by Ajay Patel
Lunch ended and Vijay looked at the packet of information Megha had brought to find out about the next event. There was a social hour planned where people were supposed to try and meet one another.
“So I don’t get it. How does this work?” Vijay asked Komal, the resident matrimonial convention veteran.
“I’m not sure. But I bet it’s some time they’ve set aside so the parents can try to meet the parents of the worthy ‘name tags’ if you know what I mean,” she intimated.
“Oh brother!” Vijay groaned. He could just imagine that his parents, in their zeal, had probably already put together a long list of women and their parents that they’d want him to meet. It suddenly felt like it was going to be a long afternoon.
Vijay walked back into the main room and found his parents talking to two people. They had already started, groaned Vijay to himself. As soon as he was in sight, Jayendrabhai motioned for him to come over to them. He evidently wanted to introduce Vijay to the couple with whom they were talking.
Before Vijay could even let out a hello, Jayendrabhai introduced to the others, “This is our younger son, Vijay.”
“Hi. How are you?” The man said bowing his head. He wore a brown cardigan sweater that looked a little frayed over blue slacks. The woman, who appeared to be his wife, bobbed her head in synchronicity, without saying anything and smiling broadly like a Cheshire cat. She was overweight and wore a crimson sari that exposed her midriff. All Vijay could think was that if they had a daughter, any guy that was introduced to her would only look at the mother and fear for the future.
“Fine. It’s nice to meet you.” Vijay bobbed his head in response. He had never met them before.
“This is Kanu and Manisha. Manisha and I went to college together long time ago,” explained Shantiben.
Vijay decided to play psychic and predicted that Kanu uncle and Manisha auntie had a daughter that they wanted him to meet.
“Kanu and Manisha have a daughter,” Shantiben said leadingly to him. Bingo, thought Vijay.
“Yes, have you been meeting Priya? She’s short with long hair.” Manisha auntie provided a description that was not very descriptive. After Vijay shook his head no, she continued, “She is going to come here any minute and I was telling your parents that I would love for you to meet her. Oh there she is now!” Manisha auntie said, pointing to someone at the door behind Vijay. “Priya!” she motioned for her loudly and urgently to come over, almost as if Vijay were a blue-light special at K-Mart that was soon to expire.
Vijay was surprised when he saw her. From behind him came a petite woman who fit more in the mold of a model from Bebe as opposed to Lane Bryant. She had long straight hair that she wore up to accentuate her graceful neck. She had lively eyes with a smile that always seemed turned on.
“Hello,” she said pleasantly, generally nodding in Vijay and his parents’ direction.
“Priya, this is Jayendra uncle and Shantie auntie, and their son Vijay.”
Vijay just waved a hello not shaking her hand or anything. After all, parents were around. Any body contact might be construed as a signal for marriage.
She waved shyly back, shrugged her shoulders and smiled some more as her parents then proceeded to talk to his parents while they just looked at each other silently. Vijay couldn’t believe it. Here was the first girl that his parents introduced him to at the convention and she seemed pleasantly attractive.
Unfortunately, they were unable to speak another word because within a few minutes another uncle-auntie couple had, without any invitation, joined them, actually bumping Manisha auntie, Kanu uncle and sadly, Priya, on to other families making introductions. The new couple, too, had a daughter in tow for Vijay to meet.
“Hello, my name is Bhupendra, this is my wife Sushila, and this is our daughter Vandana.” Bhupendra uncle was over six feet tall and carried himself in a manner which indicated to Vijay that Bhupendra uncle knew what he wanted and usually got it by being louder than anyone else. He wore a silk collarless shirt with the top two buttons open exposing a shiny gold necklace around his neck. Sushila auntie was much shorter and much quieter, no doubt satisfied in her husband talking for both of them. Their daughter Vandana, on the other hand, appeared to be a pleasant cross between the two. Like Priya, Vandana was pretty, although her look was entirely different. She was dressed in an all-black outfit with a purple scarf tied around her neck. Her hair, short by most people’s standards, appeared attractive on her and seemed to suggest a progressive spirit inside her. Despite this western appearance, she seemed content in her father making the introduction, merely waving a hello as had Priya.
