Arranged Love

by Mittal, Parul A

  I was irked that Ma was spoiling my feeling of oneness with Jay. Whatever happened to the ‘trust is important for love’ gyaan she had given me?

  But I was pleasantly surprised that my mind hadn’t switched to a porn channel on hearing about Jay going near Denise. ‘You know it is true love when you don’t feel jealous,’ I updated my status on FB.

  Me: ‘Stop snooping around Ma. I know Jay loves me.’

  I closed the chat window.

  ‘How was your trek?’ I asked Jay nonchalantly. I had been so absorbed with the art exhibition that I hadn’t talked to Jay since he got back from his trek.

  ‘Oh! It was fun. Did I tell you that Bob sprained his ankle at the eleventh hour? Luckily, Denise was sporting enough to fill in at a short notice. It sure saved us a few hundred bucks,’ Jay told coolly.

  You can’t suspect your boyfriend when he compares his ex to a discount coupon. For the first time, I could see how Denise was like any other guy friend to Jay, as he had assured me so many times before, and nothing more.

  ‘Did you share the tent with her?’ I asked just for the sake of it.

  ‘Oh! Yeah. She didn’t know the others. Besides, I couldn’t trust those guys with a beautiful body like hers.’

  Jay was still as cool as the other side of the pillow, but I was disappointed that he was being protective about Denise. I was trying hard not to read between the lines or see between the sheets, when Ma sent me a link to a picture of Jay and Denise sitting cosily together on Jay’s bike. Jay was sitting on the seat, his hands on the handlebar, while Denise was sitting on the crossbar, facing him, her face inches from him and her arms around his neck. Sitting at a higher level than her, he had a clear view inside her blouse. This was getting too much for me. I just copy-pasted the link for Jay to see, closed my eyes and practised deep breathing.

  ‘She struck the same pose with all the guys. It’s no big deal, hon,’ comforted Jay.

  Sometimes I wondered if anything at all was a big deal for him and feared that one day I would also get assigned to his ‘don’t care’ cupboard. I opened my eyes and looked directly into his, searching for the truth. He could tell from the controlled pace of my breathing and hard, fixed stare that the water was beginning to boil.

  ‘Don’t start getting all jealous now like a Bollywood movie actress. You also went on a trip with that snogger boss of yours. Am I asking you if he touched your curves or kissed your lips?’

  ‘Then why aren’t you asking, Jay?’ I demanded. I wanted him to assert his right on me. To be possessive about me like he was about his iPhone.

  ‘Because I trust you,’ Jay reasoned.

  ‘Then why don’t you tell me what really happened on the trek between you and Denise?’

  ‘Nothing happened. At least nothing that you wouldn’t do with other guys.’

  I wondered if he was referring to me kissing Deep? ‘You know how even a simple high five between you and her bothers me. Why can’t you just stay away from her? She is such a lech.’ I was back to feeling envious and slandering Denise vehemently.

  ‘You need to have faith in me,’ said Jay earnestly, without raising his voice.

  ‘I need you here with me, to be able to have faith,’ I said, almost pleadingly. ‘Do you think you could come to India for a short while?’ I was confident that once my parents got to know him, they would love him as he was and there would be no need to change him.

  ‘Well, I was planning to surprise you at Neetu’s wedding reception,’ disclosed Jay, his mesmerizing hazel eyes smiling lovingly at me.

  I didn’t know what to say. I was overwhelmed with joy. I immediately started thinking about the places I wanted to show him and people I wanted him to meet—my room and all my childhood pictures, my paintings, my kindergarten school, Neha, Tanu di, MD and Sanjeev, and may be even Deep. Right now though, I wanted to compensate for my unwarranted fury from moments ago. ‘Do you want me to read aloud a “wild one-on-one consensual sex” story from literotica?’ I offered willingly.

  Jay, who was always up for kinky stuff, immediately agreed and I started browsing through the vast collection of erotic titles on the site. I narrowed down on one about an unusual encounter with a masseur. I had barely read the first line when Mom pinged again.

  Mom: ‘How are you, beta?’

