It Wasn't Love at First Shalini and I (2 page)

I said the usual hellos and started my one hour work out session.
The gym would be the only ‘me’ time I had during the day as the rest
of it was to be spent on shopping for my marriage. I extended the
session by fifteen minutes, obviously not because I liked exercise,
and took a long cold shower. I changed and called Kriti telling her
that I would pick her in fifteen minutes from her place. We would
then head to my place for breakfast and then have a marathon of a
shopping day. Not fun, I know, but wait till you have a fiancé and an
impending marriage.

I put on a jeans and a shirt and looked at my belly. After one hour
and fifteen minutes of workout it was still jiggly. I played with it a
little, smiled, tucked in the shirt, got back into the car and reached
Kriti’s apartment.

Kriti shared her apartment with one other girl and both of them
hated each other. So Kriti always looked for a chance to get out of
her house and into mine. She said she did that because she loved me
and at times I also thought that was the actual reason. But love was
too strong a word. Love is too strong a word, and a word which is
overly used.

I parked the car at the gate of her colony and called her again.
“Kriti dear, am there.”

 

“Honey, it will take me just five minutes. I hope you don’t mind.”

I didn’t know why it always took her five minutes. I had called her
30 minutes ago and at that time, she said she was perfectly ready. She
just had to put on make up. But now again, she said it would take
five more minutes. Five minutes were still fine, but her five minutes
always meant fifteen. I had not brought forward the point of her
never being on time and I used to always smile when she came. But
I had decided that today I would atleast mention it that I did not like
waiting alone in the car.

I pulled back the driver seat, and tried to sleep. Five minutes passed
by, then fifteen, then thirty. I could not sleep. I did not know what
she was doing up there. I had called her a couple of times in between
but she did not receive the calls. I was about to getup and goto her
place when I saw her running down the stairs. I pulled up the seat
and was ready to give her a piece of my mind, but then I saw her and
the testosterone part of me took over.

She was wearing very casual clothes, a yellow top and a blue jeans
teemed with a scarf, but she was looking out of this world pretty.
She was fair, very fair, had shoulder length hair, a small pointed nose,
rosy lips and cheeks and a small dimple on both sides. She was five
feet four, was a little plump, not fat, just the right plump an Indian
girl is and had an angelic look to her. I was mesmerised every time I
saw her and I thanked my parents silently in my head. They were the
ones who had introduced me to her in the first place.

She opened the car door “Sorry honey, it took me a little more
time than what I had said. Hope you don’t mind.”

 

I had a goofy smile on my face. “Mind, not at all. In fact, I took a
little nap as I was tired from the gym.” I chickened out of shouting at
her for being late- well, obviously, she was so pretty.
She sat down and gave me a little peck on the cheek. “Good boy.
Am so proud you went to the gym.”

I was being treated like a dog but I did not really mind. She was
just so pretty. The dog patting got a smile on my face and we headed
back to my place.

Kriti was an architect by profession. So basically, I did not
understand her work. She had been a typical Delhi girl who studied
in one of the DPS schools, which I hear also have a branch in Nepal
but again, that is besides the point. After her class 12 got completed,
parents had moved to Chandigarh but she went to architecture school
in Delhi and had been working for the last two years after passing
out from there.

And there in lied our biggest difference.

She was 25, I was 30. It seemed as if she was from another planet
altogether. Right now, she was in the phase of the weekday parties,
the binge drinking, the dancing, the movie marathons and all the
other things you expect from a typical 25 year old Delhi girl. And I
had already been through that phase and reliving it did not seem to
be that great an idea. Plus, all her friends were also 25 and I felt so
out of place when we met them. They looked like little kids drooling
over Shah Rukh Khan and trying to tease me to make me
uncomfortable. It used to be weird in front of her friends. Once I
kissed her by mistake in front of them, that too a normal peck on
the cheek, and I had to hear about that for the next 20 days on all
sorts of platforms.

