Closure

Priyadarshini was bored. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and there was absolutely nothing that she had on her mind. She turned on her laptop in search of some entertainment and logged into her Bharat Matrimony profile. She looked at the saved settings and made a few random refinements to narrow down the search before finally proceeding to look for the matches.

This was her usual routine for the past 5 months. The refinements were always made in the department of looks. A requirement for a certain height, a certain type of build, a certain type of complexion, etc were updated… Priyadarshini never applied any bar to the other categories. Community, caste, religion, money did not matter much to her…she never screened the prospective grooms on these criteria.

Yes, Priyadarshini was a girl who was simply obsessed with beauty. She had attained the marriageable age and although she had two semi relationships and one serious relationship in the past, she had no one in her life currently. When I say no one, I mean no one good looking enough to work for Priyadarshini in the long term. So when her parents asked her if she would like some help from them to find a suitable match she readily agreed. Her parents were relieved and taken aback at the same time. They had prepared a rather long speech on the advantages of marriage and on why it was the correct time for her to get married and all that seemed to be a wasted effort now.

According to Priyadarshini she had the right to look for a handsome guy. She herself had almond shaped eyes, high cheekbones and a smile with the right amount of cheek in it. She had a tall and slender figure to match her alluring face. In a word men found her simply enchanting! And she felt that she too deserved to be enchanted by a man who had the right kind of looks. For 5 months she unsuccessfully searched for a probable mate on the Bharat Matrimony portal.

But for the past few weeks, something had changed. There was this one guy Rahul on Bharat Matrimony whose smouldering looks had her enamoured. There would be days when she would login and just stalk his profile. She had almost read every clause the guy had penned down and she seemed to fit his requirement perfectly. Yet, this Rahul guy refused to send her any message or even express interest in her.

You would be thinking why she did not take the first step ahead but you see Priyadarshini had to be wooed into a relationship. That was another non negotiable part of the deal. She looked Rahul up on Facebook. A profile showed up where pretty much every piece of information and every single picture was locked. She fumed and cursed at him through the screen, “Who are you, a girl?”

Priyadarshini modified her profile a bit more to match Rahul’s criteria perfectly and logged in regularly to the portal to increase her visibility. She even talked to a few customer care agents from Bharat Matrimony to ensure that her profile was active. One of the agents kind of guessed her apprehension and suggested that the guy in question might be a free member with limited privileges so it would probably be better if she took the first step.

Priyadarshini’s heart started to beat much faster. That must be it. In fact every day Rahul and she logged in to the portal almost at the same time with amazing regularity. In 2 seconds Priyadarshini had figured it out. There was a pattern. Rahul was also logging in like her to get himself noticed. Beyond the virtual portal the two people were already talking in the same language.

Priyadarshini got too excited to be able to think properly. She went out for a walk and when she came back home after an hour she had the perfect plan in her head.

 She created a new profile in her name. This time she uploaded conservative pictures and gave limited details about herself. She lied in the portal and wrote that her parents were initiators of the request and launched the new profile. Soon after, she sent a message to Rahul. Only thing is that she pretended to be her dad. You see, she taking the first step was not cool but her parents helping out their would-be son-in-law to sweep Priyadarshini off her feet was totally in line with her pre set norms.

Her scheme worked. Rahul did accept the request and he did send across his parents’ contact details. And things then seemed to go exactly like a choreographed dance recital! Rahul came to visit Priyadarshini with his parents. Everybody showed their best sides and things looked too perfect to be true.

Since the parents were in complete agreement with the match, the bride and the groom were given a month’s time to interact and take the final decision.

Priyadarshini’s days changed overnight. She no longer had lazy afternoons nor the wish to look for better looking guys. She was beside herself with joy to know that Rahul did want to woo her, to know that Rahul’s personality was a charming complement to his good looks, to know that she was totally able to control her future husband’s life…

They talked mush, they talked serious…but whatever they did seemed to happen with remarkable ease. Rahul was the last thought she had on her mind when she went to bed and he was the first thought she had on her mind when she woke up.

Things happened just as in a fairy tale for 2 weeks. Then all of a sudden Priyadarshini felt a distinct change in Rahul’s attitude. The messages became a little less frequent. The calls got a little stiffer. The dates got postponed for some reason. She brushed it off at first thinking that it could be work related stress or Rahul might simply be ill. ( Yes, Rahul being ill was a much safer proposition than Rahul losing interest. ) But then things worsened further to the point that Priyadarshini felt that she was forcing him to love her. She became the initiator of all conversations and he messaged only to reply to her messages.

When she asked him about the change, he avoided the topic. Her alarm bells were screeching at this point but she prayed for the creases to get ironed out soon. But Rahul suddenly became completely unavailable for any call or message. Priyadarshini tried to call him and left him several messages but Rahul simply did not take her calls nor did he send her any message. She did not give up and kept on sending her routine care and concern texts to him. But there was absolutely no response from Rahul.

Then suddenly one morning she woke up to find a long message from Rahul.

 “Priyadarshini, hope you will forgive me for doing this. I have patched up with my long term girlfriend and have decided to marry her. I’m sorry if I hurt you. But you and I had been together for just 2 weeks so may be it would not be too hard for you to forget me. Sorry again, wish you find a way better guy than I ever can be. My sincere apologies and best wishes for your future. ”

Priyadarshini was shivering. She was actually getting rejected by this one guy whom she had imagined to be her knight.

She had thought so many times about trying to cook for him and messing it up...and how Rahul would step up and save the situation.

She had thought so many times about the time when she would almost pass out while giving birth to their future kid...and how Rahul would give her the strength to go on.

She had thought so many times about the retirement days when her memory would be feeble with age...and how Rahul would help her to recreate the good old times.

Every time in her thoughts she was the damsel in distress and he the knight in shining armour.

She had their whole lives planned out and now he was saying it is not going to happen. Her knight was abandoning her...

For days Priyadarshini felt numb and could not face the pain. Then the tears came…and when they came they refused to stop for weeks. She could not figure out if it was the suddenness of the end or if it was the rejection that hurt her the most.

Rahul’s parents called to apologise. They said that they were not aware of the secret affair of their son and that they were deeply embarrassed about the entire episode. They shared their apologies but to Priyadarshini’s parents the words sounded like condolences.

They tried to console their daughter but it enraged her further. It just meant that they knew how much deeply she had felt for Rahul and how deeply he had managed to hurt her. She detached herself from the world and deactivated her FB account. She tried her best to counsel herself out of the situation but nothing seemed to work. She tried to login and look for new guys at Bharat Matrimony but all of them seemed to be strangers she had no interest in. And that one guy who had definitely become a stranger continued to feel like her life partner.

Then one day after months Priyadarshini decided to reactivate her Facebook account. On an impulse she typed his name into the search bar. There, on his cover picture was a girl standing beside Rahul wearing mehendi, hot pants and wedding bangles. Priyadarshini finally smiled a smile of relief. The girl looked quite average. Even the maddening happiness of her honeymoon could not make her look prettier than Priyadarshini...Priyadarshini was the clear winner.

That day she realised that it was the implicit suggestion of her being inferior that had her hurt her the most. That day Priyadarshini got her closure.