  ‘Horny! In the middle of cyber sex,’ I wanted to type but I controlled the urge to shock her. I knew she was concerned, having seen Denise’s lewd picture with Jay.

  Me: ‘I am fine, Ma.’

  Mom: ‘You are a strong girl, beta.’

  Me: ‘Yeah.’

  Mom: ‘I know you will be able to survive this.’

  Me: ‘Thanks. Bye.’

  I felt like Mom was trying to prepare me for some bad news like she had done when she had broken my favourite photo frame during one of her obsessive cleaning sessions or before giving me the news of my grandma’s death.

  But eager to get back to the girl who had just entered the massage parlour, I hurriedly cut her off.

  The masseur offered the delicate, dainty girl a glass of exquisite wine. He then blindfolded himself and asked the girl to remove her clothes and lie down on the table. He dipped his hands in oil and asked the girl to place them on her navel. He was about to navigate his fingers up to her swells when the chat window popped up yet again. Mom had sent me some YouTube link this time. Before I could tell her that her spy job was interfering with my blow job, she wrote, ‘Watch this video once and you have my permission to marry Jay.’

  I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. I told Jay to wait as my mom wanted to chat and promptly clicked on the video link. It was a clip from Jay’s biking trip last week. Jay and Denise were sitting on chairs, chatting like long-time friends. Denise was even wearing a dull grey, full sleeved, unrevealing sweater. If Mom thought this could dissuade me from loving Jay, she needed to get out of her seventies’ ‘boys only want one thing from a girl’ mindset.

  I was going to pause the video for later viewing, when the screen went blank. I could barely see their silhouettes, but I could hear her moan, ask for more and then scream in ecstasy while he groaned her name time and time again.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Jay, who had heard the video playing on my laptop and recognized the voices.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me Jay, what you are doing?’ I asked, my voice stiff and offended.

  ‘She is nothing more than an old pair of jeans that I have no emotional attachment to, but I might wear it once in a while in moments of despair,’ Jay explained with amazing poise.

  As always, he was as calm as the middle of the ocean when the coast is tsunami-struck. He must have been a mortuary manager in his previous life, to be able to keep such a calm countenance when people around him were burying their dead.

  ‘Don’t try to do a snow job on me, Jay,’ I challenged coldly.

  ‘We were just chugging beer outside our tents in the moonlight, chatting and chilling after a tough day of physical activity,’ he began recounting the incident. ‘After a while, the others retired to their tents and it was just the two of us. She asked me if I missed you and I said yes. She said I was very lucky to have found you. Then I asked if she was happy with her boyfriend and she said they broke up last month because he thought her boobs weren’t big enough. Next minute, she took off her top and asked me what I thought her cup size was. She was wearing this black crochet lingerie that came around her neck like a deep halter, barely covering her nipples. I have to admit that I had forgotten how soft and succulent her breasts looked and got an instant hard on. She started rubbing herself on me and I lost all self-restraint. So when she asked if I was game for some bridge sex, I couldn’t say no. I really wasn’t planning to cheat on you or anything. Besides, it’s not like we are married. I know many guys who have made out with multiple, random girls at their bachelor’s party.’

  ‘So was this your bachelor’s party?’ I asked, aghast at how casually he had justified his one-night stand with Deni
se.

  ‘If that makes is easy for you to accept it, sure!’ he offered magnanimously.

  ‘What if you got similar opportunities after we are married? What would you do, Jay?’ I asked, feeling hurt, angry and jealous all at the same time.

  He simply shrugged his shoulders in response.

  ‘I would like it if we played Dumb-C at another time, Jay. I really need verbal answers here,’ I said furiously.

  ‘Frankly, I don’t know,’ said Jay. ‘Sometimes you are out in the market, strolling aimlessly. You see a fancy car and you get enticed into taking a free trial ride. I don’t see what’s wrong in that. It can happen to you too.’

