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‘I have this feeling that you are going to make fun of my love story.’
‘Are you nuts? A guy becomes a joke the moment he falls in love anyway. What’s the point in making fun of that? You must be used to it by now.’
‘Cheers!’
‘Cheers! So begin your story. Was she in college with you?’
‘No, not in college, I met her in Lucknow during summer training. We were under the same project guide. There wasn’t much work to do so we used to mark our attendance and go sit in a mall nearby.’
‘Your story sounds like a typical one. You should have treated your summer-training-wala pyaar as seriously as a summer-training certificate, yaar. But carry on.’
‘So we got along famously in the next two months. We were in touch on mobile during college and would meet once in a couple of months. Then I got a job in Mumbai and she got one in Delhi. She used to come here sometimes, but she didn’t quite fancy Mumbai.’
‘Sorry, I am interrupting you. Why didn’t she like Mumbai?’
‘She didn’t like the hurried lifestyle here.’
‘That’s it? You should have made her understand that to live in Mumbai, you gotta have a little bit of madness and restlessness.’
‘I tried to, but she didn’t understand.’
‘Are you sure that she loved you?’
‘Yes, yaar! She used to say, “I love you” so many times in a day.’
‘It would have been so easy if loving someone was as easy as saying “I love you” all day. Your love is just like all those other things these days. Anyway, tell me more.’
‘What more? With great difficulty, she talked to her parents, and I went to her home. But her parents didn’t agree to the match.’
‘So that was the story, and you turned into Devdas? That’s the problem with guys; they just want to be Devdas in love. What happened to you wasn’t all that bad.’
‘She is married now.’
‘That’s even better. Hurl a few abuses and move on.’
‘I can’t do it.’
‘Then are you going to stay this way forever? Tell me, when she had no plans of coming here, why did you move into a separate flat?’
‘Just like that.’
‘Arré, tell me?’
‘The worst thing about Mumbai is that you don’t have enough space to cry your heart out. I couldn’t cry there, what with my friends and all.’
‘Yaar, this crying thing just took my high away. Finish your story soon and make me another peg.’
‘You must find it odd, me crying my eyes out?’
‘No, not at all. In fact, this was the best thing about this entire evening.’
‘How is my crying a good thing?’
‘It’s good that you cry it out. What about those who couldn’t do it at the right moment?’
‘Since my story is done, why don’t you tell me yours? Why don’t you want to get married? There must be some reason.’
‘Nothing special in my story. We were engaged. There was no issue with marriage in our families.’
