Dumped

“He just dumped me.”

I choked on the piece of bread I was eating and looked up at my friend. 

“What?” I asked.

She burst into tears and starting wailing loudly. People in the restaurant turned to stare at us. I automatically shifted into the sympathy mode, patting her shoulder and silently passing her a tissue, while wishing the old man at the next table would stop peering at us through his thick glasses and mind his own business. I signaled the waiter for a large scoop of chocolate ice cream. 

She blew her nose and looked at me through red eyes. 

“But why? I thought you guys had stopped fighting?” I enquired, infusing enough concern and anger in my voice as was expected of me. 

“He says he wants someone who is more practical and less emotional. What the hell does he mean by that? Am I the kind of person who makes a scene?” she screamed.

I declined to point out that the whole restaurant was now staring at us avidly, more Interested in her drama than the menu. Choosing the lesser of the two evils, I hid my embarrassment and nodded my head in agreement; assuring her that she wasn’t emotional and that he was a jerk and that he didn’t deserve her. Fifteen minutes of who-needs-men and men-are-bastards and five hundred calories later, she calmed down enough to bring her voice down a notch. I mentally added another to her list of failed relationships, which was now at a staggering seven. 

I’ve known her since my school days and despite our many differences, we’ve always remained good friends. We tended to balance each other-she was dumb, I was smart (which is another way of saying I was a nerd); she was the ‘hot chick’ while I was the kind who is usually invisible to guys till exam time. Still we managed to remain friends through our school and college lives.

“Remember when I had my first break-up?” she asked. We were only fourteen then, at a time when we were just discovering new body parts, and the idea of having a boyfriend was nothing more than owning a shiny new doll, and something inspired by chick flicks we watched on weekends. The word ‘dumping’ meant nothing more than a few tears and was soon forgotten over a large tub of icecream. As we grew older, the size of the tub grew proportionally smaller and was accompanied by increasingly expensive shopping sprees.

“Why do these things happen to me?” she said, looking up at the ceiling, as if all the Gods had specifically chosen to trouble her alone. I could have told her that she’d brought it onto herself but then she’d never listened to me. She could never stay single longer than a few months. I could not understand what she saw in the men she went out with, when it was plain to everyone else that they didn’t care for her more than they cared for their cars, and that they wanted only one thing from her.

“That’s not true. It’s not just about sex. I care about them and they care about me too,” she said, when I told her quite bluntly. I rolled my eyes. 

“This is men we are talking about. Words like ‘care’, ‘PMS’ and ‘commitment’ don’t figure in their dictionary,” I said. She looked at me and burst into tears again. I threw up my hands and fell back in my chair in frustration. 

Ok, I admit I didn’t have the guts to tell her to her face that she was being silly and immature and that she needed to get a grip. That was just me. If I had a house of my own, the name plate would probably read D-O-O-R-M-A-T. 

It took me another half an hour of male-bashing and another large scoop of ice cream to make her stop crying. By the time the bill arrived, she was calm enough to stop blowing her nose and even offered to pay the bill, which I gladly let her do, taking it as my fee for being her sounding board and counselor. For the seventh time. In my own foolish way, I felt nice for having helped her by being such a good friend and being so sympathetic.

We had just walked out of the restaurant when I remembered I’d left my car keys inside. I went back to get them. When I came out, she was standing there, talking to a guy. There was no trace of tears in her eyes and she was giving an ‘I’m-available’ pose- with one hand on her hip, her head slightly tilted and a sly smile on her face. He murmured something to her to which she gave a well-practiced husky laugh, and said, “Don’t be silly. I’m not that pretty!”

She turned to look at me and beamed as if the past one hour hadn’t happened at all. “He’s so cute, isn’t he?” she came up and whispered to me. Ignoring my stare, she said, “He’s just asked me if I could join him for a drive along the beach and I’ve said yes. What do you think?”

I looked from him to her and slapped myself three times. I walked to my car, shut the door and drove away, without looking back.

My search for Mr.Perfect

My search for Mr. Perfect started when I was 10. I was basically this “good girl”, who used to obey my parents (literally), never bawled or wailed at public gatherings, studied well, topped my class, and had quite a normal life. My childhood was never boring, for I had a wild imagination that was bigger than me (which is not saying much as I was only five feet). I ventured out sometimes, but there was a deep-rooted shyness in me that prevented me from rolling in the mud with the kids on the street.

