It's All About The Click

By Priyanka Mathur

Meet Mitali, a young IT professional working in Bangalore who decides to take a plunge into the complex world of matrimonial websites to find herself the perfect life partner, only to be sucked right into a quagmire of stereotypes, insane expectations, and outrageous demands. After dozens of excruciating interviews, heartbreaking rejections, and obnoxious feedbacks, she finally meets a guy who ticks off all the boxes on her checklist and agrees to marry him . . . things seem to finally be working for her. But destiny had something else in mind for her. When an old high school flame enters the picture right on the heels of Mitali' s fiance, throwing her heart and her life up in turmoil, Mitali finds herself in the centre of a crazy whirlwind that lands her in a police station in the dead of the night, two days before she is set to get married. Will Mitali be able to get out of the mess she has unwittingly created? Will she find the love her heart yearns for? Will she find that elusive click' ?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fingerprint Publishing
• Release date: Dec 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9789389931815

Book preview

PROLOGUE

You get one call. Make it quick. The constable gave me a malicious grin as he pointed to the telephone on the desk in front of me. He looked extremely happy to have a woman sitting in the police station so late in the night.

I drew in a deep breath and dialled the phone.

Hello? Tanu’s tense voice came through the phone.

Didi—

Meetu?! Her voice rose in alarm Where the hell are you? It’s almost midnight! The groom’s family has already arrived. Everyone’s asking for you!

What?! I bit my nails nervously. The groom’s family weren’t expected until much later. Why did everything have to become worse when I was already in the middle of a gargantuan crisis? Why?!

Well, they are early. But where are you?!

I could feel Tanu’s frustration and rising panic. I wasn’t the sort to stay out so late ever. Least of all today.

I hesitated. Umm . . . police station . . .

WHAT?!

Th-th-there . . . there was . . . I could feel my hands beginning to shake.

There was what? Tanu demanded.

There’s been a misunderstanding. Can you please just come here? I will explain everything later. Please . . .

Fine. I will be there. Are you alone?

I decided to be vague. Ugh . . . umm . . .

I’ll be there soon, Tanu said after a fraction of a second and hung up. I knew she wanted the full story right then and there. But we were racing against time. Why? Because I was supposed to be married in two days’ time and here I was in the middle of a nightmare, with my head buried in my hands, sitting on a wooden bench in a police station at twelve in the night, guilty of doing something so morally wrong that my fiancé would never forgive me for it. That is, if I could still call him my fiancé.

01

INR 1500-crore market share and growing still . . . An online search about the world of matrimonial websites showed an upward business graph. Were there really so many millions and billions of people desperate to get married? Shaadi.com, Bharatmatrimony.com, Simplymarry.com, Jeevansathi.com—the list was endless, but they all seemed pretty darn confident about hunting down your dream partner for you. With complex algorithms running behind each trivial question to filter out your ideal match, I often wondered if these websites ever ended up pairing a brother and a sister together! After all, their target is to match you up with a person of similar, if not exactly the same interests and backgrounds.

Anyway, at 24, with no marriage proposal coming my way via the traditional routes of familial connections and with no boyfriend to flaunt in front of my parents, I was beginning to get acquainted with the cyber world of matrimonial websites and make peace with them. Dad, in a very earnest bid to secure my eternal happiness, had created a profile for me, albeit under his name, on almost each of the gazillion matrimonial sites that existed. I could have made my own profile under my name, but it would’ve looked rather ‘forward’ for a girl from a middle-class family from small-town India to do such a thing. Dad doing it was also a subtle way of hinting that said girl was still under parental guidance and control—a much appreciated fact in Indian society! But my darling Dad had given me the selective freedom to enter my details in the profile, while they retained the right to specify what type of groom I (essentially they) wanted.

I got some comfort though, in knowing that all my office colleagues were in the same boat as me. Every now and then, we would huddle over cups of tepid coffee in the office cafeteria and vent out our frustration over the whole goddamn process. One would think that for a group of young IT engineers living in the cyber hub of the country, we would come up with exciting and electrifying topics of discussion. But we’d all hit that sacred mark of being of a marriageable age, and this was all we could talk about, men and women alike. Pretending to be proactive IT engineers, we had appointed each other as our backups if we failed to find anybody to marry. But who were we kidding? With Indian parents around, you don’t need back up. Ever. You will be appointed a partner in due time.

So there I was, sitting with my laptop at twelve in the night, filling up yet another ridiculously intrusive form on a matrimonial website with minuscule details about me.

