Arranged Love (2 page)

I couldn’t force myself to fall in love with a guy that my parents picked for me, and I obviously couldn’t marry a guy I didn’t love. This much was clear. The only problem was, how to eject this IIT suitor without hurting Dad’s feelings?

I heard the SMS beep on my mobile. There were two messages from Jay.

Message 1: Save your brains the burden of too many thoughts.

Good piece of advice, I thought.

Message 2: No more than ten pieces of chips.

I immediately shifted my attention from my mind to my mouth, stopped chewing in mid-bite, and peeped inside the packet in my hand. Somebody had stolen my chips while I was lost in reverie. The bag looked more like half-empty. Damn! Now I will have to run an extra mile tomorrow.

Given that I couldn’t indulge in any more alcohol or junk food to beat the stress, I flipped open my laptop to play some music. Jeez, that suitor guy was still smirking at me! Not only was he a gross-looking IITian with a typical Indian moustache, his sense of dressing was hideous too. Trust Dad to know how to get on my nerves! I clicked on the close button to give his jaws some rest and put on my favourite playlist.
Pal pal dil ke paas, tum rahti ho …
Kishore da’s mellow voice filled the room and a wave of nostalgia swept over me. I was back in our little house; the aroma of freshly baked pizzas wafted from our open-air kitchen as my mom cooked and Dad and I huddled underneath a comforter listening to these songs.

I was about to call it a day when I noticed a new mail icon blinking on my screen. It was a ‘Hi! I am …’ message from that smartass suitor. It was Monday morning in India—people didn’t have to work in office or what!

I curled up on my bed, my eyes tightly shut to wipe out the day’s events, my fingers playing with my belly-button, as I waited for sleep to overtake me. As my dadi would have said, it seemed like planet Saturn had entered my 7th house and even Kishore Kumar was having a tough time driving him away.

Hi, I am a random guy from your dad’s guitar class. Your dad visited my house yesterday to meet my parents. He left a printout of your matrimonial profile, with some vital and some not so vital stats. I can see that you have 1 maternal uncle with 7-figure income, 6 paternal uncles who are well-established, 5 aunts who are married to known business families, 1 cousin from IIT-Delhi, 2 from IIT-Roorkee, 2 from IIM Bangalore and 1 from XLRI. I am assuming you have more than 6 cousins from 7 uncles, but they didn’t make it to your biodata. There is also a studio photograph of a beautiful, homely, Indian girl in salwar suit. I took the liberty of checking your FB profile, and it shows a more free-spirited girl, in a sexy spaghetti top. Wondering who is the real you? BTW, there is a joke among IIT boys that there are only two types of girls in this world—nice and very nice :)

From what your dad talks about you, and he talks a lot, you are not the kind of girl who would marry a random guy, even if he happens to be an IIT, Stanford graduate. I myself haven’t thought about marriage yet, so let’s be friends. You can read more about me and my life at
www.dgblahblah.com
.

Deepak Goyal

P.S. Please don’t send me a Facebook Friend Request yet. I only add people I know well, and like, to my friends’ list.

Who did he think he was? Ranbir Kapoor? Some guts he has telling me not to send him a friend request like I was desperate to increase my friends count. And what was Dad doing? Giving out my biodata to guys in his guitar class! Eyes still glued to the computer screen, I took a bite of my bagel with a large helping of cream cheese, while pretending to do some research work.

‘Any guess on how many calories that bite has?’ quizzed Jay, as he walked up to my desk in the computer science lab.

‘235 based on a 2000 calorie diet, 10 per cent saturated fat, 5 per cent cholesterol,’ I mumbled, recalling the count from our last discussion on the topic.

Realizing that I was reading the suitor guy’s email, he flirtingly asked if I was checking out the new guy. His distraction spared me a lecture on Omega-3 and healthy fats. For the time being, at least.

‘Just clearing my Inbox,’ I clarified. ‘I couldn’t possibly delete the mail without reading, in case Pa inquired about it.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ! I didn’t know you have so many aunts and uncles,’ exclaimed Jay, as he skimmed through the first few lines of Deepak’s mail. ‘Don’t they sell condoms in India?’

Jay sounded genuinely surprised, but I was least interested in discussing the size of my extended family or birth control measures in India. I felt humiliated at being valued in the marriage market on the basis of my uncles’ wealth and my cousins’ academic achievements.

