I was truly impressed with this one, until...
When you're single, just about everyone is "looking out" for you. That they know next to nothing about you is a different thing. They only "mean well".
My cousin who is old enough to be my mother, had married off her two children and was focusing on getting me married. This incident dates back to about 2002-03. My cousin met a lady whom she knew quite well at a wedding. And the lady told her that she had an eligible bachelor son and she wasn't able to find a suitable bride for him. The "boy" in question was, indeed, most eligible. For a guy who was ranked among the top 10 in the IIT JEE exam that year had chosen to follow his heart and not the herd. That really impressed me.
He and I started exchanging some mails, started chatting, and soon he was in India and decided to come and meet me. A down to earth guy who did a lot of things on impulse, including making the decision to meet me. A post doc fellow in the US traveled in an unreserved compartment to Chennai simply because he didn't get a reservation on a weekend and he'd decided to meet me.
We met, talked, I even took him home to meet my parents, we spent an evening at the beach and he left for the station after dinner. We hit it off quite well. I was certain that despite the distance, if it had to work, it would. But there was no "love" or anything. After three months of regular correspondence (and by regular, I mean fortnightly), our man made a profound statement. "I am in the US and you are in India, I am not sure how we will work this marriage thing out." And I thought... if you didn't think I was the one for you, why couldn't you tell me directly? We knew right from the start that we were in different continents.
At that point I found myself thinking that it's a good thing that it didn't work out. No, it's not a question of sour grapes or anything, it is just that it feels good to get a sign beforehand. Imagine if we had gone ahead and if later on I'd come to know that he cannot confront a problem or talk about it. To think that with all that education, no one teaches us life skills. To the world, he was the title of Vikram Seth's novel. To me, he was another one who left an impression strong enough for me to blog about him 4 years later.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
:) strange indeed...It is indeed interesting to know people with "different" mindsets...you learn from them about how NOT to be..
yes... sometimes I tell my mom... I don't know how I will be when I grow old...but I sure know I wouldn't want to be like this, or that... or like someone else.
Yes i can identify with this incident. instead of laying out excuses (we know they're excuses), some people can't come out with the truth. I think guys are afriad of hurting us, which is why a vast majority of them don't call when they say they will after a first date, or can't bring themselves to say, "i don't think we'd be right for each other" instead of citing a lack of time, excessive distance, or a fright from commitment as 'valid reasons' for discontinuing correspondence. I would much rather appreciate the truth - gently though!
Yeah Pritika... I'm a tell-it-like-it-is girl and kind of expect the same from everyone :)
You know, this blog and the responses have freaked me out a bit.. Are you all saying that a bit of politeness is bad? Or what if he really thought that a long distance thing was not right for him? I mean, it does take a trial to realise if it is going to work or not..
For all you know, he was telling the truth, and not giving an excuse.. Or did I miss something?
I think the point here is that if he wasn't up to long distance relationships, he could have said that, or he could have said that I wasn't the one... or there were a thousand other ways of resolving this than to state the obvious as a wishy washy excuse. This isn't about politeness G'man. Polite and nice are what we are to strangers. If you want to court someone and not insult their intelligence later on, I think a bit of real talk is necessary.
Post a Comment