The Bride Continued....

         I knew that wishing Soumya is a kind of sin and getting her is quite impossible. But, still I don't know why I was trying for her. May be its love, or lust or a competition.

"Competition" The lady put a exclamatory mark.

Yah, competition. I was trying her but I knew it was not gonna happen. So, in the back of my mind I was just trying for Rahul not to get her.

"And Why is that?"

Because I didn't want Rahul to get such a sweet, nice and beautiful girl. I know I sound stupid but I can't help it. Thats what another reason I am here to say Sorry to him. Sorry for all those silly things that I have done. We are good friends but there was a little bit of competition in everything. I knew that I never gonna get such a beautiful girl in my life and so how can I see that Rahul is on its way to a nice girl like Soumya. Its stupid, isn't it? I said and turned back. The lady gave a sarcastic smile.

"So, whats next?" the lady asked.

I continued:

Their love story started on that spring. Rahul took her phone number and his Phone bill started to have some more zeros. I got lonely. He was either busy in talking her or busy in her thought. I was a kind of lonely and angry. Then something happened. They were getting married but both the families were still waiting for some kind of formal wordings and  rituals. So, soumya's father was somewhat reluctant to Soumya's talking with Rahul  over phone. So, some days later he restricted Soumya for Rahul's call. And, with that the phone lines become free but for a short period of time. Rahul decided to give her a cell phone and it was I who got selected for this ambitious project.

The Bride Continued....

       On the way back to home, I and Rahul both were silent. Rahul was lost in her thoughts, I guess. So I brought him into realty and asked: what did you talk?

“Nothing much” Rahul said.

“So, do you like her? I asked again.

“Hmm, yes, I think.” Rahul answered.

I feel like an axe fell on my sentiments.

Hmm, that’s good. I said with a sarcastic smile and asked: “Will you marry her?”

“Let’s see, I like her, the families will decide” Rahul said.

“She is marvelous. If it wouldn’t have your proposal, I could propose her” I said.

Rahul burst into laughter and said: “hey, bhabi maa samaan hoti he. And for your kind information, marwaris will never give their daughters in non-marwari families.”

We laughed and drove back to home.

For the first time in my life, I thought if I would born into a marwari family so I can offer myself for Soumya. I prayed that I will be vegetarian; I will eat only sweets and ghee; I will never drink alcohol; if Soumya would be mine. At the corner of my heart I knew that’s not possible but I didn’t want to loose hope. So I tried. The first thing I tried is to take Rahul’s mom into confidence.

          Time 1:30 pm. Venue: lunch table. I joined first and Rahul was little late. Rahul’s mom asked me: “So Vijay how is the girl, have you talked to her”.

“She was good. Rahul talked to her” I said.

“So Rahul liked her?” Aunty asked again.

I thought it was the right time to save my dream girl. So I manipulated the answer.

“Hmm, yes, he is. But, I don’t think she is the right girl for her” I said

Aunty promptly asked: “what made you think so?”

“She is general graduate and she is a homely girl. I don’t think she can adjust with Rahul. Rahul is a trendy, modern and extrovert person” I said

“That’s why, I selected her. In life, you need a person to balance and not the person of your type.” Aunty said.

Before I could say something, Rahul entered.

Aunty asked Rahul: “so how is she. Do you like her?”

“Hmm, she is good. But before saying something, I need sometime to know her better” Rahul said.

         That really soothed my mind. Damn, I really have some time to get that girl back and I need to work on this; I said to myself.

The Bride Continued....

              After 7 long minutes of waiting, Soumya entered the room with typical Indian woman attire. She was wearing a saree of dark pink color having silver works at the saree liner. She has kept her hairs open. The very light pink lipstick on her lips and a white bindi on forehead gave her a gorgeous look. The bangles on her hand and the legring was creating a eternal romantic sound that can sooth your pain. I could not take off my eyes from her. She came close to the table and her father introduced her to us. She put the tea plate on the table and made an eye contact with Rahul and me too. Her black eyes and the pink eye liner on them were the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. If anything called ‘Love at first sight’ is there, that’s this one, I could bet. She sat in front of Rahul and gave a smile to him. I looked at Rahul and prayed to god “please god, make Rahul to reject her”. My conscience again came to the scene and thrashed me badly. Rahul started talking with her sidelining me. "Bastard", I said not loud of course. Her father asked Soumya to take Rahul to her room. "Another Bastard", I thought. Rahul went with Soumya leaving me with the aliens. Her father got a chance to complete his question bank and I answered all of them. After 10 minutes, they came back. As soon as I spotted Rahul, I asked: can we leave? Rahul said: sure.

