Instead of the cuckoo calling out to me from my alarm clock, I woke up today to the mellifluous strains of the shehnai.
Today is my wedding day – lying leisurely under a cosy blanket, I fondly reminisce the day I first met Varun in a seminar. It is so difficult to believe that it’s been two years...
Initially, I did not notice him much and in fact, lost him amongst the other speakers presenting their papers in the seminar. During the lunch break, however, while I was busy networking, Varun waited patiently until I was free. It was then that he offered to have a chat over a cup of coffee and our journey started.
Little did I know that chilly morning in Jaipur that this unassuming guy would one day hold the reins of my life in his hands.
Reserved as always, I truly never felt the urge to connect with Varun. According to him, he was struck by the fire and passion in me as I spoke in front of the august audience. Deep within, however, he said he could sense that I am a loner and insecure – that’s what intrigued him and so he persisted, thankfully….
Quite expectedly, therefore, over the next one year, while my door remained closed, he continued to knock insistently and waited patiently for it to open one day. But my hard shell was not that easy to crack. Interestingly, I enjoyed every ounce of my time with him but could never warm up to the thought of getting into a relationship with him.
Not to be bogged down easily, Varun now started visiting my place in an obvious attempt to build a rapport with my parents. For the elderly couple, it was like a drowning man catching a straw – at last, maybe they spotted some signs of chinks in my armour.
Looking back, it seems, the glacier within me had truly started melting….but I was still not sure. So, deliberately took up a six-month assignment to Geneva; I still remember that evening when I announced my decision to Varun over a cup of coffee.
“Do you really need to go Trisha? You know, how much I will miss you…”
‘I wish I could tell you how terribly I would miss you Varun,’ I muttered under my breath as I looked into his eyes. but I need to do this to understand myself even better,’ and so I travelled.
As they truly say, absence made the heart grow fonder and meeting Varun at the airport on my return I was sure that I could simply no longer live without him. For him, the light in his eyes as he picked up my luggage, said it all….
Suddenly there’s a loud bang on the door. My cousins have all arrived for my haldi ceremony. Am now truly excited to turn over a new leaf in my life. And so the day starts as a dream and keeps me intoxicated with memories that crowd my thoughts throughout the day.
Finally, Varun arrives with the baraat, and as we go through the rituals, the warmth of his love makes me forget that his parents have refused to accept me.
He feels my pain, and so when we head towards our new home as man and wife, he kisses me gently on my right cheek, just where I have the scar left by the acid burn, a parting gift from one of my college mates when I had failed to reciprocate his feelings towards me.
