Laddu-wooed

‘Dear diary,
I have officially ended my life today. Finally got married to that engineer guy papa kept whining about. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Maybe dad’s right, you know? I’m pushing 26 and I don’t have a stable job. I don’t have my own place yet. I don’t even have a goddamn boyfriend anymore. I couldn’t say no to papa anymore.

Maybe this is all for the best, you know?
I can do it… I have to do it for my dad.’

“You look very pretty Sneha.”, the only other person in the room broke her trance.

“Erm…thanks?” she said as she looked up to him. A 6 foot guy with decent enough facial features. She tried to size up her new husband.
American import with an engineering PhD. He was a distant relative. Her chacha’s nieces son or something. Somebody suggested the match at a family meeting and her papa immediately liked him. Or more frankly speaking, he loved his resume.

He doesn’t really look much like a nerd though, she thought. She tried not to think too much of it. The more she thinks, the worse it gets. She promised her dad that she wouldn’t make a scene.

“I don’t really know what to say… Neither of us wanted this. You know what I mean right? Sneha?”

Well maybe he’s not that bad, she thought. At least he knows his place.
Also many people get into these arranged marriages, not all of them are unhappy. Maa never had a problem with dad and she didn’t even see him before they were halfway through their vows. At least in her case she talked to him beforehand. She’d be fine, she hoped.

“You don’t know about my last relationship, do you?

 “Not really no.”

A stretch of silence followed. How did maa manage to bypass all that information? This wasn’t the first time she had ever regretted dating Riddhya, and it definitely wouldn’t be the last.

“You could always tell me about him.”, he raised his brows as he tried to catch a better glimpse of her face.

He had genuine curiosity in his eyes, something she hadn’t seen in her mother’s when she told her about it.

“What do you want to know?”, she sighed.

“How much do you want to tell me?”

“Okay”, she sat up, cleared her throat and prepared herself for the incoming storm.

“ 3 year old relationship. Same college. Star crossed lovers. Fuckboy. Toxic relationship. Has dated 3 more women after me. And before you ask…No, we didn’t have sex.”, she caught her breath.

“I don’t see why that would matter.”

“Why what would matter?”

“You know…if you had sex or not.”

She was genuinely surprised. Not because of what he said. But because of the way he said it. This guy felt like he genuinely didn’t care if his newly-wedded wife had been in bed with another man before.

Huh. He must’ve had a girlfriend then. Someone he regularly screwed. No South Asian man is okay with his wife having an ex if he doesn’t have a shittier past.

 “Have you ever had a girlfriend?”, she tried to confirm her belief.

“Naa… I’ve never really had time.”

Huh, so he’s a mama’s boy. Or more like a career guy. Not bad. Still doesn’t change the fact that he didn’t have the balls to protest when his father told him he was to get married to a girl he didn’t know. Coward piece of shit.

She didn’t want to talk to him anymore. She looked out the window to see if there was a full moon. 

She had always believed in true love. The kind of love they tell you about in novels. She always wanted to find someone who’d make her laugh when she felt sad, someone who could sweep her off her feet. But something she found out a year into her graduation was that, love never came to those who didn’t look for it. So she got desperate. Dated the most handsome guy in her batch.

Fucking looser couldn’t didn’t even have the guts to break up face to face. Broke up through text.

She calmed herself. Maybe she could learn to love this guy. He isn’t as bad looking as most of the other guys her maa suggested.

‘A 200 pound blob of jerk , she told herself. ‘That’s what you get for dating a fuckboy Sneha’

She needed some food in her stomach. She’d been dieting to slim down for the last 2 weeks. The lehenga still wouldn’t fit though. The pressure was finally starting to get to her.

This isn’t fair, she thought. It’s her own wedding and they wouldn’t let her have food. Food, the only thing that kept her going through her breakup and then this goddamn marriage.

The biriyani smelled incredible, she closed her eyes as she tried to remember. Everything smelled incredible damnit. The chicken, the faluda, the mutton and oh my god the laddus!! Those reshmi laddus almost glistened in all their buttery glory.

And as she thought, a look of hunger and sheer desperation ran through her face.

‘You can get through this Sneha’, she psyched herself. ‘You’re gonna go out tomorrow and eat all the fucking laddus you want.’ ‘Nobody’s gonna stop you’, she mumbled to herself as tiredness and some form of childish anger overtook her face.

“Hey!”, he said desperately trying to grab her attention.

“What?”, she opened her eyes with a seemingly annoyed look.

“I noticed you were looking at the small laddus on the table when we were taking photos with the guests”

“YESSS…They looked delicious!!!”, she almost screamed.

As her voice rose, some peeping Tom dropped something on the other side of the door.

So they were listening this whole time. Huh. Bangladeshi families. You could almost hear all of them escaping quickly.

She sighed, “Not like your mother would let me have any laddus. Bou maa Bou maa eita omuk er chachar khalar nati enar shathe ekta chhobi tulo? Bou maa ektu hasho??”, she mocked her new mother-in-law.

“Hey! Don’t talk about my maa like that!! She isn’t that bad.”, so mama’s boy finally decided to grow some balls.

“You’re right you’re right… I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said that.”, she said trying to control herself.

“You look quite tired. You should get some sleep.” “But um… I was wondering …..maybe you’d want some of these before you went to sleep”, he said as he held out something wrapped in a piece of tissue paper from his pocket.

Four laddus peeped out of the tissue paper even before she could open it. As she unwrapped the tissue, a smile kept widening on her face till she was finally laughing.

She had never been happier in a long time. Suddenly, everything didn’t seem so shitty after all. She felt like a 3 year old stealing laddus from the fridge. She forgot to resent the night for a couple of seconds. She smiled and smudged her lipstick on the laddu but she didn’t stop. She loved it. She loved all of it.

He gave her a faint smile and picked up a pillow. He said he was going to sleep on the couch and he left her alone.

Ten minutes and three reshmi laddus later, you could almost hear her scribbling away on her diary,

“Dear diary,
I made a new friend today. I guess he isn’t really that bad…”