Arranged Love

by Mittal, Parul A

  ‘Why didn’t I say no to him straight away?’ I asked puzzled.

  ‘It can’t be because you care for him. You are not the selfless, mahatma kind,’ Di stated, with absolute confidence in my imperfect humanness. Her eyes were still sombre but I was glad that she had regained her sense of humour.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I promptly agreed, relieved to be able to talk without any façade. Being the only child, I had always felt this pressure of being extra good, of doing what my parents would deem right. Yet, I was a normal human being with my own set of weaknesses. I liked to splurge on my shoes even though I knew that there were kids living on the street that roamed barefoot. I often judged people by their clothes and I sometimes picked my nose and threw the booger on the ground. Di, however, was one person with whom I could be just me, without having to be an idle daughter, the perfect girlfriend or a good, moral citizen.

  ‘Do you think I simply wanted to keep my options open?’ I speculated.

  ‘If you were in high school or college, I would say yes. A long-term relationship for the vast majority of kids these days lasts a semester or two. You break up with one guy and hook up with another. It’s almost like picking up a new mobile phone,’ stated Di.

  I found myself agreeing with Di that the affairs of the current generation were more like accessories. A clear proof was the popular chartbuster ‘Peechle saat dino mein’ which compared losing one’s heart to losing a denim jacket, a silver ring, a half-read novel and a new pair of sunglasses. I mean, nothing could have captured the commodification of love better than this song.

  ‘A college fling is like a Friday evening plan,’ Di continued. ‘You need plan B and plan C in case plan A doesn’t work out as you don’t want to be home alone. Love, however, is like the smile you want to wear every day for the rest of your life. You don’t want options when you are in love,’ she concluded.

  ‘Are you saying that I am not in love with Jay because I am keeping my options open?’ I asked, even more puzzled than before.

  ‘Is that how you feel?’ she asked, sipping her double espresso, bouncing the question back at me.

  ‘I don’t know what I feel, Di,’ I said, feeling all muddled up. ‘How do I know if I love Jay?’ I implored.

  ‘Love is like a child, hon. Just like a single exam paper cannot gauge a child’s knowledge, it’s hard to devise a test for love,’ Di philosophized. ‘Like a child, love also blossoms best when left alone to wander, make mistakes and learn. For your love to prosper, it’s important that you feel free with your loved one,’ Di expounded.

  I knew she was warming up and soon she would help me think aloud through this dilemma like many others in the past.

  ‘Can you be yourself with Jay?’ she asked, with a thoughtful expression on her face.

  ‘That’s a bookish dialogue, Di,’ I frowned.

  ‘Yes, and all that we need to know in life has already been documented in books by someone or the other,’ she rationalized. ‘Anyway, let me rephrase. Do you feel compelled to follow the low carb diet or do you do it because you know that it will benefit you?’

  ‘You know how I love my chocolates and fries,’ I said picking the leftover crumbs of my muffin. ‘Of course I do it for Jay’s sake, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love Jay. I do so many things for Ma and Pa as well and I know that I love them.’

  ‘That’s a different relation. With parents you are designed to obey and respect, while in love you ought to understand and respect.’

  Her love feel-osophy was going over my head now. ‘I am confused, Di,’ I sighed wearily.

  Di reassuringly wrapped her arms around my shoulder and said, ‘Now this is going to sound absurd coming from a non-experienced person like myself, but do you feel complete after having sex with him?’

  I looked at Di uncomfortably. It is not that I couldn’t talk about sex with Di, but I didn’t know how to admit it openly that while I had kissed many guys, I had never had sex with any. Not even Jay. Consider this a mental block, an unspoken promise to my dad, or a Tanu di effect, the maximum I had allowed Jay was to embrace me without clothes or indulge in cyber sex. Jay, of course, found this to be an absurd manifestation of my Indianness.

  ‘This is going to sound unbelievable coming from a vagabond like myself, but we have never done it,’ I said meekly.

  ‘What? I mean, really? I always thought you were the any person, any time breed rather than the right person, right time generation,’ she laughed mockingly.

