The First Message
Be bold enough to knock
Marriage was not a hot topic in my house since I was home studying for L.L.M. And I was only 23 years old. Relatives did give their inputs about guys like,
'Check this guy out. He is this and that.'
or
'We know this one here from so and so place.'
But we did not go through with anyone. Up until one moment when I heard my Dad having a normal conversation with a relative.
I overheard them saying- 'This guy is an IIT-ian working in Bangalore. His family lives in Jodhpur.'
I heard his name Yash. Instantly, I fell for his name. Something triggered in me and asked me to stalk him on Facebook.
I liked his profile. There were not too many pictures. His FB profile was not public. I then looked for him on Instagram. His account was public. There were just 17 posts, which made me more suspicious about him. It had never happened to me before. This all-stalking stuff. But with this guy, it just came from my inner soul- I wanted to know more about him. So, I pushed myself to ping him.
I pinged him with a hey on 30/1/2020. No one in my family knew that I had pinged him. It felt ever greater to do something secretively. Yash replied instantly. He did not know me. His family was searching for possible brides, but he kept rejecting them all. So, he could not make out which one of the possible brides was I. He asked me who I was, and I told him that my family was trying to set us up. I also told him that I wanted to know more about you before things got serious between us. So, I pinged you. This idea got well-appreciated by him. He said it was the right thing and time to do. We can do this.
Then came the phase of sharing our interests and really trying to-get-to-know-each-to-get-to-know-each-another juncture. Then what followed was a list of questions, our general and opposite interests.
The very next day, he went for the Chadar trek with his friends. He tried really hard to keep in touch with me, with all the network issues and all.
We continued with our conversations. Yash was now sharing things about his trip. I liked him for his personality. He was like an initiator king, I felt like a kid before him. He started asking questions like an expert. His answers were too damn awesome to hear and know.
We continued having conversations like these for ten days.
Then we had to stop doing this because our families came to know about our chatting. They only wanted us to continue with the chats after meeting with each other. But the meeting seemed impossible. The meeting was not possible due to Covid-19. Then, at some point, we thought our meeting would not happen anytime soon. Since everyone was free in the lockdown, relatives poured in their possible grooms for me. Whenever they said,
'Look at this one here,'
or
'What do you think about him?'.
I would firmly tell them-
'I do not want to get married to anyone else. And, if it does not happen with him, then I want to wait for another 1-2 years to complete my LLM degree.'
I wanted this to happen with Yash.
For me, the first message was a lot different. Out of the blue, I get a message from Aayushi Agarwal saying “Hey”. Right away just seeing the last name Agarwal, I had some idea about what was going to happen, but my parents hadn’t yet shared with me anything about her. Just to confirm, I replied. Things didn’t go too well the first day as we both were a bit too hesitant to share a lot (Typical scare for every Indian kid). This was the first time either of us was doing anything even remotely like it. I appreciated the fact that she sent the first message, had it been me I might have been too chicken to message at all. Being bold enough to send the first message and aware enough to get to know the other person before commitment were some of the qualities of Aayushi that I not only admired but respected.
The second day went much better. We both had shared our intentions and started feeling a bit relaxed about getting to know each other. I started with a lot of heavy-hitting questions, making sure of a couple of things – that she can seriously comprehend these questions and also to get an idea about her values and beliefs. Given the uncertainty of the situation and how long we had to get to know before we were made to sit in front of each other to answer the most difficult question yet, I felt this was the right way to go.
Things soon took a turn to fun and just sharing what has happened in our day became the highlight. I was in Ladakh, she was packing for Dubai and it was such a blast sharing these things with the other person. I would admit it was a bit of a struggle to type in -20°c but it seemed worth it. I was pulled by the pure excitement I was feeling even though I had still not met her, heard her, or even properly stalked her 🙈.
ms.agrwal
mr.agrwal