And we left her place.

     Rahul said bye to Soumya and exchanged a sweet smile with her. I could just see her smiling face. Damn!!!!!!.

The Bride continued....

     Rahul and me got ready to go and see the prospective bride. Rahul got dressed with a blue denim jeans, a white shirt with red stripes and a sports coat. I wore a white jeans and black tee shirt. At around 9 am morning, we set for their house. Rahul's mom looked at me and I understood what she wants me to do. Anyway, we left home and reached their house in half an hour. Their house was a big one. It is actually wrong to say that it is a house. It was a bungalow. Its a one storied having slopy roofs and white walled building with a big lawn in the front and a wide verandha. We drove almost to the entrace of the house and figured out someone is on the wings on the verandha. As soon as we arrived, the guy ran towards us and introduced himself as Soumya's dad. We put a big namaste to him and he made our way to the living room. The living room was a huge one with 4 large size sofa sets and a glass coffee table in the center. The floor has black and white granite pieces with all walls white in color. The walls were decorated with some canvas art works of some unknown artist. There was also a magnificent glass chandelier hanging from the top. From the house, it was obvious that the family is a rich one. Her father made us sit and left assuring us to come back soon. The room was so quite that our whisper made a noise. We wonder whether this calm is before the storm and we were right. As her father left us alone in the living room, we made ourselves comfortable and rolled our eyes throught out the room to capture its beauty. And, our rolling ends when we saw a huge crowd is marching towards us. We stood and made our hands close to greet them. Her dad introduced all of them to us. Grand father, grand mother,  uncle, aunt, brother, sister, niece, his brother, daughter in law, brother's children and a lot of them. They are all total 21 people. But, Soumya was missing. She was not yet in the scene. After 15 minute of long introduction ceremony, we are allowed to sit again. All those people sat around us. Then we are served with 15 types of sweet emerged in ghee, 10 types of snack and 8 types of fruits. There were total 33 different kind of things served on the coffee table but nothing was eatable, at least not for me. There was nothing thats spicy or at least of any taste other than sweet. Marwaris belive that on this type of occasion, anything other than sweet may turn into bad endings. So, I preferred not to touch anything, though all the members forced us a lot. Rahul took some snacks and then a question answer round started. We have been fired with a series of questions. They didn't even bother to spare me. I was not there to see their daughter. I was just there to have a feel good factor for my best friend. But I got into the victim's shoes.

What school did you go?

Whats your college?

Which company you are joining?

Is it a private or a govt sector?

How many people work in your company?

Will you settle in INDIA or abroad?

Why are you going for a job?

Why not you start your own business?

Is your job secured?

What type of work your company do?

What work you are going to do?

Why not you open a shop here?

We have answered all the nonsense questions with a lot sense. After 40 minutes of rigorous question-answer session we got a break. May be they are short of questions. It was the best opportunity for us to escape, I thought. So I gave a call to Rahul’s cell. Rahul took out the phone from his pocket and before he could react, I said: “I have set the alarm. We need to attend the get together party at 11. I have told you Rahul,right?”.

Soumya’s dad caught the exceptions and asked: are you guys going anywhere? I jumped and replied "yes, we have a get-together of old college friends. It is at 11 so we have to rush". Soumya’s dad was an intelligent man. So he promptly looked at Soumya’s mother and told her to bring Soumya though his eye gestures.

The Bride

       Rahul finalized a photo and threw it. The breeze brought the photo towards me and it fell on the ground with back side top. Something was written on it. I watched it closely and it was "Soumya". I picked it up and turned it to see the girl that Rahul selected. A close up face of a beautiful girl with hairs open and a smile. I jumped from the couch and ran towards Rahul's mom. I handed over the photo to her and the emotions on her face was worth watching. She was too happy to know that her son finally selected the bride. But I knew the truth. Rahul is not going to get married. It was just a trick to make the situation a little better for him till he left to join his job. Rahul's parent were overwhelmed by his selection. What I came to know is that Soumya is the single daughter of her parents. Her parents have own a big garment shop in the town and Soumya is considered the most beautiful girl ready to get married in their community. Her family is humble, intelligent and respected in the whole marwari community. So Rahul's parent thought this proposal is the best of all and got ready to make it happen.  It was decided to see the bride after two days and the preparation started.

