No pride. Just prejudice… And a birthday wish

When you are young you have a lot of fantasies. You believe in soulmates. And watching all the “When Harry met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle” makes you believe that this how your life is going to be. You think that you will meet that one person, who will be the Yin to your Yang and both of you will live happily ever after. When I was growing up I also thought I was a hopeless romantic. May be it’s that age you are in that makes you see your soulmate in even just a chat window. You imagine spending you life with that person on the opposite side of the chat window would exactly be like that chat. Full of falling hearts and blown kisses.

And then reality strikes. I went through heartbreaks and failed relationships and being Indian, by the time I turned 25 my parents were killing me by making me check out matrimony profiles and pictures of guys to choose from. At that time also I had a preconceived notion of what my life partner should be like.

My first and most important criteria was that the guy should be over 5 feet and 10 inches. I have no idea why, but that was very important to me at that time. I myself am of average height but I wanted a tall husband. I remember rejecting a few guy just because they were 5’8″ or shorter.

My second criteria was the guy should be a movie buff. Again, not sure why. Maybe because this was the only common thing between me and my ex, so I thought this was a biggest requirement of a successful relationship.

And there was several other such stupid little and unnecessary constraints that I wanted my future husband to fulfill. I must have met at least twenty guys at Baristas and Cafe Coffee Days and I did consider a lot of them but could not just bring myself so say “Yes, I want to marry this guy” to any of them despite trying a lot.

Now a lot of these guys did fulfill those constraints, still in my mind none of them felt right. Also, all this time I was doing an on-again-off-again thing with my ex. And then when I was in the off again phase, I traveled to the US for work. That time again my mom kept pestering me with pictures and profiles of suitable grooms. One day she gave me this number of a guy and asked me to give him a call. By this time I was an expert at giving a call game. I knew exactly what to say and ask and all that.

So I gave him a call, he said he was busy and said he’ll call me back, which he later did. On the first call, I knew he was not the guy for me, but he seemed very enthused. I asked him if he watched movies, he said “yes, every movie that releases”. So, I asked him a follow up question, about which actor does he like and his answer was “Mr Bean and Sallu“. At that moment I knew we were poles apart. I asked him if he had a gmail account, he said he didn’t and that was the end of conversation for me. I thought ‘how can I get married to someone who doesn’t even know the name of the actor who plays mr Bean, and besides that Mr Bean character was so irritating, how can i marry a guy who likes that character? How can I marry a guy who’s favorite actor is Salman khan and who calles him Sallu and the last thing, how can someone not have a gmail account?’ So I sent him an email, that it was nice talking to him and that we’ll talk more maybe when I was back to India. What I really meant was, I was not interested.

Next day he IM’ed me on gtalk. He had created a gmail account but clearly he wasn’t and expert at chatting. We talked on gtalk some more. He told me he wanted to meet and that he had told my mom that he can receive me at Mumbai airport when I land. I found it all very creepy. Anyway, we kept talking on gtalk here and there and all those conversations reaffirmed my faith that him and I weren’t the right fit.

I came back to India, and he called me once or twice and at that time I told him I’m not the right person for him. Still he kept insisting we meet at least once. He kept saying he’ll come to Pune but he never did. The frequency of our conversations reduced and then slowly I forgot about him. Then one day he sent me a friend request on “Orkut”, I saw it’s his birthday so I decided to call him. On the call I told him I was coming to his hometown to attend a wedding. He told me he is in town and would like to meet, which I wasn’t so keen on.

Anyway I went to Bhopal (his hometown) and he did not speak to me but little did I know, he was constantly in touch with my mom all this time. The next day my mom literally badgered me to go meet him. It was late, so I argued with my mom that she should no pressure me to go meet a random guy who I am not interested in marrying and that too at 10 In the night. I also found it a bit creepy that a guy wants to meet for the first time this late. But I had to give in to my mom’s emotional blackmail, so I went.

When I met him, I felt this positive vibe (a lot coming from the fact that he was really good looking… Yes, ok I’m shallow :P). Even then I felt, being a film buff and tech enthusiast was what mattered, when he asked if we could meet for a longer time, I said I’ll think about it and after two day we met.

We talked for hours about everything from our likes, to our expectations to our history and then on the drive back home, I decided I’m going to say yes. Even though I still had my doubts, there were lot of things to be figured out, I felt I had never met a person who was so positive about life. And also no one had ever said so many nice things about me.

We really were quite different from each other in every way but those thing that I thought mattered the most really made little sense at that time. I was very sure in my mind that even with the difference in upbringing, though process and interests, we will make it work. And then all went well, we were engaged in a month and married in five.

It made me realize,  that how when you are young you look at things in a certain way and as you grow up you shed the prejudices and change for the better.

Tomorrow on his birthday it will be six years from when this saga started. I am not a very expressive person and I hardly tell him (or anyone) how much he means to me.

But today through this post, I want to tell him that we may not be soulmates but we have worked on our relationship. He is the Harry to my Sally, the Darcy to my Lizzie, the Yin to my Yang. He’s changed me for good and made me a more positive person than I ever was. I’ve been through thick and thin with him in the past six years and want to do that for the next sixty.

Happy Birthday Husband! I love you :-*