Serendipity - कांदे पोहे and the Whatsapp missed call

The concept of arranged marriage is amusing to most in today's generation. I couldn't be any different. From the last one year or so my folks were hell bent on me finding a match through this novel concept. For the most of the previous 2 years I was stationed in Korea for official purposes. I would visit India for visa renewal every 3 months and go back after a week or two. Few of these 1-2 weeks turned out to be really eventful. To think of it, they were actually awfully embarrassing. My family and I would meet a family totally stranger till the time we actually met up. The program in Pune is famously called Kande Pohe. It is the matrimonial meet where the guy along with his family goes to the girl’s home to meet her and her family.

I went for a couple of such programs and was embarrassed to the core.

 -The girl had to be dressed up in a Saree/Salwar suit irrespective of what she was most comfortable in.

- She would bring the guys side Pohe (flattened rice) and some sweets after having already bought some water and tea earlier.

-What I found most bewildering was the girl had to touch everyone's feet and seek their blessing. I have immense respect for our Indian culture of touching our elder’s feet to seek their blessing.  (In fact from childhood I have been touching my elder’s feet including the people who actually worked in my farms, back in my village) However, why was only the girl expected to do it? God only knows.

- The guy and girl were then given some alone time to check if their thoughts match. Now this is crucial. The girl and the guy have to envisage if they could like to spend the rest of their lives together based on the little they could discuss in the even more little time together. For me this was the most frightening part of it, because naturally it is difficult to know a person that soon. The conversations weren't as frightening as the follow up questions my folks would ask me.

In February, 2015 I decided to quit my job and my family was naturally elated. Not so much because of the new job or the higher pay, but they knew I would stay in India and the matrimony process will be expedited. Be that as it may, I was asked to go back to Korea even in my notice period.

Every now and then there would be notification in my mailbox from one of the matrimony sites. Sometimes I would care to open them and 'like' the profiles of 1-2 perspective brides. However, most of the times, it so happened that I never responded to the interests I received and similarly I did not receive interest from the people I had expressed interest in. I believe the process was so mechanical that after a certain point I started treating it as a futile activity. However, some people were actually interested and would call, email and whatsapp me too. We would exchange each other’s snaps and bio data (yeah... that's what it is called in the marriage market).

This was so damn mechanical that I actually had saved a draft of the emails to send across in the first, second conversation and so on. Once a gentleman pinged me on whatsapp asking me what I do in Korea and when I would come back, etc. Most people didn't know much about that beautiful country, except off course two college going girls who were crazy about some Korean TV actor. This gentleman asked me when we could meet in person. I politely informed him that I would come back to India the following month and would inform him accordingly. Ideally I should have stopped at that. I don't know what made me ping him back with the following message "Can you ask your daughter to talk/chat with me, so that I can get to understand her priorities". He gently replied me that he couldn't do it until we had met in person. Understandably so, and thankfully too, I did not prod any further.  I was this blunt in all my conversations. However, in less than 48 hours later I received a reply informing me his daughter number and that I could call her. I saved the number but could not find her on whatsapp and didn't care to call her.

Finally it was my last day in Korea. I was going through mixed feelings the whole day. I had had spent a considerable time there and being the emotional person that I am, I had got attached to a lot of things there. I was just deleting a few of my personal mails from the client’s machine when I got a missed call. It was a whatsapp missed call. It was from an unknown number. However since it was on watsapp I wanted to know who the opposite person was and how he/she has my number. On putting forth that question, "I am sorry. It was by mistake" , was what I received as a response.

The profile picture looked familiar. I later realized it was the daughter of the person who had shared her number with me a few days ago. I don't know how her number had disappeared from my cellphone. I then informed her that she needn't apologize and that I would have chatted with her anyway. I had to leave for my hotel to pack up and leave for the airport. On reaching the hotel, I received 1-2 messages from her. On a reply to one of them I asked her had she ever been to Pune. As a follow up she asked me if I had ever been to Bhopal, her current place of residence, to which I told her that I had visited once for my SSB interview and that I had written a blog post on the same. (Winner for Life - My Experience @ SSB )

She asked me for the URL and I shared the same with her. She had some objection to my describing Bhopal Junction as good or bad as Bhusawal Junction. She then happened to go through another post of mine. (Mercurial Vistas - A Long Wait).  In 2010, I had really poured my heart into writing this post about the hardships I had faced till then. Never thought a perspective bride would read it someday. But one such had just read it. She said she liked it, to which I forthrightly said that it’s not a good piece to read for matrimony purpose. My observation and experience with arranged marriage market had been that it is one which is even more ruthlessly competitive that the demanding job market in India. The guy is expected to be some kind of a macho man who has seen and done it all kind. I unfortunately did not fit into this elite club of eye candy bachelors in the market.

