Three weeks later. I was in my office, just like on any other weekday. I was checking out the photos
that MP had shot of us all, during the reunion trip. He emailed them to us and while I was looking at
them, in my Yahoo! inbox, I noticed an ad flashing in the top-left corner.
It was an ad for a matrimonial site—Shaadi.com—with a beautiful girl, smiling and looking for her
perfect match.
Recalling our reunion discussion, I clicked the hyperlink on this ad, which took me to the website.
With the default filters enabled, I clicked the search button and, in no time, I was on the result page
with many feminine pics. Wow! Some among them were damn pretty, and I wanted to check them all
out. But before I could visit the sixth one, I was prompted to register at the website, without which I
couldn't browse through more profiles. The trailer was over and to watch the whole movie you had to
register yourself.
'I didn't have much work that day, so I thought I'd register myself and create my profile on the
site.' This is what I kept saying to Happy, Amardeep and MP. Whereas, it was actually the other way
round. Those pretty faces on the results page forced me to make time in my hectic schedule—which
involved project delivery to a client, the very next day.
Someone rightly said, 'Three things—wealth, women and …' (I always forget the third one) '… can
make anything happen in this world.'
So, finally, my profile was on the website. I uploaded a nice photograph and unchecked any
checkbox which asked to hide my whereabouts from girls who might be searching for me. I did not
forget to mention my professional trips to the US and Europe either. After an hour or so, I was all set
to check out those pretty faces again. I set my filters to check out all the Punjabi girls on the website
and hit the 'search' button.
The results page displayed some three-digit number—the total number of profiles that matched my
search criteria. This was exciting! But I could only check out some fifty of them before my eyes grew
tired. Still, among those fifty or so, there were a few whom I wanted to contact. But before I could do
so, there came a heartbreaking moment. To talk to those pretty faces I had to make a payment to the
site. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Damn!
The only cost-free part was a way to express my interest in them by clicking a button on their
respective pages. This would send a message from me to their inbox. But even if they gave me an
affirmation to interact, I still wouldn't get their email ids unless I made the payment. I checked the
amount they were asking for. '3000 bucks for the yearly plan! No way,' I said to myself. Then I
thought, 'I will only pay up if I happen to get good, affirmative responses from those beauties.' Till
then, whenever I felt like it, I could ping any girl on the website to show my interest in her profile.
This was the beginning of my experience with Shaadi.com—at the cost of my project delivery,
which I almost screwed up.
Apart from Happy, Amardeep and MP, nobody else knew about my profile on the site, not even my
parents. Because telling them that I was thinking of getting married meant stirring a hornet's nest. The moment they found out, they would bring inputs from their acquaintances all over the planet—and,
Jesus! How I hated that!
For the next few days, I got responses to my requests. Every time I opened my inbox there was this
strange excitement. But, most of the time, it didn't last long. The best ones had declined me. In fact,
most of them had ignored me. Only a handful accepted my request but, unfortunately, they didn't
appear that good. 'Ah! This website is good for nothing,' I told myself. As if I was James Bond and all
girls in the world would throw themselves at me, the moment I approached them.
And this is how Shaadi.com went from high-priority to the lowest-priority. Time passed by and I
visited the site once in two or three weeks, clicking buttons on profiles that interested me, but without
much expectation. Some more girls declined me; some girls, I declined. A few wanted to interact, but
their education was not impressive. Some called me up on my cell; to some I wrote a few SMSs. A
couple of them wanted me to move abroad but I was not game; some others, I could not convince that
India was a better place to live in.
During one of my short, official trips to the US, I also happened to buy the yearly plan for a girl
who badly wanted to talk to me. Damn! Out of the three things (wealth, women and … the last one
which I always forget) that could make anything happen in this world, the second was already making
me do things. The irony being that the girl, whom I coughed up 3000 bucks for, never got in touch. I
lost all interest in the website.
Then, one evening, I received an SMS on my cellphone.
Hi I m Khushi I
received ur msgs
on my other cell can
u pls call me now
That was 20-July-2006 18:58:19. My cellphone's inbox still shows the date and time.
When I got this SMS, I was in a conference call with a client in the US. I quickly recalled the name
of the profile from which I had got an acceptance the week before, along with the contact mobile
number and an email id. I wrote an SMS in reply:
M in mid of a conf call.
wll ring you in another
hlfnhr.
The very next minute, my cell flashed the arrival of a new message.
I too hv cmpltd my conf cal
few min bck. U cmplete urs and
I can wait till then.
After finishing my call, I dialed her number but only after I had quickly browsed through her profile.
'Hello!' said a beautiful voice from the other end.
'Hi! This is Ravin.'
'And I am Khushi,' she said in a pleasing and confident voice.
'Yup, I learnt that in your SMS. Sorry I kept you waiting but I was in the middle of an important
conference call with a client.'
'No problem. Even I had some stuff to complete.'
Our conversation began formally but, in no time, it became quite relaxed and informal when we found out some amusing things.
'I learnt that you were born in the month of February 1982,' she said.
'Yes. 4
th February. Anything specific?' I wondered if I was supposed to recall something from her
profile. But the only thing I remembered, then, was that she looked beautiful in her picture.
'You might have noticed that my year and month of birth are the same.'
'Oh yes! 22
nd February. I had seen that,' I said, quickly rushing to my computer and scrolling
through her profile. 'And you were born in Faridabad …'
'No. I was born in Kolkata. My dad was in the defence services and, when I was born, he was posted
in Kolkata and was staying there with family.'
'Really …? You won't believe this!' I shouted, attracting my coworkers' attention.
'What?'
'You guess!' I said, heading towards the staircase area, where I could talk to her without disturbing
the others.
'Don't tell me you were also born in …'
But before she could complete her sentence, I shouted again, 'Yes!'
'But, how come?'
'That's my mother's native place.'
And I don't know why we screamed and laughed at this fact. Thousands of people must have been
born in the same year, the same month and the same place, given our country's track record. But the
way we reacted!