Once Upon A Hullabaloo!

CHAPTER 27

Timing is a very important thing in life. 

If Kshitij had left before my parents arrived, that would have been the timing working in my favour. It would have been a great timing if I had succeeded in calling my parents to talk about Kshitij before Zalak decided to call my mother to enquire about the best bandhani cloth in Ahmedabad and managed to yap away about how happy she was that things were working out between Kshitij and me!

But none of the above happened and it landed  Thakkar family with Kshitij Gulati in my drawing at an odd hour in the night. 

There are two kinds of parents in this world- one who yell, shout and turn the world upside down until their child swears to never repeat the mistake again. The other kind is a tad bit complicated- They won't ever be the ones to point out the wrong. They choose silence as their weapon to guilt-trip their child into realizing and admitting their wrongs. 

My parents belonged to the latter group. None of the two questioned me about Kshitij's presence after Naitik had seen him out of the house with a couple of brotherly warnings. If I had to be absolutely positive about the situation then I was thankful that Naitik had atleast dropped the idea of scarring my (hopefully)to-be-fiance's handsome face. 

"Omi." Mummy knocked on the bedroom door.

I turned away from my reflection in the mirror and looked at her. She was standing at the door in a beautiful yellow saree with a pile of clothes in her hands. I nodded at her and she gingerly walked towards me at the dressing table. 

I got up from the puffy and she handed me the clothes that were in her hands. I ran my fingers on the thin golden border of the plain white chiffon saree that she gave me and admired the fine contrast it made with the red velvet blouse beneath it.

"It is beautiful!" I whispered.

She smiled, "This is the same saree that I had worn when your papa had come to see me at my house with baa for the first time. I had met many suitors before him but I was the first woman he had come to meet with his mother."

She held my hand and steered me towards the bed. Both of us sat down at the edge of it.

She continued, "Arranged marriages are tricky. You don't have much time to get to know the other person before a final decision is expected out of you. But whatever time you have, you make the most of it- analyzing every moment that you spend with that person. Most of us usually end up weighing the pros and cons to take our chances on whether there is someone better than him/her for us out there. Sometimes it so happens that these so called pros out-weigh the cons and still there is a little voice in your head that keeps whispering maybe... that maybe there is something still better out there."

I squeezed her hand, "And papa didn't have that maybe in his head, did he? You were the first girl as his arranged match and he married you."

She bit her lips at the memory, "By the end of our first meeting, he had already given me his decision."

"That is why you married him, didn't you? It wasn't because he was better but because he was the right one."

She shrugged and winked, "And partly because of his resemblance to Anil Kapoor. Not all of my suitors had their looks similar to one of my favourite actors!"

I rolled my eyes but couldn't help laughing.

"Omi," She said tenderly, "One thing your papa taught me is that 'maybes' never make for appropriate choice. I hope what you and Kshitij have is beyond that. I don't care if his cons outweigh his pros but if you even have a tiny whispering of 'maybe..' in your head then we should stop right here. I don't want you to pressurize yourself into a relationship because...."