Arranged Love

by Mittal, Parul A

  If you are wondering how, in a short span of thirty minutes, it suddenly dawned on me that Deep was my powdered milk sachet, I will let you in on a big secret about women’s psychology that I have uncovered. Women love limited time offers and flash sales not because it helps them save money. In fact, they always end up spending more in sales than otherwise. Women love the excitement and frenzy of flash sales because things become unavailable very quickly and women love to long for things they can’t have. So, the realization that Deep would soon become unavailable if left unclaimed provided the missing impetus, adding fuel to my already smouldering fire. But what was I to do now? I couldn’t possibly just walk up to him and tell him that I was in love with him. I had practically tried twice and even successfully rejecting him once. He would think I was a shopaholic who can’t help buying a product from the shop only to return it the next day, or even worse, that I was like my mom who was pleading to a full-time maid she had chucked out last month to join back.

  I couldn’t seek Di’s advice for she was nestled cosily in Champ’s arms, ready to take off for her long overdue honeymoon immediately after the reception. I saw Neha was still busy on the international call with her beau. I rushed to the food stalls and was relieved to find Sanjeev and MD at the jalebi-rabri counter.

  ‘Jab kisi ko sachhe dil se chaho to saari kayenat tumhe usse milane mein lag jaati hai,’ reassured MD, addressing my quandary.

  I gave her a sceptical ‘real life is not the same as reel life’ look.

  ‘Kayenat is not some Bollywood bullshit. Its quantum physics,’ she immediately retorted. ‘Once we have made it clear what we strongly desire, then the conscious energies of the universe (quantum physics) line up actual events and encouragements to lead us to what we have asked for,’ she elaborated. ‘But God only helps who helps themselves,’ she parroted the age-old saying.

  My confidence bolstered, by the micro- and macro-elements of physics, I decided to take charge of the situation and start by asking Deep out for tea tomorrow in office. In the meanwhile, I requested Sanjeev to keep an eye on Deep who was now surrounded not only by cutesy caterpillars but also by giant, groom-hunting butterflies.

  How Do I Know You Are ‘the One’?

  I adjusted the height of my chair and listened to the sound of keystrokes on Deep’s keyboard. He was rapidly typing off a mail to someone. With my back facing his back, I breathlessly waited for the clickety-clack sound to stop so I could ask him for tea and send a deep-rooted kinship signal to the kayenat. To bide my time, I aimlessly searched on Google. ‘Can the typing sound reveal the message being typed?’ As always, I was amazed to learn that there actually was something called Acoustic Snooping and it had been well researched by UC-Berkeley students.

  Suddenly I felt a drop in the background noise level. The sound from Deep’s keyboard had stopped. His typical flight time, which is the time you take between key up and key down while typing on a keyboard, was one third of a second. I counted to two seconds and whirled around rapidly in my chair. I could see that Deep was about to get up from his seat and go for his morning cup.

  ‘Tea?’ I asked, trying to keep my nervousness at bay.

  ‘Sure,’ he smiled.

  Now, that was easy. Why did I not do that earlier instead of waiting for him to ask? I followed him out of the cubicle like I had on many days in the past.

  He poured my cup of premixed masala chai and handed it to me. I silently watched him make his tea: 4/5th hot water, 1/5th milk, one teaspoon sugar and an Earl Grey teabag. He told me he was planning a musical evening at his place on Saturday. My heart thudded with excitement at the opportunity to spend time with him and listen to his sexy voice. I mean, life had been rather dull in the past few months. One could watch and read erotic stuff on the net, but that was nothing compared to a live titillating voice. I complimented him on his mehendi skills and he teasingly confided that it was another one of his palmistry-like excuses to hold a girl’s hand. We talked about this and that and I felt like nothing had changed between us. It didn’t matter that his purple plaid shirt didn’t go well with his khaki trousers or that my hair had fuzzy ends due to a fading out perm. Everything seemed rosy. It was strange that a simple, routine chai with him was giving me such a high. I was enjoying the taste of to-get-him-ness when he was approached by a tall, large-framed, hugely overweight guy. The guy’s face was covered with a weekend beard and his shirt was half tucked like he had come straight out of his bedroom. He obviously had a KS case. The guy said something in Deep’s ears and expectantly awaited a solution to his ‘super-sized’ problem. Sipping my cup of tea, I happily observed the usual Monday morning ritual from a distance. ‘I will tell Deep about my feelings once he has dispersed his pearls of sexdom to this horizontally challenged guy,’ I thought to myself.