  ‘C’mon now, does it mean I don’t love him because I didn’t go all the way or does it mean that I love him because I could stand up for myself in front of him?’

  ‘I am confused, hon,’ admitted Di comically.

  Seeing the exasperated expression on my face, she donned a serious-look face, and asked what it was that I wanted in a guy.

  Now, this was something I was very clear about. My ideal guy had to be physically attractive, have a good sense of humour and be cool about my previous affairs. He had to be comfortable with my social drinking, spaghetti tops, shorts and off-shoulder dresses in everyday life and not only on vacations away from in-laws. He also needed to be multi-talented, have an interest in sports, have a cultural bend of mind (music/dance/drama/art) as well as a decent IQ. Helping in household chores, respect for my career and treating me as an equal, all the things that the nineties’ women wanted, were the obvious musts.

  ‘Balike, are you sure you are not a re-incarnation of Mahabharata’s Draupadi looking for her five Pandav husbands?’ Di joshed as I listed the must-haves.

  ‘I bet Champ was all this,’ I challenged indignantly.

  ‘Yes, Champ was all this and more,’ said Di and I saw a glimmer of pride momentarily flicker in her eyes.

  ‘But he lacked faith in our love,’ she added dolefully, the spark leaving a dull ache behind.

  I already knew Jay met my eligibility criteria, but did he have faith in our love? More importantly, did I have faith in our love?

  While Di went up to the cash counter to order another espresso for herself and a cafe mocha for me, I re-read the last message on my phone.

  ‘Congrats. Looks like I have already earned five hugs. Am wondering if I should have negotiated a better deal—Deep :)’

  Something about the message made me happy and something about being happy bothered me.

  ‘Do you think I might be developing feelings for Deep?’ I voiced the possibility that had been silently nibbling at my conscience all through the week.

  ‘One hundred per cent, ma’am,’ Di confirmed. ‘The real question is whom do you love more—Jay or Deep?’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before? How can I fall for Deep if I really love Jay? Doesn’t this mean that there is something lacking in my relationship with Jay?’ I badgered her with multiple questions.

  Di smiled at my impatience. ‘You are now talking like Puja,’ she reminisced about the good old times spent with her gang of girls at IIT and a colon-dash-bracket spread over her face. Di had been especially close to Puja, but their friendship had suffered a setback when Puja’s sister Piya had allegedly lured Champ.

  ‘Puja used to believe that you only look out for opportunities if you are unhappy in your current situation,’ recalled Di.

  ‘I thought that is what you believed as well or so you told me,’ I asked baffled, for I had acquired all my love fundas from Di.

  ‘I do,’ professed Di, ‘but there is an exception to the rule.’

  I hated exceptions. They would pop up unexpectedly in your well-planned-out code and hang the whole programme. Taking a sip of warm chocolate-flavoured milk froth, I waited for Di to elaborate on the exception causing my life to go haywire.

  ‘Soulmates!’ she exclaimed, unravelling the mysterious exception. ‘Soulmates are two people who are drawn together by a very strong connection that often defies human explanation.’

  This was outrageous! Was Di trying to tell me that Deep-Ache Go-Yell was my soulmate? Could that explain th
e undeniable attraction I felt towards him, the indescribable appiness I experienced when he was around, or the inexplicable whim that had made me send him the Crushaider mail?

  ‘Do you mean that I really love Jay but I am attracted to Deep because he is my soulmate?’ I asked, dumbfounded by the absurdity of my own conclusion.

  ‘Or Deep is not your soulmate but then you don’t really love Jay either?’ Di verbalized the alternative.

  I threw my hands up in the air and looked beseechingly at Di to show me a way out of this ‘either both or none’ XOR gate.

  ‘You can’t possibly expect me to decide whether you like an impeccable, American-style, self-sufficient apartment with a 4* TripAdvisor rating across 300 reviews or a speciality lodging with a warm, loving, Indian touch having a 5* rating but only 30 reviews?’ Di replied.

