at my phone.

  Mom really had a wild imagination. I must have inherited it from her. I shook my head, picked up the phone and went inside my room.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Deep.

  ‘For?’

  ‘Your marriage.’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘To the arranged suitor #2.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘You just said you were unavailable, so I deduced that you have decided to marry the guy you were seeing yesterday.’

  ‘Are you jealous?’

  ‘Hell no, poor guy!’

  ‘I agree. Can you believe I was the fifty-first prospect he was evaluating in the last two years?’

  ‘Fifty-first! Are you sure he was not looking for a reliable, fully trained maid who can read his mind and receive his couriers?’

  ‘You mean like a soul-maid,’ I punned and we both cracked up.

  ‘So I take it that you told him that you guys were not “maid for each other”.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  Was there a sense of disappointment in Deep’s voice or did I just imagine it? ‘I didn’t but Dad did. The moment Mr Suitor #2 uttered that he was exploring opportunities abroad, I knew his game was over.’

  ‘Hmm. So technically you are still available then.’

  ‘Technically, yes. I am still waiting for my Mr Right to sweep me off my feet.’ I could have told Deep about Jay, but it was fun to flirt like a not-in-relationship-with-anyone single. At least, till you turned thirty, after which “wow, she is single” became “why is she still single” and you would rather pretend to be seeing someone than not.

  ‘Do you have a list of questions to ask these suitors?’ Deep asked curiously.

  ‘Of course!’ I had laboriously prepared a twenty-five point list after viewing ten YouTube videos on arranged marriages. How else was I supposed to convince my parents and the guy that we were not compatible?

  ‘You mind emailing it to me?’ he said seriously.

  ‘Wo ho ho. Now we are talking. So who do you want to test your compatibility with?’

  ‘Kamini.’

  I almost choked on the water I was drinking directly from the bottle.

  Deep obviously couldn’t see my reaction. ‘She sang a love song for me last night, after the movie and then she proposed,’ he explained.

  ‘Cool!’

  ‘I know, I am flattered but I am also confused.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I was also feeling confused. ‘She is the kind of diamond that shines so much that you wonder if its fake. And she seems allergic to old parents, but otherwise she will suit you,’ I offered my candid opinion.

  Deep burst out laughing at my description. He seemed unperturbed by Kamini’s ‘Main apni favourite hoon’ attitude. He also told me that he had informed her that she was expected to stay with his parents after marriage and she had said she was fine with it.

  ‘She even came over and met them this morning,’ he said in her defence.

  That was super quick. Our generation really was instant. ‘Is that why you dropped the MBA idea?’ I asked surprised.

  ‘No. That credit goes to you,’ I heard him chuckle softly. ‘Remember the other day when I told you that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and you said that a start-up doesn’t require an MBA?’

  WTF! I had rambled off some GQ about Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and our very own Baba Ramdev being college dropouts and even the Google founders Page and Brin being only engineering graduates. How was I supposed to know that he would take me seriously and drop the idea of an MBA or that Kammo would grab the opportunity to dip her biscuit in his chai? Well, as long as Deep doesn’t blame me for the mush at the bottom of his teacup due to Kamini’s dissolved biscuit, I was happy with my hazelnut-flavoured Jay-caffee. As Tanu di would say, it’s not practically possible for a girl and a guy to be friends forever. Of course, Deep was going to get married and of course, I was going to get married and we all know that friendships change after marriage.

  I could hear Amitabh Bachchan’s powerful voice asking for an audience poll in the drawing room outside. Not in the mood to listen to Kammo’s proposal story or interact with anyone in the offline world, I hung up the phone and decided to engage in some quasi-socializing and logged on to FB.

  Neetu’s status read, ‘Two more weeks to the wedding. I wonder if it will feel any different doing it as husband and wife.’ I thought about a typical Indian bride in a red and golden lehenga, sitting on a bed decorated with rose petals, waiting for her husband to come in and deflower her. Suhaag raat had such a special meaning in her life. It was her freedom from the social constraints to finally explore and enjoy sex with a socially approved partner. It was something she had been dreaming about and preparing for ever since she first saw the hot steamy scene on the big screen. And here was Neetu for whom the wedding night was like having yet another bite of the wicked brownie. It left me wondering if it was better to dig into a tried and tasted pie or if the whole virgin experience was really worth the wait. I added some smilies on her post.

  Jay had sent me a ‘mis u, luv u, can’t wait 2 kis u’ message. I replied saying ‘me 2’ and urged him to come to India for the Neetu–Ashraf wedding and meet my parents as well.

  I was impressed to see an update even from the not so FB savvy MD. ‘One day someone will walk in your life and make you see why it never worked out with anyone else,’ she had written. Looks like someone is falling in love all over again. Good for Sanjeev. I thought. His ‘parents to grandparents in one year’ project was really on a tight schedule.