I had met Kriti through an online portal. As soon as I crossed 29,
my parents got sick worried about my marriage. They kept on asking
me whether I had already found someone. They said they would not
be happy about it but would still accept and get me married to her. I
did have some female friends, but the last real relationship I had was
with Pooja who had left me for her ex fiancé. After that there had
been some minor flirtations, some steady dates, but no one marriage
material. Or maybe, none of the girls who I went out with found me
marriage material. Whatever the case, I was 30, earning well, not bad
to look at and unmarried.

The last part became a huge cause of concern for my parents.

My parents, even though completely computer illiterate, had
managed to create a profile for me on one of those marriage sites.
They even uploaded a nice photo of me and made me look like the
most eligible bachelor in the profile. I don’t know how they managed
it, but I think they used photoshop and all to make me look more
fair. What those tubes of fairness creams could not manage in a decade
was done in ten minutes by the computer.

I got approached by quite a few people and ended up meeting
around 4 girls before Kriti came into the picture. I just saw her and
said yes. It was not that I would get to know any of the girls by
just meeting them for a few times, and I was sure I would never
get anyone as pretty as Kriti. It was not love at first sight or
anything of that sort. It was just that she was so beautiful. So I
had said yes.

My parents had then come over to Delhi and had met with her
parents. I still remember she was wearing a red kurta the day my
parents had come to visit. She was looking so pretty that it was
impossible to say no to her. The marriage was finalised, but was fixed
for a date 8 months ahead as there was no mahurat till then. Four out
of the eight months had passed. We also got time to know each
other.

She was a nice girl. The more I got to know her, the more I thought
she had a very pure heart. But she was a typical ‘girl’ girl. The sort
who will not step out if they had a bad hair day, who would admire
themselves in a mirror wherever they saw one, who would take hours
to get ready for a ten minute coffee. And, she was 25.

We had gotten close over the last four months and were now
practically boyfriend and girlfriend and practically lived together. Half
of her things were already at my apartment and it was only a matter
of time before the other half also shifted. Most of the times, I enjoyed
her company as she had the energy of youth with her, but at other
times, I just wanted to be left alone.

Left alone to sleep, to think, to do nothing. And that is what she
never understood. We reached home and climbed the stairs to my
apartment. She already had a key and opened the door. She had
promised to make me an Indian breakfast today and I was kind of
looking forward to it but as soon as she entered she said “Honey, I
have just manicured my hands yesterday and do not want to spoil
my nails.”

She showed me her nails. They did look pretty and should not
have been used to make parathas. “Could you just make bread
and eggs and we can have the aaloo parathas next week.” She
fluttered her eyes as she spoke. No one could say no to the
fluttering eyes.

I just wondered for how long.

 

I went to the kitchen, cracked open the eggs and made the
omelette.

I was a pretty decent cook. Living alone teaches you that. The rest
of the day passed in a similar tone. There was lots of eye fluttering
and lots of waiting. In the car, in the saree shops, in the jewellery
shops, in the lehenga shops, in the shoe shops, and even in the shops
which sold jeans which had nothing to do with the marriage. And
there were no aaloo parathas.

She liked Italian food so we had lunch at a pizzeria and she felt
that both of us had too much for lunch and were gaining weight
which was not good before our marriage, so we had a salad at Subway
for dinner. I hated Italian and I hated subway and I hated salad more
than both of them put together.

And it was not that I even loved her. But it was that she was too
damn beautiful. I again wondered in how much time would I get
immune to her beauty. One thing was for sure, it was not happening
today.

We reached back home at around 11 pm and she decided to stay
on at my place because if she went home, she would get into a fight
with her roommate and that would upset her. But even when she
stayed over, nothing much happened.

We were getting married in 4 months and she said that I should
wait as it was just four months. So instead of doing what a young
couple alone in a room should do, she made me watch movies. I
seriously did not have the energy to watch movies, and that too
romantic bad movies, and that too in English.

Plus, there were no aaloo parathas. I felt hungry. A Subway salad
did nothing to me. So we saw a movie and slept around 2. ‘The
Notebook’ I think it was called. A senti movie about two lovers.

Honestly, I actually kind of liked it and was happy that atleast our
choices weren’t that different. But at the end of the movie she declared
that it was the worst she had ever seen. I again, just nodded in
agreement. We finally got into bed to sleep. No action, just sleep.
The good thing was that the gym was closed on a Sunday and I
could sleep till 9.

