Long Story Short...

By Notion Press

The twenty one winning stories of Litagram's viral social short story competition, 2015

• Language: English
• Publisher: Notion Press
• Release date: Jun 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9789352061495

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NOW UPON R TIME: TWITTEROMANCE

Neerja Singh

Chandni Kharbanda, you have met a total of thirteen prospective bridegrooms and struck them all off your list! Just to reconfirm, what are the qualities that we are looking for?

I don’t know Mum…there has to be chemistry first of all. It is hard to explain. But I am telling you, the day I meet him, I will know. In an instant, I will know.

Even with that one perfect partner Chandni, believe you me, there will be days you will wonder why and how you both ended up with each other. And I know of enough and more marriages where love began tentatively only to grow into a grand passion and a lifelong, rock solid, committed partnership.

What to do Mum, there are guys I see as potential partners but they are not ready to commit yet. The ones that can’t wait to hop onto the altar are boring as hell. I am not desperate enough yet, I guess. One shouldn’t get married just for the sake of getting married. Life is too beautiful. How about we give it a break? Sometimes, the moment you stop chasing something is precisely the moment it chooses to fall into your lap.

Chandni’s batchmates were falling like ninepins all around them, into the married state. She herself seemed forever on what she called the ‘Shaadi Express’, bound for their big events. There was a drill to it. Four ceremonial costumes, wedding dance rehearsals and the gift earmarked, she would be off on a flight to the wedding with a promise to be good and take care of herself and stay safe and keep updating home and to eat sensibly and get some sleep.

Back home meanwhile, the Indian mother’s disaster checklist would be out on the refrigerator, under a dozen or so Japanese magnets. There is something called the biological clock, the partner pool keeps reducing, the good guys get taken, there is more fun in growing together in a marriage, partners bring too much rigidity to the table if they are past their prime, one must get real, life is not a movie, one person cannot complete you, marriage is what you make of it, you have to start with someone, guys eventually marry the girl back home, etc.

Come on Mum, the airlines are getting stickier about the check-in timings, I don’t want to be late, Chandni was leaving for the Swedish Young Connectors of the Future Programme at Stockholm and the drill was different for this one. It included an additional note, Promise me that you will take care of your passport and TCDC card! Watching her trundle away, pushing her luggage trolley at the airport beyond the entrance gate, her mother pledged to herself she would put the two weeks of her absence to good use by scouring matrimonial websites in peace, unpunctuated by her daughter’s whinnies of impatience.

There was an unfamiliar email the following day in the mother’s inbox. It said, Your daughter’s phone ditched her at the Arlanda airport. We travelled together on the flight from Delhi. She asked me to mail you about her safe arrival. She will be in touch soon. The parents marvelled at their daughter’s resourcefulness. We have really become a global village! Chandni’s father did not have a Facebook account and constantly fretted over his family leaving traces on the electronic network. He continued to shake his head for a while.

Since it has been de rigueur for Indian mothers since time immemorial to keep the umbilical cord humming until death does her and her progeny apart, Chandni’s progress at the international youth conference began to be tracked and relayed back home. The desktop sprouted shortcut icons to the YCF website, the event schedules, event pictures, featured speakers and field reports. Neither the five thousand kilometres odd distance nor the five hours or so time lapse could dilute the mother’s fearful concern. If anything it heightened it. I hope she watches her drink at these socials, there is a date rape drug doing the rounds these days, hope the accommodation is comfortable, there better not be any racism, what if she gets lonely and is feeling out of place, heavens help us should she lose her wallet, we are done if she misses her flight.

But of course, the extended family and friends knew of Chandni’s whereabouts. A trip abroad by a family member is worn and touted as a badge of honour in India. Just as soon as the prodigal lands on foreign soil, the family busybodies begin to count the days.

They learnt in time that Chandni had floored the panel with her presentation on social communication entitled, ‘Small talk: the secret saboteur’. They also knew that she had loved the Gamla Stan or The Old Town and was taking the Archipelago Canal Tour before boarding the Emirates flight back home. And then came the cherry on the icing, Chandni has won the South-Asian Young Connector Award! Her Mum felt elated and relieved that the event had been put to good use and was proving worth every paisa spent. Thrift is the highly valued mark of a good householder in the subcontinent.

Lulled into an easy pause mode, now that the daughter was safely aboard the flight back, Chandni’s mother logged on to her social network a day later. There was a retweet from an Indian parent of YCF 2013.

@ChandniMum @YCF2015 Forgive Indian parivaar/sanskaar, dropping the small talk, this girl is my soulmate, HELP please, knock knock #connectchandni

And then another!

@ChandniMum @YCF2015 I know her name. She is brilliant. I am YCF2012. Feel a deep connection with her. HELP please #connectchandni

The network beast had been stirred. And shaken. It unfolded swiftly. Several IP addresses began to blink across the earth’s curvature. Packets of data pulsed along the oceans, quivering with anticipation. Operating on pure autopilot, the mother reacted to these intrusive tweets by frantically punching her daughter’s phone number. And quite blissfully unaware of the commotion unfolding in her life down below, Chandni dozed through the movie ‘Centre Stage’ on the in-flight monitor.

@ChandniMum Auntie, do we know this dude? Check his profile on https://www.socialmedia.com, the bloke’s also a social entrepreneur. #connectchandni

The story was getting a metadata tag! There was no stemming this tide now. The family swung into digital emergency mode. All manner of extensions logged onto Skype, Viber, Whatsapp and the emails. What was going on? Who was this guy? What business did he have with their Chandni?

