Caprice.

"Do you always avoid eye-contact with women?"

Interestingly catty remark. He could not resist replying, despite earlier resolutions to converse in monosyllables only.

"I don’t usually suffer from that particular syndrome..."

He heard what he had just said and groaned inwardly. So much for sounding intelligently lofty.

"I mean, oh, what the hell…this whole scene is so unreal. Do you see how contrived this is? I bet there are four pairs of eyes looking at us from behind those curtains!"

He threw up his hands in a gesture of resignation.

She found his awkwardness and sudden boyish outburst vaguely amusing.
Smiling, she replied, "Unfortunately, I do see your point. The least we can do is make it as pleasant as possible for us before we bid good bye to each other. It keeps them satisfied and lets face it, it’s kind of fun, if you can disassociate yourself from the emotional aspect of the whole mess..."

He looked away from the window, where his three cousins and his mom sat watching them, his dad was pointing to Rakesh’s football trophy collection and her parents were nodding, suitably impressed.

He looked at her appraisingly. Maybe, she was slightly different. Casually sitting, almost lazing in the grass, she looked at ease with herself and with the whole boy-seeing-girl rigmarole. She was dressed simply but tastefully in a blue salwar kameez, not the usual silk saree with layers of gold lining. Long blue earrings glinted in the sun and dangled against her wheatish, smooth skin.

"Not traditionally beautiful..." he mused, "but not bad, quite interesting actually..." He turned towards her.

"I miss Rakesh at times like these…you must have heard about him, straight A student, football trophies…the works…he can somehow worm his way out of situations like these. I cannot!"

She nodded. Her mom had filled her in on Karthik’s family background with sufficient details about his younger brother Rakesh too. "Just in case" her mother had intoned looking at Swathi meaningfully. Swathi appeared immersed in her novels.

"Mom, leave poor Swathi out of this. Isn’t it enough that you are making me go through this crazy stuff?!" Divya had argued.

She was 27, almost over the acceptable "marriageable-age" for good South-Indian girls. Her sister, Swathi, just out of school, was barely 17. Divya realized that she could not postpone this issue any further under any other pretext. She had completed her Masters at UT, Austin, she had managed to secure a job in Austin and the guy she was going to see for the famous "ponnu-pakkara" ceremony was based in Austin and a green-card holder at that, her mother had reminded her for the eigth time that day.

On the fateful day, she had decided that she would be impassive about the whole deal. She would be the suave, almost disinterested sophisticate who would sail through the day and then would casually but politely decline the proposal for vaguely disclosed reasons.

When she met Karthik, she did not think much of his almost brazen appearance, white tshirt, faded jeans and the hint of a 5 o’ clock shadow on his face. She was not the kind of girl who would be impressed with the boyish good looks that he possessed. She looked more to connect on a mental level. She was a romantic but an unromantic romantic and she was pretty sure no willing-to-ponnu-pakkara-guy would fit her strange set of compatibility requirements.

But then, almost against her will, she found herself being drawn to the conversation and the conversationalist.

*****
"Making my way downtown…" Vanessa Carlton was definitely not what she was in the mood for that morning. Impatiently, she switched channels on her car stereo until she heard "Summer of '69". She hummed along, blissfully unaware of what is to come.

Something about her drew a second glance from more than a few men. It’s difficult to say if it’s because of the independence that she exuded or the not-interested-not-free-Saturday-night spectacles that she wore, if anything, one would think these hints of feminine independence would put men away. Perhaps it was a challenge for the more daring ones to outwit her, something that did not happen often. Perhaps it was the more believable allure of delicateness that could be detected in her long black hair falling casually on her shoulders, a touch of gullibility in the way she tilted her head and smiled when something amused her, making her seem more human, more a woman. Knowingly or otherwise, she drew men to her often, but they were always the wrong men.

