Once smitten, twice shy, thrice lucky

ONCE SMITTEN, TWICE SHY, THRICE LUCKY!

Sandeep Kothapalli

Notion Press

5 Muthu Kalathy Street, Triplicane,

Chennai - 600 005

First Published by Notion Press 2014

Copyright © Sandeep Kothapalli 2014

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-93-84049-27-0

This book has been published in good faith that the work of the author is original. All efforts have been taken to make the material error-free. However, the author and the publisher disclaim the responsibility.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

To mom and dad. Your love story inspired me to...

To my sister Sindu and her ingenuous insights...

To Baby Satvika...

Contents

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgments

BOOK 1

BOOK 2

BOOK 3

BOOK 4

BOOK 5

Epilogue

Oststl Glossary

Preface

I never intended to be a writer. But like love, it just happened.

When I was 14, I was convinced I would make a great biologist. I was in love with cats, dogs, ants, snakes, orangutans and everything that was aerobic but not human. But then I started hating Biology for some reason. I wasn’t scoring in Biology!

At 17, I decided to be a soldier, like my father. But I was the quintessential nice boy who was bullied at school. The one time I decided to fight back, I was pulped black and blue. There was no way I was going to become a soldier with that kind of history!

I am 27 now. I guess I was destined to be a writer.

Do you believe in destiny? I do. And so does Varun. And OSTSTL is his story.

With a hope that the protagonists of this story connect with each one of you in one way or the other, I present Once smitten, twice shy, thrice lucky!

Acknowledgments

Two years after I started writing this book, here I am, about to thank all of you who have in some way or the other influenced my thoughts and shaped me to the writer that I am.

Thanks mom. You have been a calming influence on me and have made me a better person. Thanks dad, for being ever ready to buy me those expensive comics that I demanded of.

I know, it’s cliché but I had to thank my progenitors first. Without them, I would have been zilch.

Your unflinching belief in my abilities has kept me going in the face of obscurity. I know, being a sister to an unpredictable aspiring writer like me can be a tough job. You were the first one to read the very first draft of this book and give your honest feedback. That has helped immensely. Rock on Sindu!

As an editor of this book, you have been one strict taskmaster (pun intended). But on a serious note, by pushing me to the limits, you have done wonders to this book. I can never thank you enough. You came aboard at a time, when I was stuck, desperately looking out for someone who could give me unbiased feedback. Needless to say, you have done one hell of a great job. Keep pushing me, Divya Lavanya. Thanks a lot Sarath for the constant support. Many thanks to Baby Satvika as well. I hope to impress her with this book, some day.

I never took writing seriously until that day when I managed to impress you with my short note on love. Thanks a ton, Dipika. Had it not been for your suggestion, I wouldn’t have written this book to begin with. Keep rocking, like you do always.

It’s been one hell of a roller coaster ride, writing this book. But you two stood by me like a rock. Your encouragement and a constant stream of morale boosters helped me clear all shreds of a lack of confidence in my abilities. Many thanks Divya and Srinu.

Manoj Motiani, Abhilash Gudla, Aditya Shekhar, Abhinav Pathi, Avinash Singh, Soumya Poddar, Vikas Nigam, Prasad Dhake, Rachit Kumar, Charu Lata Sharma, Arulin Jajorea and Anirban Samajpati – Special mention to all of you for sharing your life experiences and insights on love, money and women. Thanks a ton for making my living life at IIMA a memorable experience. I have tried to incorporate some or the other fundaes of you all in this book.

Thanks a lot Chandrika. Your medical insights have contributed immensely in shaping an important protagonist of this book. I am sure you will rock as a great surgeon some day.

Kiran & Divya Gone – To be an integral part of your tryst with unbridled love has been both an honour and is something I take great pride in. I have taken the liberty to sketch characters based on you both and I hope you connect to them. Many thanks to you both. Keep rocking!

Lakshmi and Sonali – I have immensely enjoyed listening to your version of how men fail to understand women. Or rather should I say your version of a dummies guide to understanding women? Can’t thank you enough though - for making me a better person and labelling me with the proverbial ‘nice guy’ tag. It sure does feel good, listening to you both.