  I heard him legitimize his actions and suddenly it occurred to me that the differences between us were more than IST and EST time zones now. There was a whole generation gap between him and me. Sex for him was like eating. While he was serious about his relationship with me the way he enjoyed his meat and potatoes, a one-night stand was akin to a hot fudge sundae for dinner. I was the healthy option that would nourish him while Denise was his break from the regular monotony of marriage. However, like most Indians, though I loved variety in my cuisine and culture, I believed in monogamous mating for life.

  In Neha’s ‘boys are like cars’ world, Jay was an American car, incapable of delivering speed and mileage on Indian roads.

  ‘Checkmate, Jay. Game is over, Jay,’ I said firmly.

  ‘What do you mean, hon? I love you,’ claimed a thoroughly disoriented Jay like he had just woken up from sleep.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I can never be myself with you, Jay,’ I replied with the same calmness that he had displayed moments ago. ‘Kadai paneer, cricket, karwa chauth and Kishore Kumar are all a part of me. I do want you, but I want you with a lot of modifications—with Hindi, with love for parents, with Indian values and without Denise. Besides, Suhaani Guy sounds more like a beautiful and tame cow.’

  ‘Like So-Honey Egg-R-Wall makes any sense?’ Jay mocked. ‘Denise was right that you never loved me. Jesus fucking Christ, I can’t believe I fell for your trap.’ His voice was no longer soft and loving.

  ‘What do you mean Denise knew I didn’t love you? I didn’t know it myself till five minutes ago.’

  ‘Because we never did it.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous! Anyone who doesn’t do IT is “not in love”? I am sure LGBT could sue Denise for making allegations like these.’

  ‘You just get into relationships with guys to legitimize getting physical with them, but you don’t want to go all the way because you don’t love them,’ accused Jay. ‘You played around with that IITian during the summer internship and then dumped him when he tried to make love,’ he added.

  ‘He dumped me, after making out with me. He said he wanted a virginal wife,’ I refuted.

  ‘All the better for you. You didn’t have to cook up a reason to get rid of him. Remember the poor guy at school whom you tricked into kissing and then ditched after a week when you had had your fill? You never even owned up to him or your parents that you were the reason he had tried committing suicide.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone says I love you in moments of passion.’

  ‘Yes, but you say I love you to justify the moments of passion. You have double standards for everything. You can only truly make love when you fall in love. I wish you all the luck for that. But stop fooling guys till then and spare them the agony.’

  Wow! So it was okay to have a sex video of fucking your ex on YouTube, but it was treachery if you kissed a guy and said you loved him but weren’t ready to make love to him!

  It was painful to hear such harsh words from someone who had been pledging his love to me seconds ago. I shuddered to think that I had been ready to hurt my parents for him. There was one last thing I wanted to know.

  ‘Why did you not respond to my Crush mail?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh! It was you then? I assumed it was Denise,’ he said, sounding genuinely startled.

  I had nothing more left to say or tell. ‘Goodbye, Jay,’ I said with decisive finality.

  ‘Well, what should I do about this nude painting?’ he asked indifferently.

  I saw his nude painting peek from behind him and remembered how exhausting it had been to control my excitement while making it. Presently, I felt nothing for him. After having gone through the ups and downs of the emotional rollercoaster in the last one hour, I was now feeling strangely serene.

  ‘Gift it to that fucking Denise. I am sure she will be able to put it to good use,’ I replied and disconnected.

  My updated status read. ‘Sometimes, all it takes is a trek to test if your boyfriend really loves you.’

  Love Aaj Kal

  ‘My current girlfriend and ex swapped places and I am loving it!’ Jay had proudly broadcasted our break-up news to all his Facebook friends.

  I felt nauseated on seeing his FB status the next morning. I wasn’t expecting him to feel remorseful, send me ‘I am sorry, let’s patch up’ messages, or eat fudge topping out of the jar, but I didn’t expect him to hook back with Denise and celebrate it either. It was like he had erased our relationship of two years with a Ctrl+Z, like an undo in an editor and gone back to the previous text in a flick.