As I grew up, my height remained the same, but my imagination expanded like an inflated balloon. I discovered the joy of fantasizing about guys through Hindi cinema. Every time Shah Rukh Khan aimed a sizzling look at the camera, with his dimples poking out, my heart sighed and melted like ice cream in the Chennai heat. By the time I was fourteen, I had already had my third infatuation. Maybe it was the initial lack of interaction with boys or my over-sized imagination, but I used to spin dreams around every male character outside the family I knew for more than a month. And, they were not always what you might call James Bond look-alikes. The last crush I had in school was on a guy who looked like someone who’d been bench-pressed from both sides, but to me, he was John Cena himself. My appalling taste continued to baffle and mystify my friends all through college- they could not see what I could see in the guys I liked.

When the time came to sit down and choose the right guy for me to settle down with, however, my mom decided to take matters into her own hands. Though the decision brought out shocked looks from my dad (“but she’s just a child!”) and a snort from my brother, my mom was very firm that it was high time I started looking. She was afraid, I think, that I might run away with a guy who looks like a chimpanzee, just because he had an Einstein-like brain. She wanted to be able to introduce her son-in-law to the public as a human being, she told me, not some primate that escaped from the Amazon.

When a girl turns 21 in an Indian household, it causes a stir, and brings out the gossip-loving, jobless ‘aunties’ sniffing like wolves. Dad starts poring over account statements, while mom starts poring over jewellery brochures. Every function you go to, people give knowing looks, and hint heavily and very obviously about prospective grooms, silk saris, jewellery and food. It didn’t take much to make me put up a profile on matrimonial websites, consent to have my horoscope written up and say ok to circulating it. I don’t know what made me agree to it. I’ve always been easily swayed and not exactly a champion decision maker. I shrugged off the comments made by my friends on how medieval that kind of thinking was, and how nowadays all women give importance to their career, and how I was wasting my brains and talent. As long as I didn’t know what I wanted, I was ready to be steered in what course my parents decided was best.

My mom was very excited about it, more than I was. She sat with me, while I filled up the profile forms online, giving suggestions, and giggling with me. I agree it was fun in the beginning. I was dragged along to family functions and weddings, forced to put up a ‘good girl’ image. Every third step I took, there was a relative, looking very important, waiting to advice, admonish or approve. One of my many unknown relatives came up to me, teary-eyed, and spoke vehemently about how she would make it her life’s goal to find me a suitable husband, and then blew her nose loudly, causing a few people to frown at me. I was introduced to people I didn’t know and had to stand with a wide smile pasted on my face, as they gave me the once-over. I put up with it for a while, till it became irksome. My mom had to give me inconspicuous jabs to stop me from shooting off my mouth or rolling my eyes. But it did feel nice to be the centre of attention at the gatherings.

Apart from socializing, I started taking care of myself, going to the gym, increasing my beauty parlor visits to 2 per week and staring at saris displayed on shop windows, wondering if green made me look fat. I found myself asking my cousins for pedicure tips, stopping at every ‘sale’ sign, and worrying about my tummy. My dad became moodier while my mom became more exuberant. Sometimes he looked wistful, probably still imagining me in a pink frock and pigtails. I was ambivalent, but decided to go with the flow. Besides, my mom’s excitement was infectious.

It was exciting at first, going through the guys’ profiles, laughing and commenting, picking and choosing. And I had to admit it gave me a thrill to receive a couple of messages through the website. My excitement stopped short when I saw the kind of profiles that I got messages from. I immediately realized why some men have to resort to matrimonial websites to find a girl. If they had been more ‘worth-a-second-look’ or smarter, they wouldn’t need a website.

As the days went by, I became increasingly frustrated. Most of the profiles wanted ‘simple, home-loving traditional girl with modern values’. I don’t get it. What do they mean by simple? I asked my friend about this and he said, “Probably just means she should say yes to whatever the guy says.” I shook my head in disgust. What’s the fun in being a simple girl? Complexity meant intrigue and more fun anyway. I was also starting to get a headache whenever I saw the oxymoronic statement “traditional with modern values”. And there was the fact that hardly any of the profile descriptions were properly phrased. One guy had written “I want to make love with the girl I want to marry”. My mom and I rolled on the floor with laughter when we saw this one. Occasionally, a few profiles sounded impressive, but the photos made them look mentally retarded.

Somewhere along the line (I think it was after the 102nd profile that I saw and was disappointed yet again) I realized my search would never be complete anyway. And then I hoped fate would displace all my plans and maybe unexpectedly make me fall in love with someone. At least then my mother would have only the saris left to worry about......