surrender

“What if I just stop running and give in to all the madness?” I found myself thinking.

After having lived abroad for five years, I missed home. I wanted to come back. And I did.

By that time I was 31. My parents were gentle in their requests for information about my relationships while I had been gone. It seems they were sure I had found someone to settle down with and never worried that they’d have to “arrange” for a boy.

The rest of the north Indian extended family were hyperventilating though. Forget 31, even 28 was nearing an expiry date when it came to the Indian wedding market. And I, having been brought up by fairly open-minded people in an extremely open-minded metro, and living abroad on top of it, was not prepared for the circus that awaited me once I got back.

Picture this: I land in Mumbai after hopping across god only knows how many continents, seas or countries, and my grandmother toddles in at 2 in the morning to ask what my boyfriend looks like. Because she wants to know if her great-grandchildren will be decent looking, she says. I stared open-mouthed before my poor mother ushered her back to bed.

For the next two hours, my parents calmly explain the situation to me – how they have fended off queries for my hand in marriage, how they were sure I’d be against an arranged thing, how they were even surer that I would find someone for myself during my time away. “After all, you’re such a smart cookie, and so pretty too,” my mother smiled at me gently, tucking my hair behind my ear.

I had to pinch myself to check if it was a dream.

It was close to two months after my return, as I was standing by the French windows in my uncle’s house, mulling my esoteric existence in a suddenly traditional set up, when I finally decided. Against all the advice of my equally esoteric friends, I would give in. I would stop running.

Love had let many people down over the years. My own parents had met through their family. So what if I barely knew the man I might marry. Sometimes we think we know people and find we don’t know even the first thing about them. The more I obsessed about it, the more it seemed to make sense.

I find myself today, with a supremely calm exterior, dressed not in my finery, but in fairly normal clothes (to keep at least a part of the typical boy-meets-girl-and-family deal different), sitting across, well, a boy. Or a man. Whatever. I find myself resisting the urge to pinch myself again and check if this is real.

Even before he opens his mouth, I know he is not the one for me. But I am not worried. I’ve stopped worrying and obsessing, I’ve surrendered to the process now. I didn’t expect to find my match in the very first guy I met.

I smiled at him and wondered how to tell Mr Electrical Engineer in a Pink and Blue shirt that well, he wasn’t quite esoteric and strange enough to suit my needs. Then I thought back to the very first boy who had a crush on me, in school, and how till today we remain friends despite the feelings not being reciprocated.

I took a deep breath and opened my mouth to say something.