“Kemcho, my name is Jayendra,” answered Vijay’s father, “and this is my wife Shanti and my son Vijay.”
“Yes, Vandana had seen Vijay in the room and said she wanted to meet him.” Vijay immediately took notice, his ego having been inflated faster than an airbag on impact while Vandana changed a shade or two in color at the embarrassment of that fact being made public. “And when we were registering, we saw Vijay’s name on the spreadsheet and we knew then that we definitely had to meet the family!” Bhupendra uncle said, further inflating Vijay’s ego. They, too, like Vijay’s parents, had gone through the spreadsheet with a red marker picking out boys that they wanted their daughter to meet, and Vijay evidently had made the “A” list. “Vandana is in pediatrics, finishing her residency, and I was just telling Sushila that it will be good to talk to parents who have kids who are in medicine. That way the families understand what the kids have to go through with working and everything.”
“I know,” Shantiben said. “We were happy when Rohit, our older son, first became a physician, but when I saw how much he had to work, I just could not be believing it!”
“Rohit?” Sushila auntie asked, perplexed at first. She then opened her eyes in admiration and said, “Wow! Both of your sons are doctors! You must be very proud of both of them, such a fine job you have been doing!”
Something then began to dawn on Vijay as to what was happening in the conversation.
“We of course are very proud of both our sons, but only Rohit is a doctor. Vijay,” Jayendrabhai pointed to him proudly, “is a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles.”
“Wait a minute!” Bhupendra uncle said, flustered, as he pointed to Vijay while talking to his father. “Isn’t he Vijay Patel from Pittsburgh, reference number 443? I saw the name tag on the table. The neurosurgeon, correct?”
Vijay looked at his parents and then Bhupendra uncle, and sheepishly took out his name tag from his pocket which stated that he was one of the other Vijay Patels attending the convention, the lawyer from Los Angeles, reference number 442, the one who wasn’t the doctor.
It was that last part about not being a doctor that dramatically changed how Bhupendra uncle and Sushila auntie acted. Whereas before, they appeared willing to wait for hours to talk and get to know Vijay and his family, now they appeared anxious to beat a hasty departure to find the other Vijay Patel. They then shamelessly said good bye, making apparent that their only interest in talking to them in the first place was so that they could introduce their successful doctor daughter to a successful doctor husband.
The rest of the social event was fairly uneventful in comparison. Vijay began to feel that this wasn’t necessarily the best way for him to meet someone as he followed along with his parents, this time with his name tag on in plain view after a stern look from them. Even with Priya, who seemed like she could be someone he might want to get to know, he hadn’t the opportunity to do anything more than wave at her because her parents did all of the talking. He needed to break away from them and find Rocky. Perhaps then, real progress would be made.
After a half an hour, his parents left to go back to the hotel while Vijay stayed behind. Walking around the hallway past the booths set up on the periphery of the Cottonwood Room, he spotted Milan with two other guys sitting on facing couches near the front talking in animated fashion and laughing loudly. Milan saw Vijay walk
ing down the corridor and waved for him to come join them.
“Hey Vijay! Come here,” said Milan. “I want you to meet some people.” Vijay walked over to where they were sitting. Milan introduced Vijay to two of his friends. The first guy was Jaymin who stood over six feet tall, was dressed in cords and a polo shirt and looked very athletic with short cropped hair. The second guy was Sam, who although he looked athletic as well, was as short as Jaymin was tall. Both were energetic and friendly and made Vijay feel welcome right away.
“So what are you guys up to?” Vijay asked.
“We were just doing some strategizing right now to figure out how to meet women at this convention,” said Jaymin.