I had targeted to complete it by today, mostly to avoid Mummy’s daily calls with endless tales of my child-bearing cousins. Thank God I was not living with my parents!

It wasn’t that I did not want to get married, I did. But I wanted to fall in love first, like Tanu, my elder sister. She had created quite a stir in our family with her love marriage. Although I could tell that my parents had been secretly relieved—she wasn’t the arranged marriage type anyway. An intelligent and strong-headed girl is hard to sell in the arranged marriage market.

As for me, I was yet to fall in love. Even though there had been a few who had professed their love for me, I had never been able to bring myself to commit to any of them. I wasn’t really the type to fall in love at first sight. The only exception to this was my first crush in high school: Nitin. It wasn’t like we had been in a relationship (he had effectively friend-zoned me before he left for college), but that boy had made my heart go pitter-patter at the very sight of him. The high point of our relationship had been when we had held hands on the night of our school farewell and walked under a star-studded sky. We had also made fervent promises to stay in touch.

But time has a tendency of wrapping up people in their own worlds, and so were we, consumed in ours. After writing to him a few times, when my letters went unanswered, I simply stopped writing. We lost touch and everything just sort of faded away . . .

Holding hands doesn’t mean you guys were in love, okay? my roommate Kriti would chide me every time I got nostalgic and repeated the story. She was right, I knew that. I had to close all the old chapters in my life, get rid of my naivety, and start a new life by falling in love with the right guy and then getting married. And the target was to achieve all this before I touched 29, my potential expiry date.

So I quickly punched in all the details on the website, reduced my whole self into some numbers and labels, and hit ‘Enter’.

02

They want a side profile and a full-length front profile picture. All your pictures on the website are till your waist only, Mummy stated the weird requirement that had come in from an interested party on one of the matrimonial websites with my profile.

Seriously? They specified that they want a picture in that particular profile only? Wow! Pick any from Tanu’s wedding album. I really don’t have the time for a professional photo shoot for this thing, I replied reluctantly.

Tanu already looked through her album, but there’s no clear full-length photo. She also said that we need to change the pictures on the website. They were all taken in bad light. They don’t make you look good. That’s why you haven’t gotten any proposals till now, Mummy cleverly slipped in Tanu’s opinion to exert more pressure. She knew I wouldn’t dare question her judgement.

Tell Tanu to put her own photograph if she doesn’t like mine. We almost look the same anyway! I attempted to lighten up Mummy’s mood. I knew the last few months had been a little disappointing for her, considering I hadn’t exactly been shining on the marriage circuit. The combination of a round face, black eyes, long black hair, and a medium fair complexion failed to have a tantalising effect on the matrimonial website’s users, in spite of the fact that my mother had highlighted my profession and my annual salary in bold.

Suddenly, Tanu’s voice came over the phone. You should be more sincere in this thing, Meetu. It’s not something to joke about.

Mummy! When did you conference Tanu in the call?! I demanded as they both ganged up against me.

Doesn’t matter. Take one weekend, Meetu, and go get yourself some good profile pictures. I can give you the names of some good studios in Bangalore if you want . . . Tanu offered.

No thank you. I don’t need any reference, okay? I will ask Kriti. She knows someone who did her photo shoot sometime back . . .

See, all the other girls are so sincere with these things, Mummy complained, only you are the lazy one. If you would’ve been here in Khetri with us—

Mummy! That’s enough, Tanu cut her short sharply, sparing me from Mummy’s prewritten blackmail script. Meetu, get a few good professional pictures shot and just be done with it. It’s a one-time thing.

I sighed silently at their bullying. I had never imagined that getting married would be so much of work.

Are you trying to tell me something telepathically? Because I didn’t hear you reply . . . Tanu added sarcastically.

I hated her. She had never had to bother with all this rubbish, thanks to her love marriage. But here she was, acting like she was the most experienced one in this matter.

Okay fine. I will get a photo shoot done this weekend. But I have to leave now for a meeting . . .

Okay bye! And the line got disconnected.

I sat back in my chair, catching my breath.

Kriti poked her head up from her cubical.

I told you, you need all the angles! She smirked.

Kriti was the proverbial old-timer in this game. Her brother had been trying to get her married since the day she had turned 20 and she was now 26, at least that’s what her profile stated. I doubted the truth of that number. But her real age was a heavily guarded secret. I had been unable to fish out this detail even though she had been my roommate for a while now. With only an elder brother and a stingy sister-in-law as her family, there was not much dowry involved in Kriti’s proposal. And that was pretty much a dead deal in her community.