Special mention to my roomies – PVR, Sandeep Yerra, Abhinav Agarwal, Shekhar for bearing a silent ‘me’. Srinivas Drona and Siddharth Varshney – Credit to you both for the cover design concept that’s simple, yet elegant. All of you have been very supportive of my creative endeavour. We shall raise a toast some day!

BOOK 1

"First love is only a little foolishness and a

lot of curiosity" – George Bernard Shaw

1

December 2010

My new Samsung Corby Smartphone had effectively changed the way I did some things. Previously, I used to bang the snooze button on my alarm clock and tell it to shut up in the mornings. But I can’t bang a Smartphone, can I? So, now I would actually wake up and softly tap the screen, silently begging her to let me sleep for a while.

She started buzzing once again. There was still some time to go for a workout in the gym, and so, as always, I dozed off, promising myself that I would wake up in the next ten minutes. However, a tired body of mine never knew when those ten minutes translated to thirty-five minutes.

Just when I was up, trying to stretch and force a zombie me out of slumber, my cell phone started ringing. Most of my friends by then were married and whatever few calls that I earlier used to get from my friends had stopped.

It was only Rekha and Satish who still managed to withstand my mood fluctuations, idiosyncrasies, and my tendency to go blank and stare at the horizon whenever something triggered the memories associated with my relationships with two of the most beautiful women.

It was on my sister Meera’s insistence that I relented and agreed to buy a Smartphone. For me, it was just a phone, though I relied on it to wake me up on time daily. Otherwise, it was just a portable and wireless version of the telephone that Mr Bell had invented long back.

I guess the Satan himself must have sent Mr Bell to earth, instructing him to make one of the deadliest relationship spoilers of all time. Yes, I am talking about the instrument we use nowadays to talk less and message more! The same instrument has made us so sluggish that we prefer to call the vegetable vendor and ask him to deliver vegetables to our doorstep instead of going ourselves all the way to the market, bargain hard to pay the right price and live to tell the tale at home!

So, despite the obvious love-hate relationship with the cell phone, I could never think of throwing it away, for it still had the capability to keep me hooked to it. I would always play bubble shooter on it for hours during the weekends.

Most of the calls that I received on it were from my family. It was unusual of dad to be calling me at this hour.

‘Morning, dad,’ I greeted him in a lazy undertone.

‘Morning, Varun. Not woken up yet?’

‘Just woke up. I didn’t expect you to call so early.’

‘Today is Vaikuntha Ekadashi. Amma wants you to take a head bath,’ he told me meekly, even as I heard mom giving me instructions on do’s and don’ts for that day – go to the temple, offer archana etc.

For someone who had worked for over twenty years in the Indian ‘Air Force,’ toughened by the kind of hardships a soldier is put into, handling the complexities of life turned out to be a piece of cake for my father. But at home, it was mom who wielded authority.

‘Is this what you called for?’ I asked, exasperated, and later hung up. I could never come to terms with mom’s idiosyncrasies even though she is one of the coolest mothers one can ever have. Out of habit I tried dozing off, telling myself that I would sleep just for the next five minutes. But, the fact that I almost shouted at dad first thing in the morning bothered me enough to shoo away all remnants of somnia within my body.

There was a time when I would make a to-do list and tick them off every day. That was way back in IIMA. At the various air force bases my father had worked in, I had spent almost my entire childhood watching the majestic Sukhois and Jaguars fiercely engaging each other in dogfights and routine sorties.

My father would always tell me how they worked within set deadlines, tracking each and every second while instructing pilots, sitting in the only high rises one could ever see back then - Air Traffic Control towers. It is only in a second that two Suryakirans approaching each other to what seems like a head-on collision graze past each other and end up performing one of the toughest aerobatic stunts ever. Watching the pilots perform those manoeuvres, I got to understand what it was like to face the pressure that came along with taking make or break decisions within a split second.

It had taken me years of conditioning at the air force bases and at IIMA to be someone who respected the concept of punctuality. All that changed once I was sucked into the vortex called corporate life. My transformation into a full-fledged zombie was even faster than I had expected.