Just as Chandni was waking up to a meal of grilled chicken breast and mashed potatoes 39,000 feet above this drama expanding, hundreds of decentralized paths came alive with message bits that internet protocol put together to arrive at the conclusion – A transatlantic romance was literally in the air!

The harder Chandni’s clan tried dousing it, the greater the ferocity with which it flared. A childhood friend somewhere in the town of Novi Sad in Serbia posted:

@YCF2015 I grew up with Chandni. This guy has good taste. Reader, thinker, rock climber Chandni. What’s your claim to fame?#connectchandni

Block this boy; I will file an FIR at the Police Station. How dare he talk about my girl publicly like this? the family struggled to contain their peeved patriarch. While the brood thrashed around thus and Chandni cruised above, the twitteratti lined up for a transatlantic facilitation of what seemed like a delicious prospect of internet matchmaking.

Someone asked @YCF2015 Where is Chandni right now? #connectchandni

Within minutes, Emirates EK157 was extrapolated and the live flight status posted.

@YCF2015 On the way, two hours to go. Wind speed good. Landing at T3 #connectchandni

The landline rang urgently in the Kharbanda home. Chandni’s cousins had taken over the family dining table, several laptops and tablets plugged in and humming. Cultural adrenaline was sparking and flickering by turns. There was confusion over what they were facing. Here was an apparently suitable boy going to town over their uncompromising cousin. No one knew for sure what to feel about this.

The man was clearly smitten. He was as good as declaring intent! What if Chandni liked him too! Tweets were continuing to fly back and forth. By now the other affected family had jumped into the fray, with a surprising openness about their son. A perception was rapidly growing as to the young people’s compatibility. What must his parents be thinking of our girl? the Kharbandas wondered just the same. My god, I hope they don’t think our girl is trying to hook their eligible son, the mother remonstrated.

@kharbanda_cousin Two smart people. Liberal, fearless, heavily invested in making the world a better place. Makes for a good team. #connectchandni

@YCF2015 When is she landing, what are the families thinking, will they receive her at the airport together? #connectchandni

@ChandniMum Please have her say yes. It will restore my faith in mankind, aunty you HAVE to convince her #connectchandni

Oh good lord, the Town TV has jumped in, Kharbanda junior, all of five-years-old was quickest on the draw in the thoroughly addled room. Within seconds, he had scrolled and clicked his way to the channel on the living room TV screen. The brood flopped down in helpless amazement. A reporter was speaking into the camera from outside the airport, Town TV brings our viewers a charming human interest story in our section on New Trends. The weather has been bipolar across the globe but flight EK147 is on time, flying at the speed of 462 kts at an altitude of 40,000 feet. Chandni Kharbanda, the Twitter trending topic today #connectchandni is about forty five minutes from landing at Delhi. We will be covering her arrival live. Stand by viewers for more.

Pandemonium broke out in the household as car keys were snatched off the wall hooks and vehicles growled onto the Gurgaon road, zooming for the international terminal pell-mell.

Meanwhile, fighting a pleasant exhaustion, Chandni had just begun to pack her ear plugs and Kindle away in-flight, trying to decide if she should visit the washroom once just in case there was a gridlock in the skies. She dreaded these landing delays. Little did she know!

Unknown to the Kharbandas, another family was rapidly transiting towards the airport carrying an icebox by now. They had been in a day long dialogue online with their son. A concluding tweet in their evening’s interaction had read:

@dadmomgroom Meet her with a Con Affetto edible bouquet. Believe she hates wasting flowers. Careful, don’t offend her. She’s the one. #connectchandni

Up in the ether, as the announcement rang out for the passengers to switch on their mobile phones, Chandni reached down into the handbag for hers. It would take a few clicks to get the instrument off the airplane mode. She pressed a finger on the tiny knob along the right side. No joy. She pressed harder. It can’t be the battery. I charged it before the flight! She used the nails of her thumb and index finger to prise open the back cover. She was pulling the SIM out when the cabin aisle suddenly resuscitated. She stood up in a hurry so to avoid being run over by the suddenly rushing humanity.

As they exited the tarmac transit coach, she noticed an unusually large throng in front of the only television set in the arrival lounge. Some people were talking excitedly and scanning the baggage conveyor belt monitors. Most shook their heads in exasperation. Stupid media, forever sensationalising the trivial, Chandni made another attempt to bring her phone alive; her parents would be awaiting word of her safe landing. Oh no, I dropped the SIM in the cabin! But I remember retrieving it from under the seat ahead. It must be in my pocket, she chided herself before collecting her baggage and setting out for the exit. Once out, she halted again, unaware of the windmill action beyond the visitor’s railing.

Mum will be worrying. What if they are caught in traffic though Dad would surely have been tracking the flight? I must get my phone up and running, Chandni pulled to the side, letting others hurry past her.

Two shakes by the hand, three blows from the mouth and five taps with the fingers later, the phone bounced back. It very nearly gagged to death the very next second. The owner stood holding her asphyxiating instrument, choking on a sea of messages and emails and missed calls and Whatsapp notifications.

Chandni looked up finally and oh so slowly. Sure, that was her mother there and this was the T3 terminal. But what was that behind her mother? The whole blooming village had come to receive her. Even Leo, their temperamental Pekingese was attending, straining at his paw-printed leash. She pinched her arm, Did the aircraft crash?

Time keeled over and halted. A young girl stood momentarily paralyzed, resisting the assault on her senses. An entire clan watched their beloved