Cafe Coffee Day

I knew it was over the moment I said Cafe Coffee Day.

It was just the beginning of the painful bride hunting process. My mom and sister had short listed this girl from Nagpur and she was also willing to meet me. Later, she would tell me that she wanted to see me because I was an artiste.

My mom and sister liked her when she came over to our house, in Nagpur, to have a chat. She was coming down to Pune for some work and was willing to see me there. After exchanging addresses via sms it was decided that I would go over to her uncle's place where she was staying and meet up. I reached on time and the family was very welcoming. She was all set to head out after a while and that is exactly what we did. We headed out without a clue as to where we were going. After a small walk she said we could sit for a while in CCD if there was one around. I had never been to CCD before and was rather unsure of it and hence preferred the security of the outdoors. I started that CCD stuff is overpriced, frozen food types, unhealthy, no value for (hard-earned) money and was simply a place for rich kids to splurge. She was taken aback by my sudden expression and strong opinion. Nevertheless she probably liked the fact that I was realistic. Probably.

We walked around for some more time in the cold November air and then it happened talking about non essential stuff like rebirth and I told her how I believed that I was a German and a researcher, at the Cavendish Lab, in my past life. We were almost running out of small talk when destiny and biology kicked in. I needed to take a piss. I held on for quite a while and also considered asking her to wait while I took a piss in a dark alley. But there was no dark alley and for all my urgency I could not imagine asking of her something like that.

The chat at CCD was not a lesser disaster. I shared my perceptions of people; their dress sense, their hairstyles, etc and how it affected and spoke volumes of their personalities. It was interesting enough until all the negative conclusions of the personality types somehow applied to her father, brother and almost every adult male in her immediate and distant family. I had already given up the whole thing the moment I had suggested CCD and also because she was rather unsure of marriage; I was the third "artist" she was seeing.