Meeting The X2

I call her X2. Unlike my first ex, I met her on a matrimony web site. This happened nearly a year after I started looking out on Shaadi. After being declined several times, I think it might have been X2 who contacted me. I call her X2 because of her nature, which would unravel itself through the year I spent understanding her. Our first chat conversation started on a Saturday afternoon, and our conversations were natural.

She made time for me that day, then went offline only to return later in the evening. She had a difficult life, she told me. She grew up in a middle-class family that didn’t have things easy. I admired her fight through adversities. She was an attractive woman, a lot fitter than my first ex, not that I am very particular about physical attributes. I could talk to her without fear, but somewhere at the back of my mind, I expected a rude reminder that I wasn’t worthy. Nearly two weeks after our first conversation, I asked her if she was genuinely interested in me, or if she was just being nice. She took offense to that comment, refusing to talk to me anymore if I felt like that way. I apologized for that comment immediately. I explained that I had a year of facing rejections and people don’t usually stick around. She wasn’t like that, she told me.

With some caution, we continued our daily conversations over the phone and chats. She lived in Bangalore and worked for an MNC in the technology and design field. She had been there for the past four years. Her home and family were back here in Bombay. She decided to come down for a short holiday. This was sometime in the early rainy season. My grandfather had passed away a week before I first interacted with her. I had not been on talking terms with my folk, owing to the frustrating experiences I was put through over my first ex, a Hindu. The queue of rejections from people of my own faith left a sour taste in my mouth. I refused to go to my grandfather’s funeral and I think I offended a lot of people in the process.

We met one evening after work, right outside the IIT compound. it was drizzling, and I crossed the overbridge, waiting 10 minutes for her to arrive. We shook hands and smiled. I was as shy as her. This was the first time I had spoken with someone this long, that too on a matrimony web site, and then finally met in person. I wasn’t being rejected and I was being treated with dignity. I felt good about things. The drizzled died out, and we walked along the lake, making small talk. There was something about her that seemed a bit off while we walked. I have tried not to be so judgmental since my first relationship, so I ignored this. There was this odd, blank stare, looking blindly at the distance, eyes wide open and never blinking, possibly dreaming. The conversations went on till we settled down on a bench, and then we had a longer chat. We had a drink and dinner at a nearby restaurant. This was a perfectly normal ‘date’. I wished her goodbye at around 10 and made sure she got a rickshaw ride back home, which was 10 minutes away.

I informed my parents about the evening and they seemed perfectly content about everything. She did too, with similar reactions from her parents. They seemed excited, she told me. She told me how psyched her mother was to meet me. We met again the following day, spending an entire day in South Bombay, watching an animated movie, then having lunch at a posh restaurant, followed by a Good Friday evening mass at a church nearby. We then had an eventful evening staring into the sunset.

Her parents were quite religious, the types that said grace before every meal, prayers before any major event, the rosary every day. It was then natural, that they urged us not to skip mass. Her parents also felt I should have dropped her home the previous night. I travelled back with her, making sure she reached home safely. I needed to display more chivalry, especially with someone this delicate, sweet and smart as her. These were things I had to learn, and I quickly made those changes in my ways. I had everything to lose.

She invited me over to her place the following day. She stayed next to a major highway, in a decent, middle-class society just like ours. It felt like my idea of a home in Mumbai. Not too upscale to feel intimidating and fake, yet not too uncomfortable. Some neighbours saw me come over. They smiled, and I smiled back.

I met her parents. Her mother, a Mangalorean woman in her late 50s, was delighted to see me. She told me, she couldn’t believe her daughter found someone so easily, that she had been praying for someone, and I seemed just the kind she imagined. X2’s mother seemed a bit nervous, not because of our meeting but in her posture. She looked somewhat subdued, and ill. Honestly though, for all the ranting I do on this blog, I need to stick my neck out for some people. Her mother is one of them, and I have the utmost respect for her, even to this day. I have always wished her well and I still do.

She offered me snacks and tea, even told to stick around longer and stay for dinner! X2’s father, a Goan, looked younger but he was the same age as her, only healthier, and well dressed. A very presentable guy for his age no doubt, he never made eye contact and would mumble all along. He coughed every now and then, in this very crude, sickly manner. I tried to be nice to him, keeping the conversation going while he acknowledged, but rarely excited. Most of the conversation he made was vague. He kept saying random things like, ‘I do this, and that, and I don’t understand technology. It’s whatever, something, something…’. His voice turned commanding while addressing his wife, and boastful while speaking to his children.

X2 had two younger siblings, the youngest, a sister who was 19 or 20 at the time. She was completing a design course in a different city. The brother was a few years elder, a chef trying to make it big. He would always be at the hotel most of the time, but rarely at home. I only met him once. He shook hands, smiled, introduced himself and I did the same, before he left.

The other person I have a lot of respect for, was X2’s grandfather. He lived with them at the time. He passed about two years ago. He was a hockey coach at one point, sang on All-India-Radio, served in the railways and he was well read. I could tell all this from his conversations he had with me. He brought up a large family. He was extremely modest, jolly, courteous, and alert, even at the age of 91. He wished us well, and he was delighted to know his eldest grand-daughter had found someone!

I think the next day is when we went to meet her maternal grandmother. She lived with her son, in a slightly older part of town, in Mumbai. She repeated just what X2’s mother had said. She’d been praying for this day. “I wanted a Mangalorean boy for my sweetheart, and I knew he was going to be like you. I knew it!”. I had no idea how happy she was, she told me. She made us lunch and made us feel at home. Her son, X2’s uncle had a similar appearance as her mother. He too seemed slow in his movements. He made very slow conversation, mumbling most of the time. He had taken voluntary retirement for his illness. I tried to make the most of our conversation and he smiled back most of the time.

His wife, like him worked for the same airline, as did X2’s father at one point in the late 80s or so, and X2’s mother till she retired just a year or so back. As someone who likes airlines himself, I tried to make all kinds of conversations, on the topic of planes, airlines, the culture, and their fleets. We could all relate on so many things. It was fun!

All these meetings instilled a sense of confidence in X2’s family, and in me along with a lot of joy, and relief. I communicated this to my parents. X2 came over, and we reciprocated the same to her. It was assumed, we were getting along well, and we were going to get married soon. I went back to talking with my parents again. Maybe, this was the big change I needed to break my depressive, closed state of mind that I had lived with for the two years past.

X2 went back to Bangalore after her short holiday, and we resumed our conversations over the phone and the web. I hadn’t seen telephone bills like this since the days of dialup internet. We would spend each night on the phone, or on video call, watch movies and YouTube videos together on Hangouts. This was us, for the first four months. I remember X2 telling me, she had never experienced this kind of peace with anyone and she was so happy we weren’t fighting at all.

I wished it hadn’t changed, but it was going to, and how!