Do you know any good studios around? I asked, ignoring her I-told-you-so attitude.

I know plenty, darling! She beamed. Don’t you worry, I will come with you to the studio and help you with this. You will need four standard poses—that’s one side profile, one front full-length, one close up, and one in natural light. She was shockingly precise.

Ugh . . . whatever, I mumbled, already regretting the whole thing.

Kriti walked over to my desk, shaking her head in dismay, and placed her hand on my shoulder. It’s not ‘whatever’, Mitali. It’s everything! Think of it like this: Your profile is a small drop in the ocean of all those online profiles. With just three lines of description about yourself and an average attention span of 10 seconds per profile, it’s just your picture that makes the impact. Not your qualifications, not your caste, not your hobbies, BUT your picture. When I started with these sites, only parents were posting ads for their kids. But now guys are writing profiles for themselves. So you need pictures which will appeal to both the parents and the son in order to get into the selected pile. This is like the Basic of online matrimony.

Really? I gave her an impassive stare.

Make all the fun you want to, but there are some basic rules everyone needs to follow if they want to make the cut in the long checklists that the grooms’ families always have . . .

Her deep insight on this topic was almost pitiable. Maybe I will turn out like her in a few years too. The thought instantly straightened me up and I decided to get just a little serious about the whole business.

***

‘The Heeralal Photo Studio’

That was where we went two days later for my photo shoot. The moment I stepped in, the place made me nervous—what with its chic décor and liberal use of crystal accessories—since I have a tendency to bring down things with me wherever I walk.

Considering one just doesn’t walk into upmarket studios, Kriti had selected my clothes and had applied her magic makeup tricks before we left for the shoot, making me look like I truly belonged in the studio. She had packed a change of clothes too—from the hot number I was wearing for the photographs that were to be sent only to the prospective grooms, I was to change into a sari and transform myself into a model for a religious poster, for the benefit of the groom’s parents and family. Quite clearly, I was with a pro.

I looked around the reception area as we stood waiting for the photographer. The walls were all covered with full-length pictures of happy couples sitting in awkward poses, smiling at the camera, looking insanely happy. It made the whole concept of ‘marital bliss’ look like a very tangible thing. They were selling a dream, a dream of beautiful couples happy with each other in their married lives. I almost found myself wanting to get married after looking at the photograph of a very cute couple snuggling up to each other while sitting on the grass in a park.

Kriti approached the receptionist who seemed impervious to our presence in the studio, until Kriti stood right in front of her face and briskly gave our appointment details to her. The girl gave Kriti a clipped smile and then just disappeared somewhere inside the studio. She came out, some ten minutes later, with a man following behind her.

Hello Simba! Kriti exclaimed, greeting the man.

He looked every bit the typical photographer—tall, thin, long hair tied in a pony, zero-power glasses, a stud in one ear, scruffy jeans, and a black tee shirt, just the right amount of ‘zing’ that people look for in a high-end photographer.

Hello. The guy spoke with a weird accent, something between a slurp and a lisp.

Kriti turned to point at me. I got my friend to you only because I liked your work. We want all the standard profiles in at least two outfits. And of course, some adjustments here and there . . .

Of course, Simba shrugged and walked towards me. I can reduce some weight here and there . . . and . . . he circled around me, observing every inch of my body dispassionately, I can air brush any dark spots as well if you want. He looked at my face keenly. Katrina fair, Deepika fair, Priyanka Chopra fair, you tell me what tone you want and I will do that one . . .

A voice inside my head told me to smack that racial monkey across the face until his ears rang, but I knew that he was talking about the real world. I had had some enquiries on my profile asking me exactly how fair I was before they even sought any other details.

Kriti spoke very thoughtfully. Deepika fair, don’t you think? We don’t want it to look too unrealistic. But yes, overall figure should be proportionate. You know . . . just do the usual things that you do.

Yes of course. Let’s start then.

For the next three hours, Simba bent his very flexible body into various angles as he clicked away, instructing me to pose this way and that for all those embarrassing, clichéd matrimonial shots. And about a week after the whole ordeal, I finally had the pictures in my hands.

This feels like cheating! I complained, looking down at the pictures. It felt like I was all set to ensnare an innocent guy with these booby-trap photographs. Don’t you think they will notice when they see Kareena in the photographs and then meet Kanta bai instead?