“That’s easy,” Vijay said, speaking from experience, “Tell everyone you’re a doctor and they’ll be lining up with their parents wanting to meet you!” He then joined them by sitting down on one of the couches next to Milan as they faced Jaymin and Sam sitting on the couch opposite of them. “Why, do you guys have a better plan?”
“That’s what I was just trying to figure out,” said Milan.
It actually was quite comical when Vijay looked on the table separating the two couches. Strewn about were diagrams hastily drawn as if they had just come out of a CBS Sports telestrator during a football game, evidently documenting how they were planning to approach certain women at the convention.
Sam explained, “We’ve had a good look around today, so we know who we want to target. Now it’s just a matter of execution, which is what we’re working on here.”
“Okay,” Jaymin crouched over the table looking at them, “Ms. Bombay is with two not so attractive cousins, so I need suicide disruptive blocking if I’m going to be talking to her. Who’s with me?”
Vijay interrupted him. “Ms. Bombay? Who’s named that?” It seemed like a cruel name to be stuck with for an Indian woman. He almost wanted to ask if she was going to change her name to Ms. Mumbai now that the name of the city had changed, but thought better of it.
“That’s our name for this girl Sam and I ran into in the hallway when we first got here. She’s awesome! You must’ve seen her. She’s wearing this funky black outfit and had a purple scarf tied around her neck,” described Jaymin with admiration.
“Oh you mean Vandana,” Vijay said with recognition and little emotion, still stinging from the hasty departure of her parents.
“Wait, you’ve met and actually talked to Ms. Bombay?” Sam asked, sitting straighter in the couch. He evidently had some interest in her and wanted to hear every detail.
“Yeah, she came up to me and my folks with her parents to introduce herself,” Vijay hinted only to how he “was the man” when it came to having women interested in him, offering no further embarrassing details as to why they had left. “But why do you call her Ms. Bombay?” Vijay asked.
“You’ve got to do that or people will hear and know who we’re talking about,” explained Jaymin patiently, no doubt having already explained it to Milan. “She went to medical school back in Bombay and so that’s why we gave her that name.”
“You guys are too much!” laughed Vijay. He found it funny the great lengths they were going to in order to meet women at the convention. Just as his parents had their approach, so did these guys, albeit altogether different but yet still highly organized.
As the four of them continued to form strategies and describe women that they all had met and thought were attractive, giving each of them code names for future reference, Vijay looked over across the room and caught sight of Rocky waiting in line to pick up his badge and other registration materials.
“Hey guys, there’s my roommate checking in,” he pointed to Rocky. “I’ll catch up with you all later tonight and maybe we can meet Red, White, and Blue,” said Vijay laughing, referring to three women that seemed to hang out together during the morning session, each of whom wore some clothing that matched a component of the US flag.
They were now only waiting for a cute friend to join the girls’ group so that they could call her the Star.
Rocky smiled when he saw Vijay approach. “Hey, what’s up buddy? You look like you’ve been having a little too much fun from the grin on your face.”
“It’s been all right, although I’m sure it’ll even be better now that you’re here. Have you been to the hotel yet? I was thinking of going back and crashing until tonight.”
“I’m not going back to the room for a while. I’ve already taken a quick shower and came here to pick up my registration materials and my badge. Then, I’ve actually got to meet someone here,” he said the last line slightly evasively.
“Rocky, the one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t come here to meet some-one. You come here to meet some-many,” joked Vijay.
“With lines like that you are going to end up with some-no-one,” Rocky laughed back. He then explained that he had started talking to a woman named Tejal a few months ago and how things seemed to be going well from what he could tell.
“Oh that’s right,” Vijay now remembered. “Is this the woman you had told me wanted to meet you here rather than fly to California?”
“Yeah, she’s the one,” Rocky confirmed. “Anyways, we’ve been talking on and off for a while now,” he gave his ID card to the person at the registration table, “and it’s scary. A while back, I called her at midnight and we just kept talking. And before I knew it, my alarm went off. We had talked for seven hours!”