  ‘It’s important to build your stamina because it’s not a spectator sport,’ I heard Deep say after some time. Next minute, the burly guy strode out with a smug look on his face. I was all ready to bare my heart to Deep, but before I could open my mouth, he was whisked away from the cafeteria by the head of social media marketing.

  Clearly kayenat hadn’t yet received my ‘I want Deep’ message yet. Disappointed, I trudged back to my desk. I wanted to ask MD how long it takes for the universe before it starts aiding you in your pursuit, but she hadn’t arrived. Both Sanjeev and Madhuri had opted for the 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. shift to deal with MD’s morning sickness. I sat down on my seat and started browsing through FB updates.

  I saw that Neetu had posted, ‘Haven’t packed my bags, but am ready to leave.’ I clicked on ‘Like’ and commented that I was looking forward to recovering the cost of my designer lehenga that I had purchased for Di’s reception, by wearing it for her wedding in Agra. Ashraf and Neetu had gotten legally married four months back in the US but their big fat Indian wedding was yet to happen. There was also a message for me from a lady who had bought one of my paintings asking if I could do a nude portrait of her and she was offering me an advance which was more than my monthly salary. I immediately responded with a yes. Heck! I never realized I could have charged Jay for his nude portrait.

  Regaining some of my lost vigour, I absorbed myself in a hundred-page consumer dynamics book while I waited for Deep to reappear. The whole day passed by. Deep filed in and out of the cubicle many times but he didn’t even so much as throw me a smile or say a friendly hi. He was back to behaving cold and indifferent like the morning chai never happened. Confident that my deep-ache message had been hacked and tampered with on its way to the quantum physics mail box, I checked out the latest spa deal in Gurgaon on Snapdeal.com and headed for a fish spa and nail therapy session. My FB status read, ‘Man-agers, Man-datory, Man-ipulation or Man-s-laughter—I don’t like these men. The only man I like is Manicure.’

  Rejuvenated with fishyotherapy, I opened my purse to pay for the spa and saw the new message indicator on my phone. It was a message from Deep. Anxiously, I clicked to read the message. ‘I enjoyed our little tête-à-tête today,’ he had written.

  Yes! I screamed in joy. Finally, the kayenat had received my intimation. Now that things were back on track, I didn’t want my FB status to send out wrong signals and upset the quantum physics equation. I immediately changed it to, ‘I must have had some Felix Felicis because I think I’m about to get lucky.’

  I wanted to call up and talk to Deep asap, but deliberately decided to wait till morning. Some things were best done face to face.

  Next morning, I didn’t have to spy on Deep’s keyboard sounds because he asked me out for tea himself. After yesterday’s disappointment, I had figured that workday mornings were not a good time to discuss matters of the heart. So I asked Deep if he was free in the evening.

  ‘Are you asking me out for a date, Suhaani?’ Deep chuckled amusingly, his voice stirring up a mayhem of emotions in my heart.

  Did he say ‘date’? Does this mean he also wants to go on a date with me? Maybe, I should confess my love right away? Why wai
t till later? Love-struck and lost in my web of thoughts, I stared dumbly at his face.

  If you have ever waited to propose to your love, you would know exactly how I felt. It was not easy to hold back the surge of temptation and yet I was enjoying how every passing day was strengthening my desire for him.

  ‘How about tomorrow evening?’ Deep suggested. ‘Today, my chachaji is coming from the US and I need to pick him from the airport,’ he explained.

  ‘Sure,’ I said gladly and kept gazing fixedly at his face. He could have asked me to do a striptease, lick him naked, or share my favourite cheese-flavoured corn chips, and I would have gladly agreed to do it all.