I reached the Incheon Airport and our conversation continued. We discussed about her career plans and I, just as a friendly gesture sent her some useful links related to fresher jobs in the industry. We did not discuss anything in particular about matrimony and I frankly did not want to discuss too much about it. My though process was this - since I am going back to India for good, I might as well take it slow.

When I landed in Mumbai I had had received a message from the same person. Our conversation continued till I reached Pune. I did not find it any strange talking so much to a person. I perhaps was good at talking /chatting ever since the Yahoo chat room days. The context of this conversation was different, no doubt. I reached Pune on a Friday and all through the weekend I had been chatting with this stranger girl. On many occasions she got into the matrimony talks,  I had had tried to avoid it as much as I could, but to no avail. I felt this girl is too young and perhaps she didn't know what she was talking about or the depth of what she was getting into. I tried my best as a friend to tell her as much as I had learned about the arranged marriage concept. When I felt that she could be actually interested in me, I told her a few of my life realities. Not that I have ever hidden any aspect of my life, I told her everything- from me being born in a modest farmers family to the hardships that one faces as villager coming to a city. I even told her that my mom, grandfather and grandmother toiled in the fields to educate me and my siblings and now that I was earning, I need to educate both my siblings and marry them off when appropriate. Mind you, being the single bread earner in the family and having the whole family to support may make your folks proud of you, but it doesn't really sell in the marriage market. I was not trying to play victim nor score any emotional points. I genuinely thought that no girl of today would like to get involved into matrimony if these were my ground realities. I thought it would play a natural matrimony repellent. However, this girl debunked my theory of today's i-want-this-i-want-that materialistic girl. She was genuinely interested in knowing me. It is only after this conversation I began thinking of her on the matrimonial lines.

I talked to a few family members about her and our group conversations continued over the week. Innumerable phone calls later my uncle and I finally landed at her house in Bhopal that Sunday. Since we had traveled quite far we spend the most of the day at her place. She was as simple and beautiful as I had thought. We got quite some time to talk to each other in private. I found her to be really genuine and innocent, too. I wouldn't dwell much into the conversation. It was just like any other. A little shy, a little reserved.

On Monday, we boarded the train back to my hometown, Chalisgaon and within 48 hours of us reaching home the girls side had been invited back. This Wednesday was another Kande Pohe program with the same girl. This time my entire extended family got to meet their side. I hadn't spoken to the girl in those 48 hours, it was on purpose. I had learned a trick or two of the marriage market. Each side found the opposite to be suitable and deemed this matrimony in their collective wisdom as destined-to-happen.

The last minute, very sudden and extremely hurried attempt to make it official was not that great. It was a simple ceremony. When this was being discussed I badly felt like running into the house and asking her one last time, again, if she knew what she was getting into and whether she was happy with it. However, those of you who have any rural connect would know how such things in the village are really tough. Anyway, the ceremony was over and there was euphoria all over. To be very frank I was too much in a daze to actually assimilate what a big change had had happened in my life.

We reached back home and the matrimony discussions filled the house with a pious aura. I was, to be frank, still in a daze. Perhaps this had something to do with me having a relationship phobia. Next day we had a surprise visitor. The girl and a few of her relatives had come home. While the rest of both the families continued with their exhilarating discussions, I couldn't hold back walking up her and borrowing her from the rest. We went up to the terrace and I showed her the aerial view of my village and farms. That was the least of my objectives at that time, to be frank. I just wanted to know if she was OK with all that's been happening. I had never got a chance to ask her that till then. However, when we talked again I saw a a glee of hope in her eyes and a stunning smile. That answered all my questions. I was finally at ease and only then it began to sink in that I had been hooked up.

I can actually write a book on my arranged matrimony experience, but I'll save that for some other time. I just wish God grants me the strength to do justice to that pretty stranger who has decided to spend the rest of her life with this commoner.

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