  Di loved using metaphors to pepper her language. I smiled at how eloquently she had given Deep a higher rating than Jay and at the same time incorporated the fact that I had known Jay for much longer than I knew Deep in the number of reviews. Typically, when planning vacations, I would just choose the accommodation with better pictures, but here we were talking about life-long residence. Besides, Deep’s monster face had magically disappeared. I heard him and laughed with him, but I didn’t see his face any more. Anyway, I waited eagerly for Di to make the decision for me. To tell me what to do.

  ‘Hon, you are not in fifth grade and it’s not about choosing whether to sit by the window to enjoy the outside scenery or hide in the back row to pass around notes. This is not about whiling away time in a boring history lecture. Its about whom you want to spend the good and bad times of the rest of your life with,’ Di chided lightly.

  Oh! How I wished I was in the fifth grade! Although back then, every instruction from Mom used to be a reminder that I was too young to know what was right for me. Call me when you reach your friend’s house, come back before its dark, don’t speak with your mouth full and keep the speaker volume down. I had craved to grow up quickly and take charge of my life. Alas! Now I realize the value of those blessed, carefree days when all I had to worry about was how to keep my paper boat afloat in puddles of rainwater.

  I looked at Di and sighed in despair. It was evident that she was not going to tell me the answer. I had brought upon myself the curse of being a grown-up and would have to solve the equation myself.

  ‘I think better when I am relaxed. Let’s go for a full body massage. There is a 90 per cent off from a SnapDeal offer,’ I proposed.

  ‘I don’t like random girls touching me,’ squirmed Di, remembering the last time I had taken her to a spa.

  ‘Just tell them not to touch your breasts,’ I spoke loud enough to draw curious glances from the guys at the next table, and Di was out of the coffee shop in no time.

  Later in the day, I updated my Facebook status to say, ‘Love is like a game of poker. The longer you play, the higher your stakes become and the harder it is to give up.’

  Checkmate

  ‘How do you decide who is the right person to spend a lifetime and all your nights with?’ I had spent the whole day calling my close friends, who were either engaged or married, and asked them this question. While one girl had honestly admitted that she had just got too used to her boyfriend driving her around and paying for her shopping bills, and another had said that he had had many live-in girlfriends and this was the first girl who didn’t ask him to clean before or after, most people had said that ‘you just know when it happens’ or ‘it’s basically a gut feeling’. Hello? I was talking about love emotions, not loose motions.

  After a hard day’s work, I was disappointed that hardly anyone was able to give me a meaningful answer, one I could use to sort out my life. It was understandable if these people I talked to were in arranged marriages. When instead of only you, the whole family, often extended, is involved in fact-based, comparison shopping, it’s hard to add the right size, fun-in-bed or sexy looking columns in the comparison table. You just hope that your elders would look after your interests, like they had hoped from their elders, and so on. After all, they say, ‘Umeed pe duniya kayam hai.’ But I had specifically selected friends with love marriages. How could they not explain the most important decision of their lives? Was I the only one fussy about whom to share the TV remote, bathroom and papri-chaat with? Now, it was possible that they were scared that I might disclose their responses to their spouses (which I did, actually) or were afraid to analyse their feelings and discover that they might have made a mistake. Although, they all seemed happy and content in their relationships.

  The only plausible explanation was that there was no tangible explanation for love. I deduced that love was largely a collection of feel-good moments which kept growing over a period of time and then one fine day, when you had enough happiness in your emotional bank, you took the big plunge.

  Yet being a numbers person, and a baniya at that, I knew that rational decision-making could not be based on sunk costs. Just because I had invested some time of my life gathering memories in a relationship with Jay, didn’t justify my sticking with him if Deep was indeed my soulmate. But was he? I knew that Deep had been in love with another girl. What if that other girl was his soulmate? I wasn’t entirely convinced that I had a sambhar–idli or chai–toast type made-for-each-other connection with Deep.