This was the first time we had slept on the same bed. Nothing
had happened but it was atleast a step in the right direction.

Even though it was a Sunday and I had the liberty to sleep till
nine, for some good reason, I gotup at 7 again. No alarm, just gotup.
I hated early mornings. I looked around and I realised that Kriti was
also there. I looked at her, she looked like the best thing that had ever
happened to my bed, or even the best thing that had ever happened
to me.

She had changed into cute little yellow polka dotted pyjamas with
a matching yellow polka dotted tshirt. Her hair were open and were
all over her face. Her lips were apple red and she was the most beautiful
girl I had ever seen.

Just then her eyes opened. Beautiful black big eyes. And the best
part was that I could see the love in them. The love I had not seen in
any girl’s eyes for me for a very long time. I thanked the matrimonial
site once more and I was sure that I was doing the right thing by
marrying her.

“Darling, will you like your morning breakfast on bed?” I said
that, not she.

She smiled. A lazy sleepy pretty smile, and nodded. I gotup to
make the eggs with juice and bread. I actually had a smile on my face
while cracking open the egg.

The rest of the day was similar to the last one. She was still as
beautiful and there was as much waiting with the Italian food for
lunch and salad for dinner. She decided to goto her apartment for the
night as her office cab would pick her from there. I dropped her off
and got back after a long weekend with not much productivity for
me, ready for another five days at work.

There are some things that do not change no matter at what level
you are at work. You still have someone to report to, you still have
deadlines which cannot be met, you still feel that the year end
increments are not high enough, you still feel that you and not your
colleague deserve the promotion, you still feel that some other job
would pay you much more for what you are doing, you still have a
bunch of people who start off as office colleagues and then become
friends, you still have a bunch of people who start as friends and then
become colleagues, and you still have the long cigarette breaks where
you vent out all the frustration, even if you don’t really smoke.

My office was no different. I no longer worked as an engineer. In
fact, I now worked in the marketing and distribution channel for
one of the big FMCG companies which used to sell all kinds of
things. I was responsible for one particular brand. My work, like
most other jobs, was monotonous for the most part wherein there is
a set system and you just have to fit in. But there were chances when
you got to show your creative ability and that was the part which
kept me, and millions of other people like me going. Plus, the money
was good, and money was needed to pay the bills, and with the
impending marriage, it was also needed to pay for the honeymoon,
the new furniture, the new wardrobe, the new house etc.

I was pretty satisfied with my job. I had been in this job for almost
3 years now, right after finishing MBA. There were some office
flirtations and some sort of flings in the beginning when everyone is
new to work and do not really know what to do. But that had now
settled and I fit into the office like old furniture. I used to hit the
gym after office hours, or at times in the morning, for my marriage
and then used to go back home, cook some light food, watch some
television, chat on the phone with Kriti for some time and then goto
sleep. A usual boring routine followed by every office goer who has a
fiancé or a girlfriend. For the (un)lucky few who don’t, the talking
on the phone part is replaced by watching more television or drinking
beer. But at the end it’s all the same. You get used to it and it stops
making a difference.

In my case the ‘chat for sometime on the phone’ had recently
started becoming ‘chat for a hell lot of time’ on the phone. Kriti had
so much to tell about office. Either that her office was too happening
or that she just liked talking too much. She would tell me everything
that happened in her day. She would reach office late every day- she
needed some extra time to get ready, and then she would try and
confuse her manager and make him believe that she was indeed on
time. She said he would agree but I knew he had a similar problem
like me, he could not say anything to those fluttering eyelashes. She
would then login to her computer and check the first mails of the
day. She would then have breakfast with coffee. She ensured that I
ate a healthy breakfast but she herself would gorge on the oiliest and
fattiest food possible. She would then gossip around for half an hour
with her colleagues and as all of them were that age, their favourite
topic used to be marriage. After that gossip session, she used to call
me to fill me in with what all who all had bought and what all we
needed to shop over the week. She would then go and actually work
for some time and have more gossip sessions etc.