Upside Down: A MaNan Marriage

4: Nandini

How rudely he just orders me "give me your number" This is not a real marriage and I am not his real wife! He has no right to order me around like that. Let alone his wife, he has no right to order anyone around like that. Idiot. Why should I give him something so easily. You want my number right, see what I give you. I just wrote 'NANDINI MURTHY' in capital letters on a chit of paper and handed it to his lawyer. My dealings are with his lawyer for the divorce and not with that idiot. Let that arrogant moron suffer wondering whether I will come to Mumbai or not.

I have better things to do than thinking about him at the moment. Ohhh! Wait a minute! I don't even know the age of the guy I married? He didn't look to old, but still, Ayyiappa! What if he is like 20 years older than me? I quickly pulled out my old dell laptop and googled his name 'Manik.' Well, like I expected I got so many results to sort through, but one image caught my attention immediately. I saw him, the moron I married, standing with a tall girl in a short red dress. The captions below the image read "Millionaire Manik Malhotra gives his girlfriend the ring!"  So, I know his name now. Manik Malhotra and he was some sort of business celebrity. The best part about these celebs is the gossip, so I decided to read what the article had to say about him. He is 26 and he is the first Indian to feature in the Global Entrepreneur's List. Pretty young for what he has achieved. Being a business student, his profile definitely intrigued me. The next page had an interview with his fiancée, Alia. To be honest, I wanted to know more about him and his businesses, but I read Alia's interview just for the fun of it. Ok this line where she says "I love my 5  carat ring. The larger the ring, the more he loves me" is just too funny! How can the size of a ring be a determinant of how much someone loves another person. If you love someone truly, you love them unconditionally to the extant that its not measurable. His fiancée seems so materialistic and clingy! I wonder what he found in her! I admit, she is pretty, but why her? I could be wrong, but from the interview, she seems very fake! He is so talented from what I read, why did he choose to marry her?

Anyway, despite my splitting headache, I packed my bags as I was leaving tonight from Vegas to go back to India. Memories of last night started coming back. As I mentioned earlier, Navya has her way with people. She got me to wear a very short tight black dress, something I have never worn before and would never ever wear again. I remembered going to Presidents' Bar with Navya and her friends. The bar was crowed when we arrived at around 9PM and most people had their respective groups or were on dates. However, one guy caught my attention. Firstly, he was Indian and very good looking. Let me rephrase that. He was strikingly handsome and looked like a model, with those defined jaw lines, and his physique. Secondly, he had no company. He was sitting all by himself on a bar stool and drinking. I stopped looking at that guy when Navya pulled me to the bar counter and ordered all of us tequila shots with some lemon and salt as a side. I insisted on not drinking as my parents died in an accident caused by excessive alcohol consumption by the driver of the other vehicle. She said " Nandini, you are not going to drive, and this is something you have to try at least once in your life. Besides, you are 21, you have to do this. Come on, don't be a spoil sport!" I was not fully convinced, but I decided to go with the flow, to make Navya happy. I drank one shot and sucked the lemon and salt imitating Navya. It was horrible to say the least. I could feel my throat burn as the liquid moved down my esophagus. She forcefully made me drink 4 more shots of tequila before she disappeared. "Probably not your drink" that lonely good looking Indian man came up to me and said. Thats all that I remember from last night. How did I marry that guy, why did I land up on his bed in a white wedding gown and what we did after I landed on his bed still remain a mystery to me.

As I continued packing my belongings, the sudden realization of what to tell Ams hit me. Ams is very sweet and loves me a lot, but she is also very strict. As I mentioned earlier, my parents died when I was young, so I grew up in Mangalore with Ams. She was the one who taught me music. Anyway, she disliked the modern concept of dating, live in relationships etc. Even thinking of her possible reaction if she finds out that I married a stranger, or that I may or may not have lost my virginity to that very stranger frightened me. I decided to hide the fact (and my speculations from that night) from her.