perfect matchmaking

The first time I saw him, I had an urge...to look at him again. It was a stupid sensation, I know, but then I couldn’t help it. I turned-and he noticed me- "O my God!" Someone called out his name, "A-----", it was different, just like he was: tall, dark-eyed, enigmatic and a charmer indeed!

After a few of those terrible stares that left me blushing, embarrassed, confused and desperate I told myself "He doesn’t like me." So our rendezvous ended low key.

We met again, a year down the line. My ‘knight-in-shining-armour’ had become even more irresistible. "Was he noticing me?" "Could it be ‘that’?" "Yes! It was!" We always moved about with other friends yet, I always found myself with him: inadvertently in the beginning, deliberately later and predictably thereafter. We started talking. My heart registered every word he spoke. Once while on a trip to Jaipur, did I hear him say, "Are you going for the camel ride?" "Would you come with me"…with him? No stretched limousine could have beaten the experience of it! We went for a carnival-balloon shooting, sorcerer’s tricks, dandia, mehendi-everything seemed out-of-the-world: with him! I once even rested on his shoulder. It was magic! I felt a chill running down my body every time he touched me. And then one day he held my hand. "Not that!!!"…. I mean he just stopped me from beating somebody up. But-he held my hand! I was wearing bangles that day and I would have kissed them a thousand times!

He had to go…abroad…for studies. I had known from the beginning, but still that day at the airport I kept my hand on his and said a lame, "Don’t go!" I hugged him and the emotion was too profound for words. "He is the one for me", I congratulated myself on the revelation.

Hours, days, weeks, months went by without any contact. A zillion things crossed my mind. It was long before I could surrender hope. "When the heart breaks, nothing matters anymore… it’s the end of happiness but the beginning of peace", a teacher once quoted, perhaps I realized its truth. I wasn’t happy, but I was at peace.

Years passed. He was part of memory, a memory I had learnt to bear. I missed him. No man could measure up to that ‘knight-in shining-armour’ image for me. At home, discussions began about my marriage. On unrelenting insistence, I agreed to be introduced to mummy’s second cousin’s brother-in-law’s next-door-neighbour. I was at Pizza Hut that day waiting for "Mr. Probable" when I saw him again. "O my God!" God’s timing! We hugged almost impulsively. It was amazing how we could talk with the same ease. I forgot all about mummy’s second cousin’s brother-in-law’s next-door-neighbour. I even forgot to complain about his not responding to my mails. Nothing mattered. "I couldn’t ask for more…or could I?"

Today on the seventh anniversary of my marriage with mummy’s second cousin’s brother-in-law’s next-door-neighbour, she said, "Arranged marriages are so romantic! You never had any romance in your life before I introduced you to him." "What?!" " Me and him-arranged?" My mother’s utopian idea of a ‘perfect happily-ever-after arranged marriage’ was in the wrong place this time. Perhaps it was time to tell her ‘who’ arranged our marriage.