“Wow, that’s awesome! But wait a minute, how come you haven’t been sharing this all with me?” Vijay demanded. This was the first he was hearing about how serious it was getting.
Rocky sighed and said “To start with, I don’t know if anything is going on so there isn’t really anything to say. Some conversations are great, like I told you, but then weeks may go by before we talk again. Besides, I think I probably didn’t mention it to you, or anyone for that matter, because I’m tired of telling everyone about my failures. If it didn’t work out, people would just tell me I’m being too picky again. I figured if I did this quietly, nobody would know if things didn’t work out except me.”
“I understand,” Vijay responded. “But still, you know you can always talk to me if you want to.”
“I know. But I’m telling you. I’m done with all of this talking business. I want to start doing.”
“All right then,” Vijay said, “Starting now. Go find her. I’ll meet you at dinner, but I’ll want a full report.”
“Deal,” he agreed, and then walked away to meet Tejal.
Vijay went through the open doors at the front entrance, climbing into a waiting shuttle. As the door closed and the shuttle started to leave the area, Vijay leaned his head against the window and stared at the convention hall hoping that fate had finally taken a change of heart for Rocky and that all his doing would finally leave him something good to talk about.
After taking a nap, Vijay dressed in slacks and a sweater and met up with his parents in the hotel lobby. Shantiben looked at him and although she said nothing, she was obviously wondering why her son was not wearing one of the many suits she had told him to bring. Vijay, however, knew that wearing a suit would only make him a painfully obvious matrimonial candidate which although might impress his and other parents, would make him little headway with the women he hoped to meet that night.
He looked around in the reception area once they arrived at the convention center. Although there were parents and some kids present, they didn’t hang out with each other as much anymore. It was almost as if the parents felt like they had done all the pushing that they possibly could and now it was their time to hang out with their friends, no doubt to swap matrimonial war stories about their difficult sons and daughters. Neither Vijay nor his parents, unfortunately, had a crowd to join and therefore they kept each other company as they surveyed the scene with plates full of appetizers in hand. Vijay hoped to find a friendly face which would allow him to break off from them, but he had no such luck.
After a while, an an
nouncement was made that dinner was being served, with the parents eating in a different room than the matrimonial candidates. Vijay left his parents and walked to the Hoover Room where a long line had formed at the front entrance. Evidently, the organizers had assigned tables for each person.
As Vijay approached the front of the line, a volunteer informed him that he was assigned to table 15. Wanting to know how Rocky’s visit with Tejal had gone, he also found out that Rocky was assigned to table 88 which was in an adjoining room. Once inside, however, he didn’t even have time to look for Rocky because a volunteer on stage requested everyone to take their seats so that dinner could start. Up to now, cliques of friends were trying hard not to be broken up by standing in the aisles giving each other comfort. They were now reluctantly being forced apart to go to their randomly assigned seats.
Vijay abandoned his search for Rocky with a sigh and headed towards his table. There was already one woman sitting. Vijay exchanged brief nods of acknowledgement before joining her. The woman was dressed in business casual attire, wearing a black pant suit with a plain cream blouse. She had an angelic face with cherub cheeks. But unfortunately, the pudgy look hadn’t stopped there. She was a little overweight, perhaps wearing the color black in the hopes that it indeed was slimming. Before Vijay and the woman could even introduce themselves to each other properly, two other women and another guy joined them completing the table.
“Should we go around and do introductions?” asked Vijay. The table had been fairly silent after each person’s cursory hellos when they had sat down. Evidently nobody was up for taking on the chore of being the host so he obliged. “My name is Vijay. I’m from California and this is my first convention.” He then looked to the woman to his left that had been seated at the table first.
The pudgy woman in the black pant suit appeared to think the idea of everyone introducing themselves to the table to be a good one and complied. “Hi everyone. My name is Dipali and I’m from Evanston which is a suburb outside of Chicago. This is my second convention. I didn’t go to the one last year, but I went to the one in Atlanta the year before.” Dipali then looked to the woman to her left.