Arranged Love (17 page)

‘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 the 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.’

‘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.’

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.