Today was no different for her than any other day as Senior Programmer at Logic Tech Consultancies, located at Riverside Dr, Austin. She was the personal favourite of her manager and had the corner-view cubicle to herself. Sometimes, staring outside through the glass paned windows gave her a sense of freedom, a feeling of flight, a feeling of being away from the monotony that her life had become. The seemingly nondescript day plowed on as she went about her morning routine of glancing through her office emails. The same set of virus warnings, acquisitions and one from Shankar asking her not so subtly if she would like to go out for dinner Saturday night. She was about to mercilessly send the emails to trash when one email stood out, a wedding invitation from Karthik and Suganya. It was not the content of the email that caught her attention, she had tired of the two Indian-American weddings that she had attended already, the pretense being too much for her to take. What did make her frantically open the email to check its contents was the one name, Karthik. She scrolled down and checked his last name, twice and heaved a sigh of relief. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, letting her emotions overtake her. Two years and she could still feel his eyes on her when she had looked away…the image dissolved to a series of random memories and with it, the yearning, the hurt, the pain came flooding back.

*****
"Jeffrey Archer?! You can’t be serious lady!"

He had laughed out loud and she could not convince herself that it was just self-righteous indignation at being laughed at that irked her more than how charming she thought he looked when he threw back his head and laughed mockingly.

"A reader’s perception and preferences should not be mocked at ignorantly without knowing her reasons for the same…"

More laughter and eventually, she had joined in. They were now discussing their favourite authors and books to kill some more time before they would both walk in, looking not very pleased. It would make the whole rejection process easier, they had figured.

She was surprised by how much she was talking, something alien to her normal self. Whether it was to add on to his trail of thoughts or to strongly convey her disapproval, she felt the need to keep talking and to keep listening to what he had to say.

An hour passed and then another and they had still not exhausted their topics; marriages, books, society, women and even a bit of politics. She had discreetly checked her wrist watch and reluctantly told herself that she was just talking to make it all seem more realistic, so that her parents would not guess that their daughter had still not bought into the concept of an arranged-marriage.

Perhaps they had failed to notice the increasingly restless activity inside the house, but they could no longer ignore the fast approaching darkness. She looked at the moon and wondered if its beauty had cast a mystic spell on them. Disgusted at her romanticism, she abruptly stood up.

If he looked surprised or disappointed, he did not show it.
"It’s time, I guess. You are free to go now…" he said, smiling.

A small pang of guilty thrill that he had said "You" and not "We", which she ignored and said matter-of-factly, "Yes, until the next time, with yet another moron…"

Hardly had the words escaped her mouth, when she realized what she was implying. Yet, she did not correct herself, although she desperately wanted to.

He was silent for sometime and then said, "Divya, I did not expect that I would have such a good time. I enjoyed your conversation and your company and thought you were delightfully sprightly and smart…"

She had yearned to disclose what she really felt then but something within her, a bit of vanity maybe, made her hesitate.

He continued, almost in a whisper, "I don’t expect you to feel the same about me, Divya. Just wanted to let you know that if I had even sensed a glimpse of reciprocation from you, I would have taken the chance and told my parents that I was interested…"

Tears stung at her eyes and she still did not talk. It was too dark for him to notice the stories that they had to say.

"…a marriage is a big deal though and we need two emotionally involved or atleast interested souls to make the bond strong. I…" She thought she had heard a tremor in his voice but her own racing heartbeat was making her oblivious to everything.

"…I wish you a good life, Divya, God knows, you deserve it."

She did not notice when he walked away quickly, perhaps to hide his own feelings. She did not notice how long she stood there, head bent, tears blurring her eyes.

When she finally looked up, he was long gone. The rest of the process was simple, a letter conveying a politically appropriate "No" from the his family and it was all over.

*****
"Divya, about this Saturday…ahem," he stepped forward hopefully.

She dismissed Shankar within moments and then cried.

She cried in the solitude of her cubicle, wishing that the little voice, the ego-laced vanity in her had not made her hesitate that fateful night.

*****