X2 - Not done yet...

A week or two after my last interaction with X2, I realized she had started looking out again. I couldn’t tell what to feel or think. I was where I left off after my relationship with X1 ended, disappointed, depressed and shocked. I kept my calm, following the prevalent advice of society - take some time out for yourself. I focussed back on work, my hobbies and kept as calm as I could. I had no choice. It’s not like women on Shaadi.com were looking for me. I found it terribly disturbing that X2 could move on like that. She pinged me once in between, telling me she was sorry she took me for granted for that long. That came as some relief, knowing that she had realized it, or been told that by someone.

I remember being extremely annoyed with X2 and sending off long mails, describing and detailing the mess she and father had gotten us into. We started off so naive and it ended up in a dump. There seemed to be a constant, attitude of carelessness and unawareness even with these statements. She didn’t want to take any responsibility.

Four or five months passed by before X2 messaged me again, asking me how I was doing. I was out with family in Pune for a couple of days. X2 told me she wanted to meet me and give things a shot again, if I was open to it. She was back in Bombay, and we would be able to meet freely and start afresh. She was currently freelancing and making enough to pay her EMI for the flat. She tried putting on the narrative that she knew what she had let go. I wasn’t looking out, and with nothing to lose, I agreed to meet.

She spoke to me about her experience with guys she had met on Shaadi.com and Tinder. She met some guy in Bangalore on Tinder, who was not into relationships, just flings. Apparently, he had slept with one woman a few days before they first met. X2 expressed her concern, and when she met him a month or two later, he was still sleeping around. X2 decided to call it quits. She was then interacting with someone in Dubai, someone she called ‘Dubai guy’. Turns out he was nice, but he had erratically disappeared and that didn’t progress. That’s when X2 felt I was a more stable person to be around, and someone she knew quite well.

I guess I felt she had changed, maybe she was responsible and more organized with her thoughts now. Maybe, she was able to make better judgements. We met a day or two later. I invited her home once and I remember my mother losing her mind. She didn’t want to see X2 again, after having experienced the madness of the year past. I figured she’d calm down, so we left hoping to visit some other time.

We met again and had a long talk about the sequence of events of the past year. I made her understand that she couldn’t blindly make erratic decisions, without informing me. She agreed wholeheartedly. A day or two later, X2 called me to tell me that her father had asked her to register her freelancing job into a registered business. There were obviously some clauses involved in it. I anticipated that.

X2 was to be the co-founder of this business, alongside her younger sister. Her sister was barely 21 at this point, with no work experience whatever, but she was made to be legally bound to it. As part of the agreement, X2 would need to pay 45 per cent of the profits from the business to her sister. I objected. I had to argue that she was already paying nearly half her income towards the loan, and if 45 per cent of her income went to her sister, what would she be left with? I urged that she continue paying her sister as much as she liked, but not make it a formal agreement, not yet. That, or she could reduce the share to her sister.

Of course, this was another arrangement ordered by the father in his personal and selfish interests. He was now trying to channel funds from his earning daughter, through the younger daughter into his pockets well after she was to be married. By now, I was already used to the manipulative and cunning nature of this individual. He hadn’t spared his wife, and he wasn’t about to let his daughter’s income escape him.

X2 went into another spiral of confusion back home. I urged her at the very least, not to make any erratic, sudden decisions, just like the one made while booking her apartment. There was no need for this registration to take place immediately in a span of one or two days. After a lot of chaos, she agreed with me and that she would tell me well before she decided on anything.

The following morning. I received a SMS saying that a lawyer had come over and she had already signed the registration papers for her business. I chose not to respond. She didn’t bother getting back in touch either. That was a short attempt of a revival of what was left. I thought I could expect change, but her erratic ways were just normalcy to them. She had gone through this attitude all her life, with past partners, with no clue of what was right, wrong, good or bad.

I remember feeling even worse now and I think I resumed my search on Shaadi.com a month or two later. I believe X2’s grandfather passed away well before she got married. She messaged me to tell me she was getting married to ‘Dubai guy’ because he wasn’t making a big deal about her EMI and loan. He too was paying an EMI for a flat, it turned out. I told her, if only he had experienced the sequence of events I experienced, and if you told him what you told me, I doubt he’d feel nearly as comfortable.

Time passed by. A day or two before she got married, I received a message on Facebook from her. It said “Hey, are you still a loser?”