Lethargic instincts once imbibed don’t leave you just like that. My body clock was designed to be ready for important events, but when it came to the daily chores, I always chose to sleep and while away the time under the cosy warmth of the blankets.

I was working as a photojournalist for a magazine known as Travel India. It is a lifestyle magazine by the Bharat Today group. I was given an assignment for which I had to visit Hyderabad, the city where my family eventually settled down after years of hopping around cities and states across India.

I avoid early morning flights. I mean, who would want to wake up early and then get ready for a flight. I am sure there are many who rise with the Sun, but I was definitely not one of them. So, I deliberately booked a 12 PM flight to Hyderabad.

I was looking forward to interview the caretaker of the Hellen Keller Institute for Deaf and Deaf-blind based in Secunderabad. Recently it was in the news as three of its deaf, degree students won the National Best Short Movie award at the International Film Festival of India. One of them was the director of this movie, and I was dying to know how they could conceptualize and make a movie without the ability to hear sounds, something that is crucial in movie making.

Since I woke up rather early that day, unlike everyday when I would procrastinate for an hour or two, I decided not to skip the workout session in the gym. Highlights of a particularly interesting ODI match were to be telecast in the TV sets in the gym.

When it came to working out, my gym trainer was a crazy disciplinarian. He was a pain in my arse for he would insist on following all the rules of the gym, some of which were otiose. Waking up to my flatmate’s Altec Lansing speakers blaring out Pink Floyd was the norm every morning. Now, I have never been a great admirer of the likes of Beatles and Pink Floyd. Bred on Indian Classical music, I find it difficult to appreciate the lyrical beauty of Rock that many of my peers claim to and brag about. Nevertheless, his Altec Lansing served to act as a natural alarm clock for me.

That morning, when the flat was as still and silent as a serene Himalayan lake in the Tibetan mountains, I was curious to know why this aberration. My flatmate was not an MBA. I wanted to unlearn being an MBA and so was clear that I wouldn’t share my flat with someone of my brethren. He was a copywriter with a major advertising firm. The day before, he had gone to Hard Rock Cafe with his gang of jabbering colleagues. I was fast asleep when he turned up drunk with his girlfriend in tow.

He was knocked beyond his senses. So, like every day, I didn’t wake him up. Moreover, I was too shy to venture into his room what with his half-naked girlfriend sleeping on him. The urge to join him for such drunken orgies was always there. However, my uncanny tendency to talk gibberish after being drunk and land myself in deep shit wasn’t exactly new to me.

Putting up with a dour (read gym instructor) was a better proposition than coming home drunk like my flatmate. That’s what I thought and left for the gym. My flat was located in an upmarket locality of Navi Mumbai. The receptionist at the entrance to the gym gave her usual genial smile and greeted me. On any other day, I would have acknowledged her. However, a voluptuous, sexy, hot girl entered the gym and the next moment I found myself checking her out. That was when my trainer rudely interrupted my beautiful yet cheesy flow of thoughts.

‘Dude, haven’t you ever seen girls in your life? Concentrate on your physique and soon girls will buzz around you like honeybees,’ he advised.

‘Well, you do have one hell of it. Do you have any girlfriends?’ I retorted.

The plurality of the word girlfriend definitely pissed him off. For a moment, I thought he was coming to slap me, but thankfully, he picked my hand and pointed it at the RULE number 3 in the board titled ‘Rules and Guidelines’. It read:

‘AVOID DISTRACTIONS WHILE WORKING OUT’

I grinned at him and he smirked back. I was glad that the intensity of the workouts was a little low, thanks to the highlights of that ODI match.

After the workout, I went into the changing room when I heard someone singing the popular romantic song ‘Kaho naa pyaar hai…’ from the Hrithik starrer of the same name. It was the housekeeper, who was busy flushing the toilets. It was nauseating, considering how this legendary song didn’t quite fit the context as well as the situation. I was mighty pissed.

‘Dude, can you stop singing the song? Don’t sing this when you are cleaning the goddamn toilets!’ I shouted at him.