  It was 7 p.m., Wednesday evening. Most of the crowd that availed of the office cab facility had left. I was springing with nervous energy when I heard Deep’s humming from the corridor. It was the same song that had been playing in the car when I had first kissed him. I felt this sudden, uncontrollable urge to taste his lips. I looked around. Our floor was empty. I stood up and pushed myself towards him the moment I saw his frame materialize in our cubicle. And I halted on my tracks when I saw Kamini standing behind him.

  ‘Aren’t you late for the cab?’ inquired Deep.

  ‘I thought we were going to … you said …,’ I stuttered, but it was obvious from Deep’s expression that he had forgotten.

  ‘Oh! I completely forgot that I had promised to help Kamini with the use of the content moderation tool. Let me take you out for dinner tomorrow, my treat,’ he offered.

  Well, it was only a deferral till tomorrow. He wasn’t saying a no, I assured myself. Feeling totally deep-somaniac, but somehow curbing the craving to smack Deep’s lips, I mumbled a yes and rushed to the restroom.

  Restrooms, I tell you, are mankind’s most important creations. When you need to be on your own, totally unreachable, even by a mobile network, just lock yourself in the restroom and you will have your sanity back in no time.

  Deep called me later in the night and sounded genuinely sorry for causing the confusion. He also said that his school gang was going out for dinner the next day, but since he had messed up badly today, he will just have a few drinks with them and then come over to pick me up from my home at eight in the evening. Somehow, although at one time it seemed to me like it would never happen, the earth completed one rotation around its axis in the stipulated twenty-four hours and Thursday evening arrived. It was half past seven. I hadn’t told anything to my parents in case of a no show, but I was all ready. Dressed in a new, sleeveless dress, I stood in my balcony looking at the rapid speed with which the metro line was being constructed. It was scheduled to be operational by summer of 2010, in time for the Commonwealth Games. At exactly 8 p.m., I got a call from Deep. My heart skipped a beat as I pressed the talk button.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Deep asked in the most husky, seductive voice ever.

  ‘I have been ready for the whole week,’ I wanted to say. But getting a hold over my wet dreams, I simply said yes.

  I could hear a lot of laughing and cheering in the background. It made me feel important that he was leaving all this fun to be with me.

  ‘Great, I will be there in fifteen minutes,’ he said. I was about to hang up when I heard a familiar female voice saying, ‘Don’t go, Deep. We have so much to catch up.’

  What was she doing there? I wondered and it dawned on me that his school gang obviously also included his childhood romance, Meeta. She was there with him right now, perhaps holding his arms and flirtingly looking into his eyes. And then the line went dead. Deep had disconnected. I expected him to call up any time and tell me that he wasn’t going to be able to make it. After all, he was already a couple of drinks down and his first love was pleading him to stay back. Why would he waste his time on me—a file he had closed long ago?

  When my phone didn’t buzz for the next five minutes, I picked it up and called Deep myself. I told him that we could talk another time and I was okay if he wanted to carry on with his party.

  ‘I love you, Suhaani,’ he said, in inebriated exaggeration and the line went dead.

  ‘I love you too, Deep,’ I said to the piece of metal in my hand.

  Friday, 9 September 2009, was 09/09/09. It was the last set of repeating, single-digit date that we would see for almost a century before 1 January 2101. People were calling it a special day, and abundant discount offers of 99.99 were floating around on the web. FB was also full of status updates citing the lucky omen and its history. I however didn’t feel very lucky, especially after hearing Meeta’s voice last night. I had updated MD with the latest in the morning, and she had suggested that I at least tell Deep sir how I felt, but I was undecided.

  It was six in the evening. Deep was sitting in his chair. I hadn’t asked Deep about a time today evening and he had not expressed any interest either. I stood up and peeked at his monitor. I saw his Facebook window open.

  ‘Hi,’ I sent him a Facebook chat message.

  ‘Hi,’ he replied promptly.

  ‘Are you busy?’ I asked absurdly.