  What really got me excited was the message from Neha about a cool new FB application called Crushaider. I went to its page and it had this bold white lettering on a red background that read, ‘Does your crush have a crush on you?’ Finally, somebody had come up with a cool, innovative, fast and embarrassment-free way of finding out if the person you loved, loves you back. Curious, I logged on their web page and sent out a ‘I have a crush on you’ message to Jay. It promised to send a mail to both of us in case Jay responded with my email address. It also assured me that in case Jay had a crush on some other email address, then he will never know who sent him this crush message, saving me the embarrassment. Not that it mattered in this case. I was just testing their service, not our love. Next, on a crazy impulse, I sent another crush
message, this time to Deep. With Kammo having proposed to him and his mysterious non-girlfriend date Meeta whom he never talked about, he would never guess it was me.

  Can’t Take Another Rejection

  I was sitting all by myself in a secluded treehouse, a few minutes’ walk from the main camp in Chakrata. Chakrata is a beautiful place 70 kilometres from Dehradun. Nestling in the lap of nature, set amidst the stepped farms overlooking a valley, with magnificent views of the snow-capped Himalayan peaks, Chakrata had divine beauty. Coming from the high-rise concrete jungle where my daily contact with nature was the pigeon shit scattered all over my balcony, I felt spoilt for choice. I took a long, deep breath of fresh, naturally purified air and then slowly exhaled it. I could feel the cobwebs in my mind getting sucked out by oxygen-rich air. Feeling rejuvenated, I picked up my sketch book and started capturing the pristine beauty of nature, untouched by mankind. My detoxification however was interrupted by the Airtel’s atoot network.

  Message from Mom: ‘Jay is going trekking with his friends.’

  I replied saying, ‘Stale news’. Ever since Mom had befriended Jay on FB, she had become a 24 x 7 spy looking for gossip to turn me against him. Initially, when she had started digging up Jay’s older posts, she had been shocked to learn that I had started dating Jay within a month of reaching Michigan. Confident that Jay had been my way to cope with homesickness and convinced that an American tofu was no replacement for the Indian paneer, she had been feeding me scandalous titbits from his past like the time he had been caught jerking off under the desk by his biology teacher or the sophomore year V-day when he had dated ten different girls in the same cafe at one-hour intervals.

  I had just deleted Mom’s message when I saw another new message icon.

  Message from Mom: ‘Denise is also going with him.’

  This time my heart stopped beating and my hands froze. Most of Mum’s news was like the repeat telecast of the Jay-covery channel, but this was sensational ‘Denise’ Tehelka. Jay had told me that a bunch of guys from his gym group were going for a weekend bike trail, but he hadn’t mentioned any of them being girls or specifically Denise. My imagination ran amok. I could see Jay sitting on a log in a forest, lifting Denise’s smooth, sexy legs to his lap and tenderly massaging her lovely feet with his firm fingers. Moments later, he was watching her bathe Mandakini-style under a waterfall, only now the white saree seemed to be missing. Suddenly the scene changed and he was sitting beside me up in this treehouse, rubbing the sides of my back with his thumbs. His legs were dangling down the wooden plank, occasionally playing footsie with mine. He cracked a joke about a man-sitting-up vs a miss-under-standing. I was giggling madly at his KS joke and … wait. KS joke? Something was amiss. How did my hazelnut-flavoured Jay-caffe become KS-spiked D-caffe? ‘Looks like you have been smitten with the Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na bug, teased my back office. ‘Thinking friendship, feeling love’—this was a common condition afflicting teenagers with little or no experience. But this couldn’t be happening to me! Urgh, this was so humiliating. Neha would kill me for this blasphemy. This couldn’t be happening!

  ‘It must be due to the excessive parental pressure that I was having to deal with,’ I consoled myself. I had met with two more prospective paneers (you could call them murgas if you are a non-vegetarian) in the last two weeks and my ear lobes were threatening me with a regional split if I didn’t stop the jhumkis invasion soon enough. Suitor #3 had been kicked out by my mom as he had asked for all her Farmville assets in my dowry while suitor #4 had rejected me on grounds of being a control freak. I had just asked him if he liked doing it in the bathroom or was he open to doing it on the dining table instead. Guess some people are rather touchy about where they read their newspaper. Thankfully I was spared this weekend as I had to come away for an official team-building trip.

  I wished that finding your life partner was easier. That, there was one fixed, easy-to-find soulmate for everyone and that one just knew the person one ought to love and marry. For instance, you could be born with a unique number on your navel that your parents could post in a worldwide database the moment you were born and search for the only other person with the matching number. Oh! That might not work, as it would require too many digits with the increasing world population. Besides, some parts of the world still didn’t have Internet access. Well, then maybe if you met someone who was your destined life partner, you could both develop a matching pattern, almost like an allergic reaction, only in the nice way. It could be a matching eyebrow pattern, or the love line in your palms, or something like that. See I was so confused now.

