Yahoo! It's a Spice-y Connect-ion - Part II

As I get ready to write up the second part, I remember all those soap operas with their major recap sessions which last until the first break, and I’m wondering whether I should have something similar – a recap that would take up half of this current blog entry. That, though, would not serve my purpose, so I guess I better get on with it.

It was rather amazing that even though Yahoo! Chat introduced us to each other, we never had a chat over the internet after the first session. What followed that initial chat session was daily exchange of emails and frequent phone calls. The mails were initially generally about our previous day and such, but it was in her mails that I first saw a change. I am, by nature, like an ostrich. I’ll close my eyes and think I’m blind or its dark around me. Sometimes, it is like a defense mechanism; other times, it is because I’m stupid. In this particular case, though, I was the former as I wasn’t sure where it would all lead to. Not trusting my judgment, I discussed this with a couple of my friends – taking into consideration both a male and a female perspective. Both my friends agreed that there definitely was something, but they didn’t make it any easier by saying it is up to me. Now, I didn’t need them to tell me that, but I realized that I had no choice.

Just as I realized that I’ll have to make a choice one way or the other, I decided to play my final card and see. Ever since we’d started correspondence, we hadn’t seen how each of us looked like. Deep down, I knew that it didn’t matter, but my reluctance to face reality told me that I could probably have a way out. So, I suggested to her that we should probably be seeing each other’s photos. The next day, I was off from work, but I went to a cybercafé to see whether she’d sent me that photo. My roommate accompanied me along because he didn’t have a great opinion about my ability to judge feminine beauty. Not surprisingly, the email with her photograph attached had arrived. In it, I could see a pretty girl with a pleasant smile but that’s about it, but my friend went absolutely ballistic, claiming she’s much more beautiful than I could ever hope to get and a few more dramatic dialogues like that. As one can see, he didn’t have a great opinion about my looks as well. Anyway, I couldn’t find anything wrong which could have provided me an opening to escape.

Now that she’d sent me her photograph, I had to sent her one of mine. Having found nothing specific to criticize in her photograph, I decided to have a final go at escape and chose one particular photo. That was a photo of mine at dark (people who’ve seen me will know what I mean here), wearing a dark shirt and a cream pants. I myself could only see my pants, teeth, and the camera’s flash light reflecting from my glasses. I knew that any ordinary girl would not proceed after having looked at it, but I was slowly beginning to realize that I wasn’t dealing with any ordinary girl here but someone really extraordinary. She didn’t hesitate one bit with the photo (and I somehow knew by then that she wouldn’t) and asked me questions as to whether I liked anyone special and who it was if there was one. Here was a girl, one whom I really liked but was afraid to surrender my heart to, asking me who I specifically liked, and I decided finally to throw caution to wind, at least once in life, and told her that it was she who I was interested in. Later, I would come to know from her that if my answer would have been in the negative, she wouldn’t have ever spoken to me after that; that was how close I came to being a total fool.

Now that I was committed to her, I had to tell this to someone in my family, and I chose my younger brother for it. He was at Singapore at that time, doing the final year of his marine engineering course. I messaged him regarding this, and he called me up. Although he was a bit skeptical at first, it was pretty evident that he was quite excited about it all. If I remember right, he even wrote a mail or two to her to just get introduced.

With the confusion of decision off our shoulders, we decided that we should meet up before proceeding further. Now, that provided bit of a problem in that she was in Kolkata while I was in Bangalore, and neither of us had much of a reason to visit the other city. But since we’d gone far too deeply into it, it was decided that I’ll travel to Kolkata some time in October and meet her to confirm (even though we both were sure) that we were indeed right for each other. The fact that it was only August didn’t help matters, with another 2 long months stretching in front of us, but we started making our little plans of meeting up.

Things took a turn for the worse when she rang up one day, towards the end of August, telling me that the situation was getting a bit worse for her as her parents had started searching for a groom for her. She told me that she was having to inform her parents earlier than we thought. Couple of days later, she said that she did inform it to her parents, and they just blew the fuse. They apparently asked her what she was thinking, falling in love with someone she hadn’t seen (other than a pair of pants, a set of white teeth, and glasses), and for all that they knew, I could be a psychopath or a pervert or something much worse. Can’t really blame them; if it was my daughter and I had seen the photo she received, I also would have surely reacted in the same manner. There definitely was a shady look to me in that photo. But then, as I said earlier, she’s someone extraordinary, and she stuck to her guns, and her parents finally decided to see how it would all pan out.

I wasn’t sure about the reaction at my own place, but I decided to present it during a 3-day visit to Thrissur. I was going there to attend 2 weddings – of a colleague’s and of a close friend’s. I called up my brother and told him that I was going to present the case, and he gave me full support for it, saying that he would also chip in with his thoughts on the matter later to my parents. She had been made to send a photo of hers wearing a saree by her mother, but to me, that looked a bit of a disaster because she wasn’t at all like the girl I saw initially. Although I have subsequently claimed it as a tactical move to give enough time for my parents to act on it thoughtfully, it was another exhibition of top-class cowardice when I called my mom aside and presented the photo to her, quickly explained who it was, gave a copy of her horoscope which she had enclosed along with the photo, and went off to attend my colleague’s marriage. Since it was rather far off, it was quite late by the time I came back, and as I had hoped, my parents had slept off. Next day, once again, I left early in the morning, because the second wedding also was at a far off place, and I was pretty sure it would be late by the time I returned from there. Moreover, we were shifting our house that day, and I was convinced all of them would be tired by evening. As I had expected, they weren’t in a condition to discuss anything serious after all that hectic activity.