‘What kind of a guy ridicules a girl’s family and comments on her looks in his first mail?’

‘He is quite witty, if you ask me.’

‘Do you think he is …?’

‘No, he is definitely not gay.’

‘How dare he look at my FB profile pic?’

‘Honey! It’s public info, and last I checked the dictionary, public meant
belonging to people
.’

Jay didn’t realize that the issue was not just that Deepak had looked at my picture. I was also addled by the cheap IIT guy’s joke.

‘Does he mean I look very nice in the suit and nice in the spaghetti or …?’

‘Very nice in the spaghetti! I mean, look at that cleavage!’

I was miffed that Deepak had dared to stare at my cleavage in my very nice public profile pic. Even more annoying was his implication that I was trying to cheat him with a
sati-savitri
matrimonial picture.

‘How can he assume he doesn’t like me? He doesn’t even know me,’ I rambled, still on my own trip.

‘To be fair, he is simply saying he doesn’t know you and hence can’t like you or add you to his friends’ list.’

‘Wouldn’t make friends with him if he was Wilson, the volleyball, and I was Tom Hanks in
Cast Away
,’ I continued to curse.

‘Frankly, this Deep-Ache-Go-Hell chap doesn’t seem that bad.’ Jay was finding it all very amusing and for once, I found Jay’s anglicized pronunciation of Indian names funny.

‘Wouldn’t marry him even if I was single at forty,’ I vented.

Unable to see any signs of improvement in my mood, Jay squeezed my hand comfortingly and pushed off. ‘See ya for Frisbee at six,’ he communicated with lip movements from across the room.

Finishing off the rest of the bagel and cream cheese, I moved the email to Trash. I didn’t know whether to like Deepak’s sense of humour or hate his spunkiness, but I was not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how his email had irked me.

I glossed over the day’s schedule. The next lecture was in an hour’s time. I did a quick scan of the room to see if someone was
up for a chat. Four Indians, two Chinese, one Korean and two Americans. All PhD students, all guys, and all were hammering away at their laptops. I got up from my chair, straightened my little-above-the-knee black skirt, and proceeded to the coffee machine in the adjoining room. The overpowering fragrance of hazelnut-flavoured coffee wafting out of the room tantalized my tastebuds. As a master’s student, I was lucky to have an office space and access to free coffee. This was thanks to my advisor! I glanced towards his room at the end of the corridor. It creaked open and I saw the tiny frame of Professor Girpade materialize in front of me. Reminded that I ought to be working, I tiptoed back hurriedly to my desk, careful not to make too much noise from my click-clacks.

I examined my to-do list, and rearranged the items one through thirty-five while sipping the coffee. Satisfied with the re-prioritized item list, and unable to concentrate any longer, I saved and closed the file. Feeling restless, I again surveyed the room. Barring some minor shifts in positions, I felt like I was at Madame Tussauds, surrounded by wax figures. Sitting in a lab full of dummies, I could not engage in shopping, socializing, or sex. So I decided to watch the song
Crazy kiya re
on YouTube to jazz up my spirits. The boys slowly began to glide towards my laptop. It can hardly be my fault if the wax statues got aroused by the sexy lady on the floor. Guys, I tell you! I bet Professor Girpade also watched Aishwarya Rai sway her hips and seductively glide her hands over her curves, before making his presence known.

Generally speaking, Professor Girpade, BTech IIT-D, PhD CMU, currently working as the associate professor, EECS department and my advisor, was a good-natured and lenient man, especially compared to professors back home. You could eat, drink, sleep and even walk out in the middle of his lectures. Understandably then, I was scared when he called me to his room and shut the door behind him. In the next five minutes, he made it clear to me that he
will not tolerate any behaviour that causes distraction to his other students. He even threatened to cancel my research assistantship if I didn’t complete my master’s thesis in the next twenty days.

First Deepak and now Professor Girpade! My horoscope for the day must have read, ‘Watch out for attacks from IIT-D alumni. You are likely to incur emotional setback and financial loss.’