‘Excuse me, Sahib. Oh! I am sorry. Good habits die hard,’ he muttered.

For a moment, I paused and then resumed the activity of tying the shoelaces. That song had brought back memories of the day when we both danced to this song ten years ago for the farewell day in school. Even as I was trying to be all romantic and gooey with her while dancing, our teachers couldn’t stop gossiping about the crackling chemistry we shared on the stage. It was her favourite song as well.

The airport and the 12 PM ho-hum flight soon got into my head as I continued to suppress the countless thoughts zipping through my mind in a Brownian motion. I had always been a lone traveller on flights. That day was no different, either. How do you feel when you have a haughty, blabbering old woman as your co-passenger on the flight? I felt like pasting a tape on her mouth!

Two hours later, I called up Mr Srivats, the person whom I was supposed to interview. He asked me to visit the institute right away as he was leaving the city the next day to attend an important conference in Delhi. I was delighted: a quick wrap up of this interview would give me additional time to spare for my family and friends.

After travelling an hour on the bumpy roads that led to the institute, I finally made it on time. I am proud of this city. This is the city where I made the most important friends of my life and learnt that relationships are all about expectations management. I can never thank this city enough for teaching me the nuances of life and making me what I am today.

However, I did feel the winds of change flowing in Hyderabad. In the past few years, the city had transformed beyond recognition. The old, laidback charm that this city emanated was missing. Where was the tehzeeb that people of this city were usually associated with? Where were the hawkers who used to block the traffic near the Secunderabad Railway station? Where was the Charminar? Sadly, it was and continues to be dwarfed by the innumerable high rises that dot the city skyline now.

People were in such a rush that for a moment I forgot that I was in Hyderabad, for it seemed to me that I was still in Mumbai. God, I miss those old days in this city. And with the metro project works that had started then, even the finest and the widest of the roads were starting to converge, throwing the traffic out of gear.

Unlike what I had imagined, Hellen Keller Institute for the Deaf and Deaf-blind was a well-maintained convent school, quite big for a school though. With over 1200 students on its rolls, no wonder it was one of the biggest schools in its category in India. There was also an MBA and a degree program for those students who had completed their college education. It was good to see an eclectic mix of students, right from kids in the primary school to MBA graduates in the institute, most of who were living under a single roof like a big family.

I couldn’t help but stare at the huge portals of the institute. Its gothic architecture, with a serene aura surrounding it, was stunning to say the least. It was no wonder that I found most people around to be calm, composed and radiating happiness all around. It was a perfect place to study. I wished I could stay there a little longer.

I gave a stern look to Sister Nirmala when she interrupted the telepathic conversation I was having with the stellar domes and pillars.

‘So, are you the one who has come from Mumbai to meet Sri?’

‘I am sorry, Sister, but I am here to meet Mr Srivats,’ I said, speaking like a dumb jackass I can be sometimes.

She sternly looked at me, and that was when I realised she was referring to Mr Srivats when she addressed him as ‘Sri’.

The aromatic, strong tea the office boy brought for me made me reminisce those days when we used to sit at Rambhai’s for hours and have at least 2-3 cups of strong Masala tea every hour. She particularly relished the zingy flavour of the tea Rambhai made and would insist on meeting me there. Excuse my penchant for digression sometimes. Can’t help, as my past was beautiful!

Mr Srivats’ chamber was an epitome of utter chaos and randomness – something that I didn’t expect from him. Books were lying in all corners of the room, some of which were quite surprisingly in tatters. Brown stains all over the door reeked of pungent smell, and it was clear to me that it was animal shit. I was surprised at how the laptop was spared. The furniture was quite classily made of rosewood and teak and that brought some aesthetic sense to an otherwise shoddy atmosphere in his room. I was too busy standing there, gazing at the mess before me when he caught me unawares.

‘Are you okay, Varun?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, Mr Srivats. I am sorry, I—’ He cut me off before I could say further.

‘It is okay, Varun. All this mess is the art creation of my dog that can be quite moody sometimes. It’s a Labrador, you see. Yesterday I scolded him and he vented his anger on me like this,’ he said with a laugh that sounded like a half-dead motor.