  I picked up a fern lying nearby and started plucking its leaves. J, D, J, D … I mumbled alternately as I picked each leaf. The last leaf had ended with D. C’mon, what did that mean now? Did I love D or J? Why was I finding love so elusive, like finding a star in the daylight or tomato in the ketchup? I really needed to talk to Tanu di. She was a master of these ‘one for sorrow, two for joy, three for letter, four for boy’ type natural love signals. I was turning my phone at different angles to see where the signal reach was better when it slipped from my fake, decorative nails and fell down.

  ‘Caught it,’ said Deep, as I was about to go down in search of my phone’s pieces.

  His voice was so close that I almost lost my balance and fell off the wooden plank. Standing a few rungs below the treehouse, he held me with one solid arm, holding my lifeline in the other. I smiled with relief and climbed back up.

  ‘What are you doing up here?’ he asked curiously.

  I couldn’t tell him that I had been daydreaming about him playing footsie with me. ‘Seeking myself,’ I replied and leaned back against the treetrunk.

  ‘Did I spoil the fun by seeking you out?’ he smiled. He had settled himself beside me, his legs also dangling. I felt a shiver run up my spine as his leg accidentally touched mine.

  ‘What are you doing up here?’ I asked to distract myself.

  ‘Hiding myself,’ he said in a soft, low voice and winked mischievously at me.

  Suddenly, my mind-Pod selected a hide-and-seek song and started playing it in my head.

  ‘Hum aapki aankon mein is dil ko basa dein to … hum moond ke palkon ko is dil ko saja de to.’

  I must have been lost in the song and singing it out loud, because I felt the warmth of his hand on my lips as he covered my mouth. Startled, I gestured with my eyes to ask what happened? In response, he tapped his ears indicating me to listen. I heard the sound of footsteps rustle the fallen leaves and then I spotted Kammo right below our treehouse. He put his free hand’s finger to his mouth telling me to keep quiet like I had a choice in the matter. It had been two weeks since Kamini had proposed to Deep. She had since been away for a family wedding to Australia. Having returned yesterday, she was obviously expecting Deep to announce his love for her.

  ‘I thought you liked her,’ I whispered, once I was sure she had retreated back to the main camp.

  ‘I like her and she is nice, but she is not Very Nice.’ He was simple and to the point, like only a guy can be.

  I felt a small air of jubilance and relief wash over me. ‘Have you told her so?’ I asked, faking concern.

  ‘Wouldn’t be hanging from here like a monkey if I had.’

  ‘No,’ I joshed. ‘You would be lying down there, trampled, like those crushed leaves.’

  He winced at the thought. ‘I don’t have a lot of experience with breaking hearts,’ he said, with a childlike naiveté.

  ‘And I can write a whole thesis on the topic,’ I laughed again.

  ‘So what’s the most effective and least painful method of rejecting someone?’ he asked half jokingly.

  ‘KISS.’

  ‘You mean like the way you kissed me before you could dump me?’ he accused charmingly.

  ‘Alas! I never got the opportunity!’ I sighed haughtily.

  He made a pitiable face at me and laughed. Unmindful of his teasing, I laughed with him.

  ‘Anyways, I di
dn’t mean that you actually kiss her,’ I clarified. ‘I meant, “Keep it simple, stupid!”’

  ‘And what would be simple for a girl?’ he asked.

  ‘For example, you could tell her that she sings better than you. It could lead to post-marital rivalry like it happened to Jaya and Amitabh in that movie Abhimaan. She may end up losing her mental balance like Jaya does in that movie and you don’t want to do this to her, and hence you can’t marry her.’

  ‘Hmm … that’s rather simple! I get the idea,’ he said and gave me a mock salute. He then took out his iPod and started listening to some songs. I picked up my sketch book and began doodling, while my back office was busy determining the probability of a kiss given that a sexually active female sat five inches away from a sexually active male on an isolated treehouse. I sneaked a glance at Deep. His eyes were closed and he seemed very absorbed in the music. Assured that my love for Jay was not under any threat from Deep, I slumped down in a relaxed position and began capturing the shadow of the treehouse on the farm below.

  We had played some cool icebreaker games after breakfast in the morning like group juggle and categories followed by more back-breaking and adrenalin-pumping stuff like rock climbing and rappelling. Most lean guys like Deep had been able to climb up the wall with relative ease. Sanjeev, of course, kept slipping down due to his weight and also his oily hands. After the initial couple of steps, I had found it very hard to get a grip of the stone above and lift my body straight up. The team, however, had cheered and I had managed to scale about one third of the wall before my hands finally gave up and I slipped down. Rappelling had been quite scary too although more doable, except that I thought my back would break.

  Lunch had been simple dal roti, and sabji but it had tasted delicious especially after the workout. Feeling drowsy after the overnight train journey, the physical activities and a wholesome lunch, I had walked up a few hundred metres away from the camp, found this lovely little treehouse with a hanging rope ladder and climbed up. Of course, all my sleepiness had vanished the moment I saw the panoramic view of the hills and the river Yamuna flowing through the picturesque valley below. There was still an hour before we would drive down for wide-water river-rafting in the Yamuna.