It’s not like I was a good-for-nothing slacker, tarnishing the image of Indian students in a US university. Although people did often mistake my ‘Live each day—
Kal ho na ho
’ attitude as a sign of my incompetence and lack of dedication. Just like you need a healthy mix of vitamins and minerals for a balanced diet, I preferred a healthy mix of alphabets in my grades to maintain my work–life balance. The balance, however, came with a fair mix of good and bad days, and today was turning from bad to worse. Any chance I could win a settlement suing Aishwarya Rai or YouTube for stripping me off my hard-earned scholarship?

‘Guess I better work on my thesis topic then!’ I resolved, albeit grudgingly, to take a break from YouTube and focus on work. I needed the moolah to survive the rest of this semester and complete my master’s. Although I had a provisional job offer starting next February, I doubted Lehman Brothers would allow a master’s-incomplete, funds-withdrawn candidate to join their IT division. Of course, no one could have predicted that twenty days later, I would still have the scholarship but not the job.

All work and no play, freaked my boyfriend Jay, and he put me on a low carbs diet. Other than that, the next three weeks passed without any mishaps. Fortunately, Deepak didn’t report my ‘no-reply’, and Dad continued to believe that Deepak was slowly on his way to becoming my chocolate-cream soldier. Thesis submitted and my self-imposed entertainment ban lifted, I was watching a new episode of
Friends
, when my mobile rang.

‘The new guy who joined us last week is so damn cute!’ I heard
Tanu di’s cheerful voice say. Almost ten years elder to me and still waiting for her soulmate, Tanu di, my
tauji
’s daughter, was my icon for the Woman of Today. However, right now, she was an accomplice of my dad in the husband-hunting crime.

‘Fuck him!’ I said reproachfully, least interested in casual boy talk. ‘Five unanswered emails, ten missed calls and fifteen SMSes. Where have you been absconding for the last three weeks?’

‘
Balike
,’ she addressed me in a calm, saint-like manner, ‘I was away in the hills, looking for the
sanjeevani booti
to save your love life.’

‘You could have saved yourself the trouble if you hadn’t verified that IIT suitor’s credentials to begin with. First you create a bug and then you try to find its solution. I thought only Microsoft is allowed such flimflam.’

‘I am innocent My Lord. I was victimized,’ said Tanu di in a theatrical courtroom voice now. ‘I was led to believe that the suitor inquiry was for one of our many unmarried, wheatish-fair, working but family-oriented cousins Pinki, Chinki or Dinki.’

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing out at her melodrama. ‘Anyhow, I think the situation is under control. Dad hasn’t bothered me …’

‘Chachu will … exactly after a week!’ she prophesied confidently.

‘You asked Professor Trelawney or what?’ I joked.

‘Better still, I sneaked on his Muggle phone. He has a reminder set for 15th of every month to check on the Suhaani–Deepak progress.’

‘I don’t understand. Why has Dad suddenly gone off-track, searching for a groom?’

‘Babes, but of course you realize that Chachu simply wants you back home. Once you finish your studies and start working in the States, chances of your coming back are poorer than me having sex with that new, cute trainee.’

‘Well, an underwired bra, stilettos and some Viagra can help increase your odds,’ I teased.

‘I will certainly work on your suggestion, ma’am, but you will need more than sex toys to fight your battle.’

She then explained her comprehensive combat strategy, starting from Deepak’s debacle to my subsequent marriage with Jay. For now, I was supposed to just dilly dally on this marriage proposal. She would ensure the discovery of some gross flaw in Deepak, fabricating a pregnant girlfriend or a history of smoking pot if required. Basically, Deepak was go, went, gone as far as I was concerned. I will stay put in the US for another couple of years, unable to take time off for an India trip due to my new job. My parents could visit me instead and also get to see a new place. Over the next two years, I will gradually get my parents to doubt my sexual orientation and fuel their paranoia about my marriage. Occasional, accidental Facebook comments, a kiss here, a hug there, and a few random girlfriend pictures would do the trick. Once convinced that their daughter has homosexual inclinations, my parents would be glad I married a GUY, even if he was Jayant Guy.

Impressed by Di’s plan and convinced that trying to mislead parents doesn’t amount to lying, I told Tanu di to start a consulting service on ‘The Art of Staying Single’. She agreed it was an awesome idea and we both hung up, me with a satisfied grin. Super-excited, I dialled Jay’s number. It went unanswered. He must be at the gym, I figured and started dressing up for the evening bash.