      A list of people that needs to go to see the bride is prepared. It starts with Rahul's parents, his uncle, aunt, their son and daughter-in-law, his two cousin sisters, his mom's sister, husband and their daughter and son in law and a lot of people involving both short and long distant relatives. After a lot of discussion, inclusion, exclusion, a final list is made with 17 people in a three hours duration. Being an family affair, I kept my name out of that list. Though I have been a part of their family in the last one month and his parents forced me a lot to go with them, I preferred to deny. Rahul was ignorant all bout this. In the evening dinner table, his parents revealed it and Rahul blown out. "I am not going with you" the only thing Rahul said on the table. His parents got worried again and tried to convince him. I also joined and tried to make him understand the thing. But Rahul was adamant.

"I am not going with you. If you want me to go, I will go alone or with Viji." Rahul declared.

With no other option, his parents agreed. But I shouted "Not me, I will not go". Rahul's mom rolled her eyes on me and I kept my mouth shut. The list came down from 17 odd people to 2, Rahul and me. Soumya's parents get informed about the plan and everything has been set. Rahul left the dinner table and as soon as he left, I told his mother that I am not interested to go. His mom got emotional and started

"Look Viji. Don't misunderstand me. We have a good reputation in our community and we don't want Rahul to mess that up. It is not like that I don't care for his emotions or choice. If he rejects her, we will not utter a word. But, if he does anything stupid or asks her anything that is not acceptable, we will be in a mess. The whole community will talk about it. So,  we just want you to be with him and curb him if he intends to do something like that". I got speechless after her speech and could able to say just one word "Okay".

    Watching girls in mulls, disco is immaculately different from seeing a girl in her house with presence of her parents. No parents will love to see a guy scanning her daughter from top to bottom and mostly the guy like me and Rahul. The day before the bride selection was a night mare for me. I couldn't sleep at all. I was in a dilemma. One side is my nature to scan the girl which I couldn't help and the other side is Rahul's moms expectation. I couldn't decide what to do, how to behave, how to stop my eyes, my mouth and my nature. Seeing a girl in disco, we scan her from all the top to bottom, the hips, the legs, the breasts everything. If everything is well in shape, we give her a rating from A to D being A the most sexy and beautiful. But here the case is different. I couldn't decide how to judge whether this girl is beautiful or not. Rather a right girl to get married or not. Then I gave some more deep thought and find out that nobody wants to marry a item girl though the item girl is the sexiest girl ever. Everyone wants a caring, nice, lovable girl for marriage and being beautiful is the second thing that comes. So I finally decided to control my eyes and look for the other things that makes a girl a good wife. Anyways, its is for my best friends's marriage.

Rahul's home sweet home

      As Shiva left, I don't have any other good friend than Rahul. After four years of college, it was too difficult for me to go back to my village and stay there for three months. So I decided to stay in Rahul's house. Rahul is a marawari and single son of his parents. His parents are really nice and caring. They have their own business of garments and they come in the rich list of the town. Being the single son and a engineer by education, he was considered as the most eligible bachelors in his community. Being in their house for 2 months I leanred a lot of things about marawari family. Most of the marwari guys go for own industry, shops or any kind of business. They consider the people doing job as slaves. They don't eat meat and they treat alcohol as a sin. The girls are usually slim before marriage and grow side-wise exponentially after marriage. They love to play dandia and a lot of things happen on dandia nights. The guys generally don't go for highier educations as they knew they need to go with the family business. So they don't waste time and money on it. As the destiny for them is family business, they go for early marriage. By nature, the people are good but a litttle bit of stingy. The can do some gigantic additions, subtraction just like that. They hesitate spending money on anything on the world until and unless its life saver. And if they spend, they remember upto the minute detail of expense. They cook everyhting with ghee and they know the only taste, exists in the world, is sweet. Rahul was quite different from his community. He loves alcohol, he loves spices, he will die for sea foods and he spends money like anything. His parents also support him except certain things. The only thing they get into fight for is marriage.

