Arranged Love (12 page)

‘Suit yourself,’ I said and got busy clearing my FB backlog. I was swarmed with ‘is everything ok’ messages from my online circle of friends. I quickly went through the latest posts, liked thirty of them and commented on another ten.

Jay meanwhile started chatting with someone else. A minute later, he asked me, ‘Is your mom into hot car wash babes?’

‘Are you mad?’

‘Well, she just asked me about car wash hot.’

‘Why are you even talking to her?’ I demanded, as I searched for any recent posts on Jay’s wall that needed to be hidden from my mom.

‘Hon! I don’t want to be rude to my future mom-in-law.’

‘She doesn’t want to be your mom-in-law,’ I argued.

‘I think she is sweet. She just liked my picture.’

‘Forget it,’ I said exasperatedly, wondering what Mom was trying to do by befriending Jay. Getting to know him better was definitely not the right answer. This was definitely not
Gandhi-giri
, for my mom didn’t believe in being kind to her enemies. Jay was naive to take my mom’s actions at face value.

‘Last time, you only talked about your dad’s expectations from me. What about your mom? What does she think of me?’ Jay asked curiously.

‘Oh! She believes that love marriages are high risk, so you don’t even figure in her options list,’ I teased.

‘What if you fall in love with an arranged suitor? Will she object to it then?

I hadn’t really thought about this before. I was debating if Mom would have an objection if I fell in love with an arranged suitor like Deep, when there was a knock on Jay’s door and someone came in. I couldn’t see the person but I was certain he was talking to a female voice. I was sure it was not Denise, but my spy antennae went up all the same.

‘Who was that?’ I asked cautiously when he came back, trying not to sound jealous.

‘My mom,’ he answered carelessly.

‘Why didn’t you introduce me to her?’ I said. I had always wanted to meet his parents and get to know them better.

‘She saw you on the video, but she didn’t ask and I didn’t tell.’

It is interesting that in America, even your mom won’t ask you
an intimate question, while in India, your maid considered it her prerogative to know about the goings on in your life.

‘Listen, I gotta go drop my mom at the airport,’ said Jay. ‘Tonight was fun,’ he winked.

‘Same here,’ I said blushing.

‘And by the way, car wash hot is a fast observed by married women for the long life of their husbands,’ informed Jay.

‘That is Karwa Chauth,’ I exclaimed, disconcerted that he was still on chat with my mom.

‘Yeah, same thing,’ he chuckled and hung up.

I could hear Tanu di’s voice from the drawing room. I was about to log off from FB when I saw there was a new friend request from Deep. I clicked on accept without any compunctions. I knew I had gone off the deep end, but I didn’t feel any regrets. I believed in enjoying life, not fretting over it. What was done was past. What lay ahead was an unknown but definitely exciting future. I liked to live in today, in right now. And right now I knew that Jay loved me and Deep’s chapter had been sealed with a kiss!

Being five feet one and a half inches tall is not good for your lower back. None of the usual positions are comfortable when you are small. When the legs align well, the neck gets strained and when the back is well supported, the feet end up dangling in the air.

My personal favourite is the cross-legged position, though I can never get my eyes at the desired top viewing angle. I really wished I didn’t have to suffer so much because of my size.

I am talking about office chairs, by the way. And people tell me I have a one-track mind. You see, the office chairs, much like office t-shirts, are ordered in bulk, typically for sizes M and L. So for the likes of us, who are petite, these supposedly ergonomic chairs turn out to be quite a challenge! Anyways, so I was sitting cross-legged in my medium-sized, blue, ergonomic chair, working on my to-do list, when I heard the familiar husky voice.

‘Everything in control, Suhaani?’ asked Deep, as he entered the cubicle. It had been over a month since we went public as ‘just friends’. Yet, every time I heard him say my name, I felt the same nervous excitement as I had felt talking to him the very first time.

‘It was, until you came,’ I said, trying to hide the fluttering in my heart, and continuing to gaze at the unanswered emails in my inbox.

‘I don’t like it when girls tell me that,’ he said smiling facetiously.

I laughed at his sexual interpretation of coming. ‘Well, you came earlier than I was expecting,’ I said, playing along.

‘Usually I have better control on my timing.’

‘Been out of practice?’ I teased.

‘Looks like,’ he admitted. ‘In future, I will make sure you get enough time before I come.’ Deep winked and plunged himself into the pile of documents on his desk.

I had always been comfortable talking about sex with both my girlfriends and guy friends. I could discuss PMS with my guy friends with the same ease as I could talk cricket with my girl gang. Somehow, most Indian guys mistook my sexual candidness as a loose bolt in my character. This was one of the reasons I was wary about marrying an Indian. Deep, however, seemed different. If there was one thing I had begun to enjoy while working together with him, it was our non-stop raillery. Touchwood, so far, he hadn’t misinterpreted it or made any physical advances at me.

