It Wasn't Love at First Shalini and I Read Free

Nepal
but again, that is besides the point. After her class 12 got completed,
parents had moved to Chandigarh but she went to architecture school
in Delhi and had been working for the last two years after passing
out from there.
And there in lied our biggest difference.
    She was 25, I was 30. It seemed as if she was from another planet
altogether. Right now, she was in the phase of the weekday parties,
the binge drinking, the dancing, the movie marathons and all the
other things you expect from a typical 25 year old Delhi girl. And I
had already been through that phase and reliving it did not seem to
be that great an idea. Plus, all her friends were also 25 and I felt so
out of place when we met them. They looked like little kids drooling
over Shah Rukh Khan and trying to tease me to make me
uncomfortable. It used to be weird in front of her friends. Once I
kissed her by mistake in front of them, that too a normal peck on
the cheek, and I had to hear about that for the next 20 days on all
sorts of platforms.
    I had met Kriti through an online portal. As soon as I crossed 29,
my parents got sick worried about my marriage. They kept on asking
me whether I had already found someone. They said they would not
be happy about it but would still accept and get me married to her. I
did have some female friends, but the last real relationship I had was
with Pooja who had left me for her ex fiancé. After that there had
been some minor flirtations, some steady dates, but no one marriage
material. Or maybe, none of the girls who I went out with found me
marriage material. Whatever the case, I was 30, earning well, not bad
to look at and unmarried.
The last part became a huge cause of concern for my parents.
    My parents, even though completely computer illiterate, had
managed to create a profile for me on one of those marriage sites.
They even uploaded a nice photo of me and made me look like the
most eligible bachelor in the profile. I don’t know how they managed
it, but I think they used photoshop and all to make me look more
fair. What those tubes of fairness creams could not manage in a decade
was done in ten minutes by the computer.
    I got approached by quite a few people and ended up meeting
around 4 girls before Kriti came into the picture. I just saw her and
said yes. It was not that I would get to know any of the girls by
just meeting them for a few times, and I was sure I would never
get anyone as pretty as Kriti. It was not love at first sight or
anything of that sort. It was just that she was so beautiful. So I
had said yes.
    My parents had then come over to Delhi and had met with her
parents. I still remember she was wearing a red kurta the day my
parents had come to visit. She was looking so pretty that it was
impossible to say no to her. The marriage was finalised, but was fixed
for a date 8 months ahead as there was no mahurat till then. Four out
of the eight months had passed. We also got time to know each
other.
    She was a nice girl. The more I got to know her, the more I thought
she had a very pure heart. But she was a typical ‘girl’ girl. The sort
who will not step out if they had a bad hair day, who would admire
themselves in a mirror wherever they saw one, who would take hours
to get ready for a ten minute coffee. And, she was 25.
    We had gotten close over the last four months and were now
practically boyfriend and girlfriend and practically lived together. Half
of her things were already at my apartment and it was only a matter
of time before the other half also shifted. Most of the times, I enjoyed
her company as she had the energy of youth with her, but at other
times, I just wanted to be left alone.
    Left alone to sleep, to think, to do nothing. And that is what she
never understood. We reached home and climbed the stairs to my
apartment. She already had a key and opened the door. She had
promised to make me an Indian breakfast today and I was kind of
looking forward to it but as soon as she entered she said