Different Directions……

 

A new beginning: Anuj’s life

London is a great place to be. A beautiful city with lovely people around. I was having a lot of fun here. Onsite work is always full of pressure but it’s a good learning experience. I slogged on weekdays but on weekends I made sure I went to some new place every time. I wished Sita could see all these places I went to. She would have just fallen in love with London. I mailed her a couple of times but she did not reply back. I was mad at her for ignoring me so much. Here I was longing for her and it hardly meant anything to her. every night when I lay on my bed and closed my eyes I could see her face. I would see her in my dreams sometimes and thought of it as real. But then suddenly I would just wake up and realize it was just a dream. Months passed and soon it was a year since I was in London. My life was good but it lacked something. Whatever I did gave me just temporary joy. After sometime I would loose interest in it. I had seen London in and out. So now my weekends were mostly spent at home watching TV or sleeping. I wanted to go back to India.  I missed my family, my friends, Sita. I missed everything.

One day I decided to talk to my manager regarding my shifting back to India. I reached office and was checking my emails when I saw an email sent by Sita. The email that brought me back to India. The subject line said “Hi”. I opened the email with a big smile on my face. I started reading.

Hi Anuj,

Hope you are doing good. It has been long since we had any kind of conversation with each other. I am sorry I didn’t reply to any of your emails. Thought it was not good to be in touch with you. Well there is a good news hence emailing you as I do not have your cell no. else would have called you up personally. I am getting married. It’s an arranged marriage. PFA the invitation. You are the first person I am sending an invitation to. That’s the big news from my end. What about you? How’s your life going on? And when are you coming back to India? Hope you come back soon. Take good care of yourself.

Bye for now.

Regards,

Sita Menon

P.S. Hope to see you at the wedding.

I read the email and I didn’t know how to react. I certainly wasn’t happy at all. I couldn’t believe what I had just read. How could she get married so soon? She was still young and it had been only a year since we were not in touch. That certainly didn’t mean that she get married. She could wait for me to come back. But why did I want her to wait for me? I didn’t know. I was clueless. All I knew was that I had to rush back to India.

Someone loved me: Sita’s Life

It had been six months since Anuj left. I was living my usual monotonous life. I started writing stuff just to keep myself occupied when I was free. It was something I always wanted to do. And it turned out that people thought I had caliber. My work was being appreciated and I was being encouraged to write by more and more people. Emails came pouring in everytime I wrote something new. One day I got an email from a guy called Sriram Nair saying that he had read some of my work and he really liked it. I replied back in gratitude and another mail popped up on my screen as soon as he got my mail. Within no time we were chatting with each other over emails. He would mail me everyday and made it a point to ask me to write more stuff. Sriram was a project lead with TCS and was based in Pune. He was a mallu and co-incidentally he lived near the Sri Krishna Temple which I used to visit. He found me on facebook and soon we became friends. He was a smart guy with strong family values and it turned out that we had a lot in common. One day while we were chatting on facebook he asked me what were my views regarding marriage. I said I would marry a guy whom my parents would approve of. The next day I got a call from my mom asking me to come home as soon as possible without waiting for the weekend to arrive. On enquiry she just said it was something very important. I told my manager that there is urgency back home so I need to leave soon. I caught the bus that very evening and reached home at night. I was relieved to find everything fine back home. Mom told me that there would be a family coming home tomorrow. They wanted to see me. Yes my first marriage proposal. I was a little scared initially but then I calmed down and don’t know why I suddenly thought of Anuj. But I dismissed all the thoughts related to him. In the morning the boy’s family arrived. I was called into the living room and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Sriram was sipping coffee from his cup along with his family. And when he saw me he gave me a big smile. And I almost blushed. After that day I chatted with Sriram on fb he told his parents that he wanted to marry me. His parents found out all about my family and there they were sitting in my living room analyzing me from top to bottom and smiling insanely. I talked to Sriram for the first time face to face that day and he said he was in love with me. I asked why and he said he didn’t know. He loved whatever I wrote and after chatting with me he thought of me as a good friend with whom he could spend the rest of his life. I couldn’t believe someone could fall in love with me. Our parents matched our horoscopes and it seemed that we were made for each other just like our names. So finally I was going to get married. I longed for this thing to happen to me since so many years. And finally my dream was coming true. Though I dreamed an entire life with Anuj I guess there was someone better than him meant for me. Sriram was a nice guy. He was mature, good looking, from a good family and most importantly he loved me. I guess I could ask for more. Our wedding dates were finalized and we were to be married within 2 months on Feb 29^th 2012. A rare day. When I talked to Sriram regarding this he said something that completely bowled me over. “Sita as the date of our wedding is a rare one we’ll make it a point that every four years on our wedding anniversary we would re-marry and renew our vows. We’ll re-marry everytime following a different custom and in a different place. There is so much variety throughout India. We’ll make sure we cover all the customs.” I smiled.