Back to work, the top-most item in my to-do list was to classify my email contacts using a newly downloaded email prioritization tool. One hour of uninterrupted, focused effort and BOOM, magically my inbox was reduced from fifty to six VIP mails. Two from Deep, one from the big boss, and one each from SnapDeal. com,
FashionAndYou.com
and Jay. Facebook, of course, was a category in itself and I was professional enough to only check it once every couple of hours while at work. I was debating whether to write ‘Dear Mr Khanna’, ‘Dear Sir’, or ‘Dear Rohan Sir’ to the big boss, when Deep asked if I wanted to have tea. You can’t say no to your manager, especially on status meeting days and definitely not for tea. So I followed him out of the cubicle.

Deep meticulously filled his cup with 4/5th hot water and 1/5th milk, added a teaspoon of sugar and dipped an Earl Grey tea bag in it. Dressed impeccably in a white shirt and black trousers, he looked every bit the serious, sincere and sharp employee that he
was admired for being. The black hairband was the only giveaway of his lighter, jovial side that his friends were privy to.

‘I hope that since you have undergone the customer sensitization training, you will now respond to all client emails ASAP,’ remarked Deep casually, removing the used, soggy tea bag from his cup and throwing it in the bin.

‘I have always been good at keeping my inbox empty,’ I said haughtily, making a mental note to create ‘Clients’ as a separate sub-category within my business contacts.

‘Really? May I ask what the secret of your efficiency is?’ he asked sceptically.

Proudly, I told him about how I organized my contacts in accordance with Steven Covey’s ‘First Things First’ principle.

‘What about new contacts?’ he asked, this time sounding genuinely interested.

‘They go in a new category that I glance through periodically,’ I boasted, taking a sip of my readymade masala chai.

‘Hmm … and which category would you say a random unknown guy lands up in?’

‘Pain in the Ass,’ I informed him instantly without thinking. PITA was where I kept all my previous boyfriends and the other junk mailers.

He coughed pretentiously a few times, and then said, ‘Thanks for the compliment.’

At first I didn’t understand what he meant and then it dawned on me that he was referring to the ‘random guy from my dad’s guitar class’ and his first mail that I had purposely not responded to. I looked into his eyes and they smiled back knowingly at me. I knew that he knew that I knew that he had waited for my response and in revenge he had made me go through the wait-in-the-lobby routine on my first day at iTrot.

There was never a dull moment with Deep around! This was
another thing that I was beginning to like about him. I was thinking of a snappy response when suddenly Vikas, the guy from first floor with an unhappy love marriage, barged in and interrupted us.

‘So glad you came early,’ said Vikas.

Deep looked at me and we both burst out laughing at having shared this joke earlier. Vikas looked confused. He took Deep aside and started talking about some personal stuff. I got busy with my phone. ‘Wait the Talk mystery resolved,’ I SMSed to Tanu di. I was about to head out of the cafeteria when I heard Deep say to Vikas, ‘I thought you have worked out your KS issues?’

I was surprised that even a relatively senior employee like Vikas had knowledge sharing issues.

‘Why don’t you talk to Kavita about it?’ I suggested like a concerned, dedicated employee, obviously oblivious that he was talking about sex.

‘I don’t think you know what I am talking about,’ said Vikas, with the ever-present smirk plastered on his face.

I had met him a number of times in office, during lunch and coffee breaks, since the kiss-n-dump outing. He had come across as a strong ego type of guy who loved to praise himself and subtly put other people down. Certainly not my kind of guy. Before I could argue in my defence, he added, ‘In any case, my KS issues are with Kavita, so I can’t really talk to her about it.’

Curious to hear what Deep had to say about it, I decided to stay put and listen.

‘Did you try using any of the external tools we had discussed last time?’ Deep inquired.

‘Collaboration tools could be quite an asset,’ I promptly offered my two cents, unaware that Deep was referring to pleasure enhancement tools like vibrators and arousal gels.

Deep burst into cubicle laughter while Vikas stood there giving me a ‘you-know-nothing’ stare.

‘Kavita is fucking adverse to any new ideas,’ Vikas swore openly, ignoring my presence.

I found myself agreeing with Vikas on this point. With the same stiff bouffant hairstyle every day, Kavita did come across as a person fixed in her ways.

‘Besides, there is always the fucking performance pressure,’ Vikas sounded pretty peeved.

‘Let the lady take charge and lead the game,’ advocated Deep with an amused expression. ‘Sit back and enjoy.’ Deep inhaled and exhaled slowly as if teaching Vikas how to calm down.

‘That’s the fucking problem, man. I can’t let go,’ said Vikas. ‘I like to be in control.’

It seemed that every time he used the word ‘fucking’, he derived an orgasmic kick from it. It gave him a sense of freedom and power that he was craving for.

‘You are making this an ego issue man,’ Deep pointed out.

‘Call me old-fashioned if you will but women ought to stay below and not on top of men,’ stated Vikas.