The next day morning, we all got down to cleaning the new home, arranging stuff, etc. My parents were moving out of their independent house and moving in to an apartment, but since the work hadn’t been completed yet on it, they were going to stay in a rented home for a few months. I was quite tense, expecting either my parents or my grandma to ask about this, but they seemed to have forgotten all about it. Then, just as I was beginning to relax, my dad called me. The way he started, I knew he was quite uncomfortable doing it, not really prepared for something like this. I guess it would have been a bit different if it had been my brother in my place, because I guess my parents expected such crazy things from him, but not from me. Now that I had indeed done something crazy, they weren’t sure on how to proceed. In an awkward manner, my dad asked whether I was really in the right frame of mind and lots more question to confirm that his son hadn’t really gone loco, and having confirmed that, he asked whether I was sure about this girl, about her family, etc. By now, with my mind made up, I was feeling much more confident than I generally would have, and I stuck to the fact that I don’t want them to reject it outright, and I would appreciate it if they really thought about it seriously. Finally, we arrived at an uneasy truce when we decided that we’d leave it up to matching of horoscopes and take it from there. Meanwhile, her dad had made it quite clear that my parents had to call him first for this to proceed, and I mentioned the same to my parents, and they said they’ll think about it. Their body language conveyed to me that they indeed would, and I felt a bit more confident about it all working out.

It took almost a week since I came back to Bangalore for my parents to finally call her dad. Let me just say that it hadn’t been an easy week for me or her. Anyway, they talked to each other and felt that the other side wasn’t as much barbarians as they thought to be. After a tense week, this news came as a great relief to me, and I slept peacefully that night. But then, as was the case in this affair, we weren’t done with the filmy twists. My brother, hearing about the earlier delay in my parents establishing contact with hers and not waiting to get the latest update, called up my parents and blasted them for not considering my happiness. This got my dad worked up, and he stated emphatically that he knew what best to be done for me. By then, my brother realized that he probably had done more damage than help and then called me up and apologized about it. I waited until evening before I called up home and talked to my parents, by which time they also had cooled down. My mother told me that they were proceeding because my grandma impressed upon them that if I were to come up with something like this, I would have been pretty serious about it all and that they shouldn’t take it lightly. She once again asked whether I was sure about it, and I assured her that I’d have this girl and no one else.

It was probably my grandma’s influence, as well as a rare case of intransigence from me, which finally helped turn the events the way it did. A week after all this had happened, my mom called me up saying the horoscopes really didn’t match. That, to me, sounded almost like death knell. I still stuck to my point about marrying her, which then made my mom come out with the next piece of news. Apparently, the astrologer told that even though it wouldn’t automatically match, he had enough knowledge about mantras to forcefully match our horoscopes. Now, as long as they matched, I didn’t care whether it was by hook or crook, and I mentioned as such to my mom. If my mom needed any further confirmation, that was it, and she said she’d again talk to the astrologer. Meanwhile, my dad and uncle had gone to meet her uncle and aunt who stayed in the same town. They were pretty impressed with her uncle and aunt, and that too helped in strengthening our case.

Things were going at a much quicker pace than I thought, and I knew that there was no way in the world that I would see her before our engagement. Apart from me and her, one other person who really was happy with all that was happening was a telephone booth operator at Domlur. During those few months in 2002, I provided so much revenue to the man that I received royal treatment there. I would never have to wait, as he would shoo away anyone who was using the booth as soon as I arrived. By the time I finished the call, he would have a glass of fruit juice ready for me. Before long, he had opened another telephone booth, and it won’t be exaggeration to say that I was the prime contributor to it. That said, our contribution towards BSNL was still considerably lesser when compared to what either Spice or Contact enjoyed, but then again, we weren’t complaining and neither were they.

With things finally settling down, our engagement was fixed for late October. By this time, I had also obtained official permission to call her up and talk to her at home. Needless to say, her parents were unaware of the fact that we were constantly talking to each other through mobile, but with the permission, we decided to switch to landline since mobile rates were still pretty high in India at that time. Calling her home meant talking to her parents, which was a bit awkward for me as well as for them. My brother too took their number, wanting to talk to his “bhabhi,” and as is the case with him, had no trouble easing into conversation with her parents or to her. Meanwhile, her dad asked whether I would feel okay to see his uncle who was residing in Bangalore. Knowing this was my first chance to impress my FIL, I turned on a double dose of charm and pulled all the right strings. Later, my roommate who accompanied me, told that I had overdone it all, but they didn’t seem to mind, and that was what I was looking for. By the time October rolled towards an end, I was as ready as I would be. (To be continued…..)