After a twenty-minute discussion with him on the state of affairs in that institute, I was happy to know that it was financially well served, thanks to the donors. Of late, he observed that more and more youngsters who were professionally successful and well settled in their careers were donating a part of their earnings to NGOs and institutes like these. That was heartening, and I felt relieved that something good and noble was still happening in the society despite all the pessimism and insecurity in our increasingly chaotic lives.

We talked about how the three students of their institute managed to make a short movie that won so many accolades in the film festival. Unfortunately, all of them had gone to their respective native places for Christmas vacation. Anyway, unlike what I had thought, their movie was a silent one.

2

Even my parents knew well the fact that I prefer meeting two of my best friends first thing after coming to Hyderabad, before actually coming home. That speaks volumes of the extent to which both of them had become an integral part of my life. Rekha and Satish, who were nothing like each other, had become my advisors for anything and everything pertaining to love.

The only thing about Rekha that would rile me up was her penchant for making me wait every time we made plans to meet. However, that was a small price to pay for being her friend. She was more than a friend to me. She was someone who I could trust with my life, who I knew could understand me for what I am. She was my soul sister.

And then there was her fiancé Satish. Satish was my classmate in APTU. Had it not been for Satish, the four years of mechanical engineering would have been one hell of a monotonous ride. He did everything else in the campus but studying.

A great actor, a fluid dancer and an avid debater, he was the stud of our campus. He was often referred to as ‘Hrithik’s clone’. The fact that he ignored the flirtatious overtures of even the hottest girl in the campus made him even more mystical and endearing amongst the fairer sex.

What brought me closer to Satish was the fact that I wanted to be like him, wanted to be labelled cool, hot and fun to be with in the campus. He evoked a sense of awe and immense respect in me, for him. In the campus, I did nothing of significance that could bring me fame, except study all the time.

And looking back, I guess Satish wanted to be like me. So, we saw in each other what we aspired to be, what we couldn’t do or become. But this wasn’t the reason we gelled like Jay and Veeru. It was simple: he was the only guy with whom I could talk about everything and he would patiently listen to my nonsense and be actually interested in.

Rekha, as she was then, wasn’t the same when I first met her in school. That was way back in August 1998. She was nerdy and clumsy, to the extent that my classmates often thought of her as a naïve dumb girl. With thick reading glasses that magnified her almond-shaped, upturned eyes, Rekha, with her waist length hair tied with a red-colored hair band would more often than not smell of Parachute oil. That was the reason the nickname Parachute stuck to her.

With a slim bodyline, she was fair complexioned and was as tall as I was. I was probably the only boy in the class to whom she appeared cute. Our first meeting was an accident. But then the word ‘accident’ doesn’t always connote something that has gone horribly wrong. I say so because in my case, this ‘accident’ was the best thing to happen to me at that time.

It was my first day at school, after deciding collectively as a family to settle in Hyderabad. Dad had opted for a VRS from IAF and he got me admitted in the second best CBSE School in Hyderabad. I was just on my way to the teacher’s staff room, to meet Miss Vani, our class teacher, when I bumped into Rekha. She was carrying a bunch of notebooks to be distributed amongst her classmates, who to my surprise later turned out to be my classmates as well.

‘Sorry, sorry!’ I apologised. Standing up, I offered her my hand to pick her up. With a befuddled expression on her face, she took her time to observe me as to where the hell did I appear from nowhere?

‘It’s okay,’ she muttered, dusting and straightening her skirt. I helped her pick up the notebooks and handed them over to her. I could sense that she wanted to ask me ‘Are you a new student?’ But then, she was probably so preoccupied with delivering the notebooks to the class - where a lot of anxious students were praying that they get good grades - that she instead chose to smile and made her way towards the classroom.

Her affable smile led me to believe that she would be good company to show me around and make me feel at home. So, at that split second, I made a choice. And I was right.

‘Hey! Excuse me,’ I called after her. She turned back.

‘You called me?’

‘Yes. I am new here. Could you tell me where can I find Vani ma’am?’

‘Wait here. I will be back in a moment.’ She rushed into the classroom, and within a minute, came back to where I was waiting for her.