       I leaved in there home for two months. The first month went nice. We used to enjoy the whole day and night. Our day starts at around 11 and ends at 11. We used to spent the whole day in mulls, theaters, juhu beach, parks and bird watching. With all this, we were also doing one more thing. We regularly attend his mom's lecture for marriage, its benefits, advantages, requirement and all the stuff related to marriage. His mom didn't care to spare me. Rahul and I both got bored with his mom's lecture but we were helpless. So, from the second month I changed my place from the receiving end to delivery end. In simple terms, I joined his mom and started giving advice to Rahul. With no other option, Rahul finally agreed to start looking for bride. His mom has already shortlisted some candidates and as soon as he agreed, her mom gave a bunch of photographs to pick one. I looked at all of them and each of them was far better than the other. But Rahul just picked a photograph from the bunch without seeing her and said " This one".

The wet eyes

          I stopped with that, turned back and got surprised. The blue eyes of the lady are all wet. I have seen a lot of ladies crying, screaming, feeling sad, felling sorry but the situation with this lady is different. The eyes of the lady and the facial expression has something uncomfortable in them. It was like the lady wants to do something. She desire to be there in the terrace on that day. Something like travelling back to November 25, 2006 and stop everything; stop me to let Shiva going, stop Shiva to break the friendship, stop Rahul to comment anything on Juhi.  It is like the lady just want to roll back the whole thing but it was not possible. After all it was all happened long  back in 3 years and I am just a story teller and she is just a a listener. There are tears all over the lower lid of her blue eyes ready to drop and kiss her cheek. I stared at those blue eyes and it came out after a moment. The lady moved her hand and cleaned her face with her fingers.

"What happened" I asked.

"Nothing. Just got thoughtful". The lady replied with a small cough. I could feel the choking of her voice.

The lady asked "Thats all. These guys never talked to each other after that".

"Yes, thats true. Shiva didn't talk to Rahul and Rahul didn't try to talk to him. May be its each others ego or may be something different. But, the friendship broke. " I replied.

"But, Did Rahul mean everything that he said on that night? Or Shiva just over reacted?" The lady asked again.

"I don't know exactly whether Rahul mean it or not what he is saying. But I know Shiva. He got possesive with people he met. And, he got more possessive for juhi than Rahul I guess" 

"Then, what about you? Why you didn't try to patch up?"

I smiled with that and said " Because I knew thats never gonna happen. Actually something more also happened on that night that I missed to tell you. When Shiva left he did something that hurts Rahul. He threw his beer can on him splashing the beer on Rahul's face. He then pushed him back and said that Everyone is not like Shrabs. He fell on his back with his push but that didn't hurt him. The comment on Shrabs hurt him more. So he never tried to talk to Shiva again. That also made Rahul to stop saying anything. I was with him for the rest of the night. We spent that whole winter night on the terrace without a word saying. Rahul was actually hurt. So I knew that its not going to work out  in recent future and the wound needs time to fill".

"And you think that the wound is now filled" the lady asked.

"Yes, I expect. Thats why I am here to reunion our friendship. May be they patched up by themselves. I don't know"

"What do you mean by 'May be'? You don't know"

"Yes, I don't know. I have no contact with both of them from last three years"

The lady surprised again and her surprise has sufficient reason. So before the lady ask any further question, I started.

When our college ended, Shiva flew to join his company. He left no contact of him, no phone numbers, no mail ids, no social groups. So we lost contact of him. We had to join our companies in three months. So I moved with Rahul to stay in his home for the next three months as I don't want to get bored in my village. During these three months, Rahul's marriage got fixed and I left his home in anguish. I fall in love with the bride. I know its sounds ridiculous but I couldn't help. That just happened.

"But How? How could you fall in love and have you speak to Rahul about that" The lady asked again.

Sorry, but I can't, actually I don't want to talk about that part of my life. I said.

"Okay, I don't want to force you. But you can share, if you feel like. May be, I can help you."

The lady said so in such a sweet voice that I couldn't resist any more. I took a deep breath and started to reveal that part of the life.