Don’t be absurd, Kriti rebuked me. You don’t look that bad. Besides, who has ever complained about the good packaging of products? She grinned widely. Her analogies were really troubling, but since she was clearly more adept at all this than me, I let that slide.

I did not really believe that the pictures would make an impact on my matrimonial chances, but it was tough to argue with Kriti’s logic when within a week of posting them online, I got five enquiries on my profile.

Mummy was ecstatic. She pointed out that all the proposals were from ‘good families’, since the guys were either settled in the USA or had MBA degrees. Of course. Because what else could possibly be used to judge a family’s worth and standing than the son’s degree and job?

Okay, so they want to meet you. The side profile ones, Mummy said a couple of days later, categorising the interested party by the request they had made.

Ask your mother about the name of the guy. We can check him out online before you go and meet him in person, Kriti whispered, fingers poised over her laptop to launch into research mode. This was another one of Kriti’s suggestions: Always do your homework before meeting the guy. A basic knowledge about the guy’s whereabouts and preferences will save you from making any snide remarks about his favourite sport or political party or whatever.

Rishi, his name is Rishi. But you are not meeting the guy. Mummy told me when I asked her about him. He is in the USA, but his uncle will come to meet you there.

Uncle?! I squeaked. But why? And what will I talk about with this uncle?! A twinge of discomfort fluttered through me. I was uncomfortable talking to my own uncles when I met them these days. Their only major concern was when I would be getting married. And now I had to meet someone else’s uncle!

You are a software engineer. You should be able to talk to anybody, Mummy retorted, as if being sociable was a skill we had been taught in the engineering college. Then again, I suppose it was a reasonable expectation on my mother’s part when compared to my relatives believing I should be able to fix a toaster and also launch a missile by virtue of being an engineer.

Okay, fine. When is he coming?

They will call you. I will text you their number meanwhile . . . Mummy said.

Okay. I kept the phone.

I turned around to look at Kriti with a speculative look on my face. Was this how it was done for guys based in the USA? My first ever tryst with a prospective alliance was going to be a date with the guy’s uncle. But how was I going to gauge my compatibility with the guy by meeting his uncle?!

03

On Monday afternoon, somewhere around 2 p.m., when I was busy blowing off my working hours in some hard-core Google doddle gaming, my phone rang.

Hello, can I talk to Mitali? A rather no-nonsense kind of a voice spoke from the other end.

Yes, speaking . . .

Hello, Mitali. This is Mr Hari, Rishi’s uncle. I believe your mother must have told you about us.

There was a moment of hesitation in me. How was I to refer to the man? Uncle? Sir? Mr Hari? I could feel the seconds ticking by. I decided to play safe and go with uncle.

Yes Uncle, how are you?

Good. I wanted to know if it will be possible to meet you in about fifteen minutes?

Umm . . . actually, Uncle, I am in office right now . . . so . . .

I know. Would your office cafeteria be a good place?

I blanked out for a moment. Had the man actually just suggested meeting in my office campus?

Umm . . . can we meet somewhere outside my office instead? I asked hesitatingly.

We are en route to the airport right now. We could meet there in an hour? He spoke quite imperiously.

This was even worse than the former option because the airport was a two-hour drive from my office at the best of times and then too, it was hardly the place to meet someone in this regard. I decided to go with the first option, however strange and uncomfortable it might be.

I think my office will be better in that case. We could sit in the cafeteria. But I am not very sure if visitors are allowed inside the campus . . . I said apologetically.

Don’t worry about that. We know someone in your office who has arranged that for us. Will meet you in an hour then?

Someone who has arranged that for us? Wow!

Uhh sure . . .

Good. See you soon then. And he kept the phone.

I had a feeling about this uncle. He was probably like one of my maternal uncles who had this knack of making me feel super awkward every time he met me by criticising me for just about every single thing—my age, my job, my life in general. You have to be an epitome of perfection for such people, and even then there’s no guarantee that it’ll be enough for them.

I looked down at myself and groaned. There are days when you look your best and those days absolutely never collide with the days when you need to look your best. I had an hour to match my Kanta bai look to a Deepika Padukone look. I rushed to Kriti’s cubicle and asked in a hushed voice, Would you happen to have a makeup kit with you right now?

She narrowed her eyes and looked at me deductively. Why? she asked, drumming her fingers on her desk.

That side profile uncle is going to meet me here in one hour, I said, knowing she wouldn’t budge until I told her everything.

Kriti’s eyes widened immediately with excitement. A thousand questions were probably running in her