  ‘As busy as FB gets,’ he wrote and added some smilies. ‘Am waiting to have a word with Rohan. He is busy with the director right now.’

  ‘I was thinking of leaving my job and pursuing painting full-time. What do you think?’

  ‘What does your heart say?’ he asked.

  ‘My heart says that it loves you,’ I typed and then quickly erased.

  ‘Our heart never lies so do what it says,’ typed Deep.

  Was there a way he could know what I just typed and erased? Did he have an acoustic snooping tool? I wondered.

  ‘Tell him you love him,’ nudged my back office. I told my back office to shut down. We were sitting with our back towards each other, in the same cubicle. I was afraid Deep might hear the thumping of my heart or my back office’s bakwas.

  ‘What does your heart say? I mean you have been thinking about a start-up for some time as well,’ I decided to toss the ball back.

  ‘That is exactly what I want to discuss with Rohan.’

  ‘You are serious about starting KSonline.com?’

  ‘:) :) Was thinking more on the lines of an online condom store.’

  ‘Holy fuck! That would be a stupendous success.’

  ‘Thanks. Your opinion counts. BTW do you think your mausi would still want to marry her daughters to me if I was the mastermind behind condomking.com?’

  Embroiled in my Meeta maze, I had completely forgotten about this mausi trail. ‘Dunno, but I thought you might have sorted things out with Meeta last night.’ There I had said (typed) it and without sounding jealous.

  There was a short pause.

  ‘I told you she wasn’t interested in me. We are great friends and will always stay that way,’ he replied. I cursed the inability of text chats to communicate people’s expressions. Yet, I didn’t want to turn around and talk to him face to face. Not yet. I imagined a transient glimmer of hope on Deep’s face as he thought about Meeta. He was still in love with her and it would always stay that way.

  I remembered Dad’s advice to marry the guy who loves you and not the guy whom you love. ‘Deep doesn’t love you. Forget him,’ the back office whispered. I was amazed at my mind’s ability to switch sides like a Gemini. Just minutes ago, it was telling me to confess my love. My heart, on the other hand, was still faithfully rooting for Deep.

  ‘Are you seriously considering marrying one of my cousins?’ I asked matter-of-factly.

  ‘Is there a reason I shouldn’t?’

  Yes there was. The reason was that I loved him and I couldn’t see him showering his affections on any other girl. Definitely not Pinki, Dinki or Chinki. If he was going to marry one of my cousins, he might as well marry me. Taking this as my clue to follow my heart, I wrote on the chat before I lost courage again. ‘Do you think we are compatible?’

  ‘Compatible? For what? Friendship?’ he asked confused.

  ‘Of course not, we are already friends,’ I responded, moving my ring in and
out of my finger with mounting excitement and anxiety. But I gave him no more hints.

  ‘Did you have a change of mind?’

  I wasn’t sure what change he was talking about as my mind was shunting rapidly from one side to the other like a shuttlecock in Saina Nehwal’s hand.

  ‘Sort of,’ I typed vaguely, drumming my artificial nails on the table in a nervous frenzy.

  ‘Cool. So you want to be my business partner in condomking. com now?’

  Fuck! I cursed a man’s inability to get deeper into a woman’s mind.

  ‘How about life partner?’ I asked, restless and running out of patience.

  Just then Rohan stopped by our cubicle, gave me a warm smile and told Deep that he was free to talk.

  ‘Umm … I have just discovered a bizarre bug in Suhaani’s code,’ spoke Deep with utmost seriousness. ‘I want to get down to the bottom of the problem and try fixing it. Can I drop by your place later in the night?’

  ‘Ah. I am a married man now Deep. I work elsewhere in the night shift,’ said Rohan and winked. ‘Come over tomorrow morning for breakfast and we can chat at my place. You can also come, Suhaani. Tanu makes awesome besan cheelas.’

  ‘Sure, Jiju,’ I smiled and saw him walk away from our cubicle.

  ‘You think my marriage proposal is a bizarre bug?’ I turned around to face Deep in shocked disbelief.