Just the Way You Are Read Free Page A

You-rope? You confuse me!’
    I was too tired to explain, so I quickly said, ‘Mom, it’s Switzerland’s capital. I will tell you later. Bye now.’
    Before she could say another word, I hung up. Soon after, I heard the announcement, hopped into the bus, and, within the next ten minutes, was on my first-ever flight.
    Switzerland, here I come!

2
    MANY WOULD SAY I WAS lucky to have a job to my liking, a newly wedded wife, a settled family, and all the basic needs and many comforts that one could hope for. I wonder if people realized that it never came together; something had to be sacrificed for something else. As I took my comfortable window seat in the dimly lit flight, my mind wandered to the rushed events of the past few days. I patted my back on having successfully accomplished a task of humongous proportions.
    Just then, I heard a commotion in the aisle just ahead of my seat. I stretched my neck to see the cause, and there it was—a petite woman hiding her face behind her boarding pass, perhaps trying to search for her seat number by scanning the small lettering on the pass from up close. Pretty close, actually. Since she had all her attention on the pass, she had bumped into another passenger who had been trying to put some luggage into the overhead cabin. I was wondering at her clumsiness when she stopped right where I sat and settled in the empty seat next to me. Lo, it was the same woman whose bag I had taken by mistake. She had recognized me too. We shared a customary stiff smile. I was not in the mood for conversation, nor was I lucky when it came to women anyway. So I just looked out the window at the ground staff running around. It didn’t take too long for me to slip into my thoughts, despite the fidgety woman seated next to me.
    The last few days had passed as if in a daze; so much had happened in between that thinking back felt like replaying the reel of some Bollywood love story. Till a few hours back, I had felt like the luckiest and happiest man on earth. All my dreams had come to life, one after the other. I could see a blissful future ahead of me, that too with the girl of my dreams, someone I deeply loved.
    I had waited for this night for very long, and so had my ever-so-loving mother, who was the only one to not have given up on dreaming about my marriage. All others had had their doubts in some form or the other, given my age and particular expectations from my partner. When the rituals began, I was excited; when they had been going on for a few hours, I started getting tired; after a few hours, I was praying for it all to end soon; and when it finally ended, I was dead tired. Who wouldn’t be! The running around for the day had started pretty early and the ceremonies had ended at 4 am the next day. I couldn’t figure out how the excitement of getting married was supposed to keep me running in the face of a long day and night to come, hordes of relatives to be managed, and the emotional setting at the girl’s side at the end of it all!
    I wondered why putting sindoor in the bride’s hair parting was the last ritual, albeit the most important after which two people are pronounced man and wife. Brian Tracy would have jumped into the very fire that I had to perform pheras around, or just strangled himself with the jaimala right there. He had died writing about prioritizing tasks; not really died, but you know what I mean! And here were these rituals, putting the most important at the very end. Wow! But whatever it was, I was exhausted and, in fact, felt I would pass out in the wedding mandap itself. I am an early sleeper and when the clock struck midnight, I was ready to call it a day. But my goddamn relatives had gone all wild and whiskyed, and were trying to make me dance and meet their godforsaken friends who I had no idea about, all through the night. I literally smiled my way through the people I met with subconscious ignorance, knowing well I wouldn’t see more than half of them ever