Following up from where we left off, I was left alone for almost 10 months after the PG1 debacle. Not that my parents slowed down, or gave up on their search. It was because finding an intelligent, decent-looking, educated man over 5 feet and 9 inches of height was getting a tad difficult. So difficult that my hypothesis that all good-looking and intelligent men were married, taken or gay, was turning out to be a truism. Finally, after some persuasion by a good Samaritan who called himself my friend, I did the unthinkable. I joined one of those zillion matrimonial websites that promise to get you an ideal partner before you can say Czechoslovakia. I should have been wary of such claims especially since the country doesn’t exist anymore, but I fell for the gimmick and signed up. Maybe it was the friend’s influence or maybe someone had spiked my drink.
To cut a long story short, I “expressed interest” at one of the profiles I found, and strangely enough, the guy accepted! After a few short conversations over phone, we decided to meet. It was almost as if God had decided that my over-indulgence in five-star hotels needed to be punished and our first meeting was at the beach, over some sundal and kadalai. What better way to meet a potential fiancé than to put…er…I mean eat…some kadalai, huh? The meeting lasted 3 hours, during which we both had a good measure of fun talking, eating sundal and discussing life. It almost seemed like this was the man! And then…poooooof! The guy simply disappeared! No signs of acknowledging my existence, or even bothering with a rejection slip! He just vanished. Fed up of the dilly-dallying, I called him one day and asked him where things where things were going. He apologized profusely for being distracted and asked to meet again…ok! Now, I thought I would at least KNOW what the hell was happening. During our second meeting at some random coffee shop, he was equally sweet and charming and yet seemed to hesitate about taking a decision. Baffled, I asked him what was wrong. And bingo…that was it!! The…physics…no no…the chemistry was missing. And here I was thinking marriage was all about sociology and biology! And with that ended the saga of the one potential groom I actually liked!! Sigh…tough luck!
Not long after, there materialized another guy (PG3), this time through the parents, who seemed perfect by all standards. Several phone calls, conversations, parents coming home on a bride-seeing visit later, he promised to come to Chennai from Bangalore and meet me. And true to his word, he did. It was only that he had missed telling me a minor detail about himself, so minor that it could scarcely be noticed; that he had an incurable problem with his leg that prevented him from walking properly. You see, amidst the conversations about career, house, car, family and grandchildren, he figured it wasn’t so important to tell me what to expect when seeing him. Ah…the minor details!
PG4 is a specimen that deserves a much longer and more details than the others…I will save that for another post, another day. Until then, sayonara!
you are back with a bang in your writing skill but isn’t these things too personal to blog about ???
About the minor detail, this method of finding partners can be humiliating for anybody who is used to living with their ‘minor details’ – and they might feel that (like in a love-marriage) if you met them and got to know them before you learnt about the detail, you might just find that the disability doesn’t bother you. What I mean is maybe they want to be known as a package – and their disability to be seen as just a part of that package.
When we meet people in normal circumstances, unless it is very obvious, there is no fixed time or rules when we come to know about any physical disability/health issue, so it must be uncomfortable – just like being judged by height, weight, skin color, educational qualifications and income etc.
No offense meant, but I really liked the guy. The fact that he hid it from me after all those conversations really hurt! Maybe they do live with it and I have friends who’re not perfect either! But in this case, I felt hurt, cheated and deliberately deceived.
Well I agree with you on that disability point. This is arranged marriage we are talking about and in that everyone should come clean from the preliminary talks. It is not some online/telephonic/pen pal love story where after months of chatting/talking two people meet and when one finds out something about the other, they still accept it. In arranged marriage talks, not telling amounts to hiding and any party is justified to feel wronged.