‘So which standard have you come in?’ she asked.

‘Ninth standard, section B,’ I replied.

‘Oh! So we are classmates then. Hi, I am Rekha,’ she beamed and offered her hand to shake. The amiable spark in her eyes, for a second, put me in a spot of bother for I wasn’t exactly expecting my presence to attract some friendly banter.

I mean, frankly, with an overtly anxious expression than was required on my face, I had conditioned myself to receive cold vibes and stares all around. I was in a state of mind where I could have never smiled, even if I wanted to.

That nagging worry whether I would be able to mingle with the students in the new school or not was something that completely enveloped my thought process. So, the way I spoke, my gait and my body language were all aligned to the same. It was never easy to be a new student in any school, in the midst of an academic year (August 1998), especially for someone like me who was a hardcore introvert. It was Rekha who had calmed my fraying nerves.

‘Rey! Where are you, ra? I am waiting here at IMAX for the last half an hour, damn it!’ I screamed in exasperation.

‘Dude! Blame Rekha and not me. Fifteen more minutes ra, and we will be there,’ Satish said, trying to calm me down. As if I didn’t know, it was Rekha and her obsession with the Lakmes and the Garniers that was the reason for the delay.

‘I can’t sit here idly, watching all gooey, mushy couples entering in and out. It’s creepy!’ I announced.

‘Sorry, Varun. So, where will you be then?’ Rekha joined in, as Satish put the cell phone in the speaker mode.

‘I will be at Eat Street. Bring in something with strawberries in it. Then, your apology shall be duly accepted,’ I tut-tutted. The humid breeze from the Hussain Sagar Lake nearby wasn’t helping me cool off anyway.

Thankfully, they zoomed in and arrived in ten minutes flat, bringing a cup of Strawberry flurry along for me from the nearby McDonald’s drive-in restaurant. It was after about a year that I was meeting both of them.

Rekha had replaced those thick glasses of hers with trendy contact lenses and that had only made her prettier than she was earlier. Satish hadn’t changed much. I realised that from the day he and Rekha had started dating, he became more patient. Certainly, Rekha’s calming and genial demeanour had served to temper his volatile nature and penchant to get into fits of rage at the slightest provocation.

We then made our way to Lumbini Park where the plan was to take the boat ride and catch up on all the things we had missed over the year. It was Rekha’s plan, and I must admit that when it came to planning meetings like this, no one was better than she was.

A lot had happened in this period, when I decided to quit a lucrative corporate job and pursue journalism. Rekha and Satish were engaged. And I wasn’t there to witness the drama and action that followed, when Satish and Rekha informed their parents that they were in love and were planning to marry.

I had a gala time for the next half an hour that we three spent together in the boat. Satish’s description of how both of them convinced their parents to consent to their marriage had us in splits.

Like always, the routine followed when Satish and Rekha declared their intentions at home. Elders and their idiosyncrasies, their obsession with words like caste, community, stature clouded their ability to think rationally, and Rekha’s parents in particular emotionally blackmailed her for some time, at times threatening her with consequences like ‘We will all consume poison and die if you marry him.’

I was the reason they both met and fell in love with each other. Although, the day they both met wasn’t exactly one of those good days for me. In fact, it was, now looking back, one of those days when everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. So, despite my absence, I was happy Satish stood by Rekha like a rock all the time.

That probably elevated their relationship to that of a deeply emotional state of longing for each other– a stage where both of them knew they were soulmates. So, when Miya Biwi raazi, toh kya karega Qazi!, their parents gave up and resigned to the fact that accepting their decision was in everyone’s best interests.

Satish was working as a senior engineer with a big chemical conglomerate in Hyderabad. Rekha, after completing her Bachelors in fashion technology, worked as an intern with Sathyasakhi Mukherjee, the renowned Bollywood costume designer, for a year in Delhi.

Both of them did have a tough time battling the complexities that came with a long distance relationship, during the time Rekha was trying to make a name for her in the fashion designing circles. So, it was a bold decision that Rekha took, to open a boutique of designer sarees in Hyderabad, for that allowed her to be with Satish all the time. Things were now all set and they were planning to marry in the next six months.