I misunderstood Vikas’s preference for the missionary sex position as his bias against women rising to upper rungs of the corporate ladder. So far I had been cool about Vikas’s views on Kavita, but now I felt he was getting sexist. I started educating him on the inappropriateness of the glass ceiling and how men have to be mature about women in senior positions.

‘Aren’t you going to stop her?’ Vikas urged Deep, who stood calm, peacefully smiling, hearing me preach to Vikas.

‘No,’ declared Deep defiantly.

‘Why not? It’s not like she is your wife,’ demanded Vikas.

‘Didn’t you see? She is armed,’ said Deep with a serious face and pointed towards my hands.

‘Fuck,’ cursed Vikas staring at my fingernails. ‘These are long. Really long. Veryyyyy long,’ he said, looking disgusted.

‘I hope you can type with those,’ said Deep with a suspicious grin.

‘I am getting used to them,’ I replied honestly.

‘But is this allowed? I mean doesn’t our employee handbook say that your fucking fingernails can’t be longer than your eyelashes,’ blurted Vikas, still in a state of shock. He seemed to have forgotten his own problems.

‘As long as I am not her keyboard, it doesn’t bother me how she picks a hair out of her eye,’ joshed Deep, and walked out of the cafeteria.

OMG! Deep had noticed. I felt like jumping in excitement, but my bowed out platform heels vetoed the idea. Okay. Calm down. He is not your boyfriend. Ya, I know, but when you spend 5,000 rupees getting your nails done, you want everyone around you to notice. I had been so disappointed when I had gone about flashing them for over an hour to Jay without even an acknowledgment from him. I had justified it to myself by saying that nail extensions were such a common sight in the US, that he must have overlooked mine. At the end of our call, I had myself told him how I had found a nail spa through Facebook and gotten artificial nails.

Can you believe what he said when I asked him if he liked them?

‘Uh-huh!’

I understand that men usually speak 7,000 words in a day as compared to a woman’s whopping 20,000, but ‘uh-huh’? Really? It is barely even a word. Even my dad had managed better. ‘Are you okay?’ Pa had asked, concerned on seeing the bill, but had been glad to hear that this time I had experimented with my looks in a celebration of life rather than as a stress-relieving measure. I, of course, didn’t tell him I was celebrating being in love with Jay.

The rest of my day passed by without much fruitful activity, with my nail extensions getting in the way of everything I tried to do from sending SMSes to removing the food particles stuck
under them. Finally, it was time for an important video conference call I had been preparing for over a week.

‘Welcome to my thinking pod,’ said Mr Khanna with an acquired American accent, taking a sip of coffee from a Starbucks takeaway cup. He was an external US-based consultant, hired by iTrot for competitive analysis and digital media strategy, the special project I was lucky to be a part of.

‘Morning, Rohan!’ Deep greeted back.

I hadn’t prepared to meet a strikingly imposing, mysteriously charming man whose grey streaks emphasized his financial stability rather than his age. Equally imposing was the bright, bold red paint on his office walls. It was 8 p.m. our time, but I found myself mentally re-energized and physically awakened. Nothing seems to have as much impact on atmosphere as wall colour. Or was it the high testosterone level in the room?

While we waited for other people to join in, Deep and Rohan started discussing some IIT hostel winning all the trophies this year. Apparently, Rohan was also from IIT Delhi and although they were not around at the same time, they were both from the same hostel.

‘How are your guitar classes coming along?’ Rohan asked.

‘Quite rewarding,’ said Deep, giving me a sideways glance. ‘How are yours?’

‘I just started two weeks back. I am still struggling with the chords.’

‘You have to live up to your reputation, sir,’ said Deep. ‘From what I have heard, you were the champ at picking up any new skill and mastering it in no time.’

Had I been a little more attentive, I would have been able to make the connection between Rohan and Tanu di’s Champ. A thirty-five-something ex-IIT-D start-up consultant, with red colour on his walls, and a champ at learning new things. Alas, this story would have to wait a while longer for its happy ending.

‘I am sorry it got so late for you guys,’ said Rohan when everyone had arrived. ‘Let’s get started.’

‘The biggest problem iTrot is facing currently is the low conversion rate,’ pointed out Deep.

‘We offer better deals than our competitors and yet others seem to be getting all the business,’ said the guy from the holiday package team.

I was surprised to learn that only 2 per cent of the users visiting the
iTrot.com
website actually bought something. How come I never came back empty-handed from a shop? I guess, when you go to a store, you end up buying at least one thing in order to justify the driving and parking hassles. A website was, however, only a click away. I was racking my brains to find an intelligent answer, when a fresh MBA graduate explained that having better deals was not enough and what we really needed to do was to offer better targeted deals. His idea was well received.

‘The other important aspect is social media marketing,’ Rohan emphasized.

‘Facebook is so new. No one knows what works in that domain,’ cribbed a sixties’-born, senior marketing guy.