Mira and Jai met through a matrimonial website. Mira had always imagined her prince charming to be a tall, dark and handsome guy. She was not too impressed by J’s matrimonial pictures. However, something about him told her that he was worth a chat. Having wasted too much time on finding her Mr. Right, she was just not up to the task. She had her sister in Bangalore meet him first for she trusted her blindly. Having got a positive response from her sister, Mira decided to go ahead and talk to J. A couple of calls later, Mira thought it best to catch up in person not because she couldn’t wait to meet him but because the very thought of saying No to someone after chit chatting for long did not seem right to her.
So, Mira took a flight from Delhi to Bangalore, crossing four states and a 1000 miles to see someone she barely knew. The next two and half hours were a haze and before she knew, she was in another part of the country.
As she deplaned, Bangalore welcomed her with a cool breeze and heavy showers. Everyone around her was rushing hurriedly towards the airport shuttle complaining about the downpour, worried more about their bags and laptops getting wet than themselves. Mira, however, could not care less for her cabin baggage or her chic white peeptoes for she had something far more important occupying her mind.
She quickly made her way through the crowd, collected her baggage and called J. He told her that the rains had slowed down the traffic and that it would take him at least 20 minutes. He asked her to sit in the waiting lounge.
The lounge had glass walls such that one could look at the visitors and passers-by outside. She grabbed the first seat to get the best view of the outside area. This had been the most strange wait till date. She realized how she had not felt half as nervous even as she had waited way back in 2003 for her board exam results!
She brushed her fingers across her hair and adjusted her curls gently so as to make them sit on her shoulders. She rubbed umpteen layers of lip balm, turned the phone’s front camera on to check if she looked her best. In her mind, she practiced how she would greet Jai when they’d meet first. She wiped her sweaty palms onto her pants only to notice that they were sweaty again. For the first time in a long time, she heard her heart beat fast against her chest, an uncontrollable shiver running all across her body. What if he was too good or too bad for her? What if either of them got bored of the other? What if there was an awkward silence between them? She looked at her watch as it struck 8:15 pm. The past 15 minutes had flown by in a jiffy. She needed more time. She needed to apply another coating of lip balm, another dab of foundation, another generous spray of her Versace as if these would make her any less nervous and any more confident. She suddenly felt her phone vibrate inside her handbag. It was J saying that he was walking towards the waiting lounge. She felt the earth beneath her feet split open. She fumbled with her heels and handbag and sweaty palms and walked clumsily towards the exit gate. There he was. It wasn’t difficult to recognize him. In the most novel way of reception, he held out his iPad with her name painted in vibrant colours.
She was gleaming with explicit joy as her glance moved alternately between his face and his iPad. In her mind, she thought, “It was all totally worth the wait.”
This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.
An Enigmatic Life 