Arranged Love Read Free

sleep to overtake me. As my dadi would have said, it seemed like planet Saturn had entered my 7th house and even Kishore Kumar was having a tough time driving him away.

Email, Youtube and a Phone Call

Hi, I am a random guy from your dad’s guitar class. Your dad visited my house yesterday to meet my parents. He left a printout of your matrimonial profile, with some vital and some not so vital stats. I can see that you have 1 maternal uncle with 7-figure income, 6 paternal uncles who are well-established, 5 aunts who are married to known business families, 1 cousin from IIT-Delhi, 2 from IIT-Roorkee, 2 from IIM Bangalore and 1 from XLRI. I am assuming you have more than 6 cousins from 7 uncles, but they didn’t make it to your biodata. There is also a studio photograph of a beautiful, homely, Indian girl in salwar suit. I took the liberty of checking your FB profile, and it shows a more free-spirited girl, in a sexy spaghetti top. Wondering who is the real you? BTW, there is a joke among IIT boys that there are only two types of girls in this world—nice and very nice :)
    From what your dad talks about you, and he talks a lot, you are not the kind of girl who would marry a random guy, even if he happens to be an IIT, Stanford graduate. I myself haven’t thought about marriage yet, so let’s be friends. You can read more about me and my life at www.dgblahblah.com .
    Deepak Goyal
    P.S. Please don’t send me a Facebook Friend Request yet. I only add people I know well, and like, to my friends’ list.
    Who did he think he was? Ranbir Kapoor? Some guts he has telling me not to send him a friend request like I was desperate to increase my friends count. And what was Dad doing? Giving out my biodata to guys in his guitar class! Eyes still glued to the computer screen, I took a bite of my bagel with a large helping of cream cheese, while pretending to do some research work.
    ‘Any guess on how many calories that bite has?’ quizzed Jay, as he walked up to my desk in the computer science lab.
    ‘235 based on a 2000 calorie diet, 10 per cent saturated fat, 5 per cent cholesterol,’ I mumbled, recalling the count from our last discussion on the topic.
    Realizing that I was reading the suitor guy’s email, he flirtingly asked if I was checking out the new guy. His distraction spared me a lecture on Omega-3 and healthy fats. For the time being, at least.
    ‘Just clearing my Inbox,’ I clarified. ‘I couldn’t possibly delete the mail without reading, in case Pa inquired about it.’
    ‘Jesus fucking Christ! I didn’t know you have so many aunts and uncles,’ exclaimed Jay, as he skimmed through the first few lines of Deepak’s mail. ‘Don’t they sell condoms in India?’
    Jay sounded genuinely surprised, but I was least interested in discussing the size of my extended family or birth control measures in India. I felt humiliated at being valued in the marriage market on the basis of my uncles’ wealth and my cousins’ academic achievements.
    ‘What kind of a guy ridicules a girl’s family and comments on her looks in his first mail?’
    ‘He is quite witty, if you ask me.’
    ‘Do you think he is …?’
    ‘No, he is definitely not gay.’
    ‘How dare he look at my FB profile pic?’
    ‘Honey! It’s public info, and last I checked the dictionary, public meant
belonging to people
.’
    Jay didn’t realize that the issue was not just that Deepak had looked at my picture. I was also addled by the cheap IIT guy’s joke.
    ‘Does he mean I look very nice in the suit and nice in the spaghetti or …?’
    ‘Very nice in the spaghetti! I mean, look at that cleavage!’
    I was miffed that Deepak had dared to stare at my cleavage in my very nice public profile pic. Even more annoying was his implication that I was trying to cheat him with a
sati-savitri
matrimonial picture.
    ‘How can he assume he doesn’t like me? He doesn’t even know me,’ I rambled, still on my own trip.
    ‘To be fair, he is simply saying