  It was 9 p.m. on a Sunday night. Dad was practising his guitar in our TV-room-cum-den and Ma was sitting at the dining table, preparing the next week’s meal chart for the cook. I had been in and out of my room, calling friends, meeting suitors and ruminating over the week-long parantha vs pizza tussle ensuing in my mind. Unable to get any useful insight from the more evolved among my friends, I decided to surf the net on how animals choose their mates. Everyone knows that in the animal kingdom males have to flaunt themselves to mate. ‘Animal’s Got Talent’ had the usual entries for who has the loudest roar, the most colourful tail, the strongest tusks, the best croak, the finest nest and the best dancing shoes. But I had never heard of poop-flinging talent before! I was grossed out to learn how a male hippo flings a mixture of its faeces and urine to win a female’s heart (Fart for the heart!).

  To change my mood, I started reading about animal sex. Soon I was looking at the sex videos of Bonobo monkeys, humanity’s closest relative in the animal kingdom. It was amazing how sex for Bonobos was a simple act like a smile for humans. Or a wink, or clearing of the throat, or a handshake. Their entire societal structure revolved around sex, be it conflict resolution, barter trade, or celebration. Wow! I was just wondering if sex eight hours a day could possibly be the new world peace mantra, when Jay called.

  He was wearing a sporty, sleeveless tee and loose shorts, showing off the ‘heart with a broken arrow’ tattoo on his right shoulder. One look at his chiselled body and my artistic soul felt recharged and rejuvenated. All the confusion crowding my back office cleared up and the sunk cost turned into an asset. I would let Deep know first thing tomorrow morning that I was just not into him. Of course, I would apologize for sending him the misleading crush mail and give him the hugs for the sold paintings. Maybe I will let him kiss me one last time. I decided I would even give him my raspberry lipstick as a parting gift. Having worked out a satisfactory severance package for Deep, I shifted my attention on Jay—my KS partner for life. There was so much to say, discuss and plan.

  ‘I love you, Jay. I really do,’ I said, starting with the basics. I needed to hear it out loud as much as he did.

  ‘I am glad we got that one cleared,’ joked Jay in his usual, carefree tone. ‘BTW, you look awfully sexy in that Indian costume,’ said Jay drooling over the cleavage as my pallu slipped aside.

  I had forgotten that I was still wearing the georgette saree from the Birla Mandir visit to meet Suitor #5 earlier in the evening. I could see that Jay was feeling aroused and it made me feel even more seductive.

  ‘How did your family date go?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘Awesome! I finally got to reject a
suitor,’ I said, pumping my fists excitedly. With my parents and the suitors calling the shots so far, I was beginning to feel like the President.

  ‘Why? Did he not have a good enough body for a nude painting?’ Jay asked provocatively, sexily rolling his eyes.

  ‘I barely got to see him as his mom kept jostling him aside, hiding him behind her huge frame,’ I complained jokingly. ‘Besides, he really was looking for a reversible, double-sided jacket. A bold, hip look that he could wear to his drink and dance parties and a plain, traditional side to be displayed at home in front of his parents.’

  ‘You mean he wanted you to make both him and his parents happy?’ Jay said with a sarcastic smile.

  ‘I am really sorry, Jay,’ I said, with utmost sincerity. One thing I had realized in the process of meeting suitors was that your life partner was not like a painting that you could re-colour, touch-up or whitewash to suit your parents’ requirements. It was like a picture seen through a camera lens. What you saw at the beginning was what you got. I had also realized that I had been unfair in asking Jay to wear an Indian mask to please my parents.

  ‘But you shouldn’t pester me about the calories either,’ I stressed, trying to be myself with him.

  ‘I only do it for your health, hon,’ Jay clarified. ‘I would still love you if you were a size 10. Maybe even 12 or 14. Though you ought to agree that a three-month pregnant look can be a put off during sex.’

  This was going good. I was all for an attractive look myself. Di was right. Love needed freedom to grow. I could already feel the love overflowing and filling up my boobs.

  I was going to ask him about the Crushaider mail I had sent to him, when a chat window popped up on my laptop screen.

  Mom: ‘Jay shared a tent with Denise.’