  While most people had congratulated him saying ‘Old is gold’ and ‘Sweet deal’, my mail box was flooded with private condolence messages from our common friends. I knew it was good in a way because it was already out there for everyone to know, yet I couldn’t help feeling cheated. I mean, how dare he take all the credit? After all, it was me who had done a checkmate. ‘I had dumped the bugger,’ I wanted to tell everyone. Instead, I just posted the link to his YouTube video in a comment. Let everyone see what a piece of shit he was.

  I also decided it was best that I went through the post break-up rituals to exorcise my ex. So I deleted all his lovely SMSes that I had saved in my mobile, the emails from my Gmail and the chat history from Skype. I hid him from the IM buddy list, altered my Facebook settings to hide all future posts from Jay and unfollowed his tweet. I also downgraded his email address to the PITA category in my email prioritization tool. I still had to go back home and delete all our joyful JPEGs—arm linked, kissing, drinking and sharing a salad—that were lying inside a secret folder in my laptop. And then there were photos of us tagged together on FB that I didn’t know how to deal with.

  Heck, break-ups are not as easy as shredding photos and burning a box full of love notes any more. It can be quite a challenging task in today’s multimedia age.

  Sitting in my oversized ergonomic chair, I was busy severing all communication channels with Jay, when Deep asked me for the usual first round of coffee. Oblivious to the storm raging in my heart, Deep eagerly talked about Rohan sir’s visit to our office for the ASM next month and how we needed to show him some improvement on the customer conversion rate. Although the sketch of a purchase funnel typically reminded me of a weaver bird’s nest hanging upside down, today, for a change, I wanted to talk business. Anything to take my mind off the urge to squeeze and crush Jay’s testicles.

  I put myself in a casual web browser’s mouse, focused all my energies and started to think. What would get me excited enough to buy a holiday package online? I guess, other people telling me how great the resort was and how iTrot took care of all their needs. And of course, like most people wary of Internet deals, I would feel more comfortable if I could undo my action. ‘Please check your order details carefully, before you get redirected to payment gateway’ was the worst message to give to someone who was still in two minds. It was like putting him on the spot and telling him that this was his last chance to back out.

  I told Deep that we should actively promote the customer testimonials with our holiday packages and offer free cancellation for online bookings. Deep was pleasantly surprised by my insightful propositions and said he would promptly discuss them with the others. We were about to head back, when a harried-looking guy who hadn’t slept the whole weekend
came up to Deep seeking his sexpert advice. Deep caught the sly smile on my face as I pretended to look inside the bottom of my coffee cup. It had become almost a routine every Monday morning. With 9 to 5 office hours becoming a thing of the past and twelve-hour workdays being the new norm across the industry, marriages had also been reduced to being functional only during the weekends. Weekends were the only time people got around to trying to or having sex with their partners.

  I overheard the poor guy tell Deep that his scooter had a low pick-up and how he would be pressing on the accelerator for hours before his scooter’s engine would have barely lubricated. He obviously didn’t know that I had heard several similar stories by now and knew that the scooter he was having start-up issues with was his wife/girlfriend.

  Deep patiently explained that he was wrong in expecting his sensitive scooter to behave like a macho motorcycle. ‘A motorcycle gets into action immediately while a scooter takes its sweet time to warm up and pick speed,’ Deep elaborated. The guy’s face lit up as it dawned on him that while both men and women were two-wheelers, there was as much difference between them when it came to pick-up and horsepower as between a motorcycle and a scooter. He went away humming cheerfully, looking forward to slowly and lovingly servicing his scooter next weekend.

  ‘I think I should create an online KS FAQ,’ said Deep, his face radiant with the satisfaction that comes from giving happiness to others. ‘My knowledge can benefit so many more people if it’s available on the net.’

  ‘Excellent thought,’ I seconded his idea, ‘but I would look at monetizing these pearls of sexology.’ I had had the business idea in my mind for some time now. ‘Confidential, online sex advice—try us for free and pay only if it brings you ecstasy.’

  ‘Finally! Someone sees the true potential in me,’ exclaimed Deep enthusiastically. ‘Are you ready to become my partner in crime?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You are nearly an expert yourself, now that you have been eavesdropping into my sessions for a few months. Besides, I am sure there are aspects of female psychology and physiology that you understand better.’