In a way, my admiration for them had grown by leaps and bounds, not because I knew they would continue to be with me through thick and thin, but because they fought for their love and emerged unscathed and victorious, thus reminding me of how things could have been for me.

‘So, is Vishu still in touch with you?’ I asked Rekha, unable to resist the strong urge to ask how and where she was.

Satish looked at me suggestively, nodding his head in disapproval. He was aghast, still reeling with shock that I had put him in.

‘Dude! It’s been over five years now. When will you get over her?’ Satish questioned. I smirked. I was over her. But this time, I just couldn’t stop myself from asking Rekha about her. Rekha knew exactly why. She was indeed the sutradhaar of all that had happened between Vishu and me.

‘I don’t know, Varun. After your Central Park meeting with her, she cut off with everything that’s associated with you. Naturally, that includes me as well. It’s after six months of your meeting with her in Central Park that she mailed me her wedding card and then called up to invite me for the same,’ she replied.

‘Did you attend her wedding?’ I asked, curious to know more.

‘No. The wedding was in New Jersey. I was busy shielding Satish from the flirtatious glares hot chics in the gym gave him day in day out!’ she remarked in jest, winking at Satish.

‘Oh! Now I know why you both work out in the same gym,’ I said, high-fiving Satish as we laughed heartily.

Later, when it was time for me to bid good-byes, Satish did ask me about Nancy. The one thing I hoped against hope that Satish wouldn’t ask about. I had no answer, despite the fact they deserved one. So, I just stood silent, ready to bid good-byes. And they didn’t say anything for I knew they also understood my silence equally well.

Two hours later, I finally reached home. I wasn’t tired. Not even a bit. All this while I was swimming in the pool of my thoughts, thinking about the two years I spent without her before deciding to move on. Why did we not speak all this while? I had tried my best to tell her that I did what I thought was best for her, but I never imagined that my friendship with her would end the way it did.

My mother hugged me and then pointed to my bulging waistline.

‘Varun, at least this time listen to me, son. Get married na.’

Why do most mothers have this obsession of getting their well-settled sons married quickly?

‘Okay, amma. Start looking for girls. But there is one condition.’

‘What?’ She frowned.

‘I want to know the girl well before marrying her.’ I made my intentions clear.

‘And what does that mean?’ she retorted. With her arms on her hips, head bent at an angle, and eyebrows raised, I thought I pissed her off.

‘Amma, first find me a good girl. I will explain everything else to you later,’ I said, allaying her fears.

This time, mom agreed. Finally, the search was going to begin!

After having a sumptuous dinner, I jumped on my bed to relax. Living alone, mulling over useless things like the work in office, career stability, financial security, and my past had become a habit I was not really trying to get rid of. I have had my share of rocky, romantic relationships with not one but two girls. The first one was like sweet curd that later turned sour and the second one was like candy floss that later turned so flossy that I couldn’t swallow it anymore.

‘So again back to thinking? Is it Nancy?’ Meera asked. My sister was such an expert in reading my mind that I sometimes wished Nancy was also like her. But, I guess I am so complicated that in two years, no girl can understand me completely.

‘Naah! I met Satish and Rekha. Was just wondering how they managed to convince their parents. They are getting married in six months, you know.’

‘Oh! That, I know. I had spoken to Rekha a few days back,’ she said and wished me good night. She was anyway used to the perpetual state of denial I could be in sometimes.

My sister is an extraordinarily mature woman (I guess all sisters are!). She was so much like Rekha, that at times it would startle me. But yes, Meera was a little on the plumper side. That was the only saving grace!

With Meera, I share most of the things that bother me. But then, as my sibling and a well-wisher, she would disapprove some of my actions and decisions, most of which would be quirky enough to confuse the hell out of her.

That’s where Rekha was not like Meera. She understands my quirkier side and lets me be, without influencing my decisions. Nevertheless, the bond that I shared with Meera was a strong one. I needed her to support me and my decisions, help me convince mom and dad whenever required at critical junctures, and she was doing a great