“Come on Abhi, Aashi is perfect for you. 34 of your 36 stars have matched.”
“Mom, I doubt you even know me perfectly and how can you decide she is perfect for me. And please stop it with this astrology nonsense.” I shouted.
“Oh, so now I don’t know my own son!” mom said with a choking voice. Well done mom! You’ve played the most classic mom card ever – creating a feeling of guilt in her son’s heart, that he was the reason behind her tears.
“Sorry maa, I did not mean that. Please don’t cry. I love you”
“If you love me, why don’t you listen to me?”
“Come on mom, you just are emotionally cornering me. This is not fair.”
“I’m not forcing you Abhi. Could you at least meet her once, before coming to a decision!”
That was it! I was completely cornered and I had no other escape plan for it, other than rejecting the girl after the meeting. What could I have told my mom? That I was not in a state to move on, that I was heartbroken by my recent breakup? She didn’t even know about my relationship to tell her about the breakup.
Aafiya, she was my love, my future and my life and I was hers. Her smile used to fill my day and her thoughts, my night. It was not easy, accepting our mutual feelings, because of the obvious constraints. Every relationship has these weights which don’t allow the love to take the firm grounds. The weights may be small or colossal, but if we keep on loving more and more, the love grows heavier too, shifting the balance. It happened with us too. We knew, at every step of our relationship that the risks and the resistance that we would have to face once our families come to know about our relationship. Yet, she said it was going to be okay and that she was strong enough and I was more than worthy to fight for. But life is not a fairy tale and neither is the person you loved, an angel. Problem is that we underrate the various strings attached to us. We think we can break away, easily snapping the strings, until it is our turn. The day her parents had arranged her marriage, she didn’t even try once. It didn’t take her more than a week to update the Facebook status to “Engaged” with a lovely selfie attached to it. Breakups are not as bad as they portray in the movies – imagining the person you love in every face you see, becoming a hopeless drug addict in the name of love etc. Nothing is so filmy, except for the confusion. My first thought was to board the first flight available and to go ask her hand, even though she was engaged. I honestly have no idea, why I did not do that. It just didn’t feel the thing to do then. Instead, I just kept on liking all the updates within seconds, hoping that she would come back to me. I know, that’s pathetic, but that’s how brain works, during the breakup, in the most embarrassing ways possible! It was only after everything was over, that I started thinking rationally, about what went wrong.
What is our biggest asset? What has been our biggest asset over the past few decades? I don’t know how the world works, but as an Indian, the biggest assets I have seen in my society is culture and social status. If your children aren’t married by the age of 30, what will the society think about your family? If your parents go out on a personal date, at the age of 50, won’t it bring the inerasable shame to your family? If your child believes in you and share with you, about his love, shouldn’t you reject it bluntly, so that the “high class” people of your society don’t categorize you as the good for nothing parents! Many such norms, define our lives, every day. I was in fact lucky, to have born in what I call a balanced generation. We are resisting the orthodox mentality of the society and we are not yet too far into resistance to have gotten out of hand. I believe I have the right to make my own choices, but I also am fully aware that I don’t have to hurt anyone in the process. I accepted to meet Aashi so as to make my mom happy. I knew I do not have to like her though.
THE MEETING:
I would never let go of an excuse to go out and breathe the fresh air of Mile High Denver and that was one of the reasons for me to accept this arranged date, to get out of my normal ‘rabbit in the hole’ lifestyle. I knew it was going to be nothing different from a clichéd first date, where two people pretend to be someone else for an hour or two and decide whether they like the other person based on how successful they were, in the pretending game. I usually stay away from these dates and particularly the ones arranged by parents, where the significant other is selected by compatibility of the social status. But when you are at an elevation six thousand feet and the magnificent view of lightened up Denver city astounds you beyond words, there’s little to worry about the petty matters. There are very few places in the world where I would want to be, other than the Table 3 of Flag Staff house. It’s not only about the vastness of the view, it’s about the depth involved. Watching thousands of houses over a dinner and thinking about the different lives being lived by the people in those houses, makes you wonder how adaptable we are to our own lives. Thousands of houses, thousands of windows and thousands of people behind those – each with their own story, each with their own struggle and each with their own triumphs. I was not even paying attention to anything else, until my penance was broken when someone called out my name with a husky voice.
“Hi, I’m Aashi. Nice to have finally met you!”
So many questions irritated my mind at once – ‘What does she mean by finally? Was she interested in my match from even before she saw me! She’s not even an average looking person, how could mom even say that she is perfect for me! Even her dressing sense is blunt, neither classy nor sexy. Of course, I am right, she is not the one for me.’ So many thoughts flew and so many decisions made, all within a second.
“Hi. Abhi.” I introduced myself with a fake smile that we were taught so well from the childhood.
“It’s a beautiful place. Thanks for meeting me here.” Now it’s her turn to return the fake smile.
We talked about our hobbies, our families, how we miss them, our future plans and about life in America! My interest in her officially ended when she said she doesn’t particularly like Batman and I was just passing time. Our conversation continued for an hour until we were finished with our dinner. Finally it was time to end yet another date that was emotionally forced upon me by my mom. As a custom, I placed my card in the check, but she stopped the waiter and placed hers too.
“Let’s share. We are not even officially friends. Are we?”
“I don’t think so.” I said, regretting my rude nature as soon as I said it.
“Hey Abhi, you know what. I don’t feel this is the right place to make true friends. Will you go for a walk with me? Let’s head to the downtown.”
“But that’s five miles away! That too, downhill.”
“Exactly, that’s the point!” she exclaimed.
“Okay, if you insist.” I said, interested only in walking through the dry autumn leaves that fill up the otherwise dull roads of the hill.
It is amazing what a one long walk can do to your impression on the other person. The more we talked, the more I was mesmerized by her perception of the world. True, that she was not a beauty, but she turned out to be something more – an angel with a fierce heart and a beautiful mind, which is a very rare combination now a days. We were very different in the way we see the world and in the way we want the world to see us. Our worlds have a common premise – a failed love, but it molded us into two different personalities. By the time we reached downtown, I was glad that though the date turned out to be a failure, I found myself a new friend to hang out with. After that, we took a cab to go back to the restaurant and to get our cars.
“Thank you so much mom. You gave me a new best friend.”
“What do you mean by best friend! Didn’t you like her?”
“Please mom, this one time, don’t force me. I don’t want to lose such an awesome friend, because of some forced relations.”
.
.
.
Two years later, Aashi and I have decided to take our relationship to the next level and in the very same restaurant, Flagstaff house, I proposed to her. We now go there every month, to celebrate our destiny and our endless love, by looking down at the everlasting beauty of the city of Denver.
“Problem with us humans is that, we limit our scope of searching our true love to such a minimal limit that we end up missing many opportunities to settle down, with the person who can make our life, the happiest! When we realize this, we then try to see only beyond the norms, beyond the boundaries and often ignore the people inside the boundaries. It is not so difficult to find the actual love if you look everywhere, within and beyond!”
euphoricwrites 